A Mighty Girl's top picks of books for tween and teen girls about puberty, sexuality, and their changing bodies.

You knew it would happen one of these days: your daughter is a tween. Maybe you just realized that she’s looking eye-to-eye with you, or perhaps you’re seeing breast budding or other early signs of puberty. Or, your daughter is a teen, and while she thinks she knows everything about her changing body, you want to make sure that she has accurate information and good resources to consult.

Fortunately, in this post, we have many great books to recommend for both tweens and teens — in addition to numerous helpful resources for parents themselves. If your Mighty Girl is a bit younger, check out our previous post on Body Smart, Body Safe: Talking with Younger Girls about their Bodies for resources for preschoolers and younger elementary students. You can also learn about our recommendations on menstruation-related resources in our post Teaching Your Mighty Girl About Her Menstrual Cycle.

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Ruth Coker Burks cared for over 1,000 people during the height of the AIDS epidemic, most of whom had been rejected by their families.

In 1986, Ruth Coker Burks' discovery of a hospital room door with a "big, red bag" over it and her encounter with the dying young man inside changed her life — and led her to becoming the final caregiver for hundreds of people dying of AIDS, most of them young gay men who had been abandoned by their families. When Ruth, then 26 years old, learned how many young men were being left to die alone and often were not even being claimed for burial, she recalls thinking, "Who knew there’d come a time when people didn’t want to bury their children?” Over the next ten years, Burks estimates that she helped care for over 1,000 people dying of AIDS and even dug the graves for 40 of them herself in her family's cemetery. In recognition of World AIDS Day, we're sharing Burks' inspiring story — and the powerful and timeless lesson it teaches about the power of compassion to overcome fear and prejudice. Continue reading → Continue reading

Whether your Mighty Girl is a member of the LGBTQ community, or an LGBTQ ally, these books will show her that her experience is not unique: millions of people stand with her.

“I stand for honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you want to be treated, and helping those in need. To me, those are traditional values.” — Ellen Degeneres

One of the founding principles of A Mighty Girl is that girls of all ages should be able to find books that reflect who they are: their background, their interests, and their dreams. But when a girl identifies as lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer/questioning — or someone in her life does — it can be challenging to find stories that reflect her experience. Continue reading → Continue reading

By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Communications Specialist

“Tonight love and hate met in St. Louis. And love outnumbered the hate, in poetic thousands. Hate left. But love stayed. + Together, we sang.” -- Lady Gaga on Twitter after a protest outside one of her concerts

While Pride Month is a time to remember how far we have to come in the quest for acceptance of the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) community, it is also a time to celebrate, because with every year, we come closer to a time when LGBTQ pride will be celebrated universally. In honor of the pride we should all feel in supporting individuality and equality, A Mighty Girl has put together our top ten songs for celebrating living authentic lives.

Although not all of these songs was written with LGBTQ issues in mind, they have all been adopted by the LGBTQ community as expressions of their struggles and their dreams for the future. They provide reassurance that others support the community, whether they identify as LGBTQ or as allies. Most importantly, they remind all of us that, no matter what, we should stand tall and be proud of who we are. Continue reading → Continue reading