girls and women

Cleaning Up

Jess finds a secret diary and imagines what it would be like to be a girl who has everything. Will she become so wrapped up in someone else’s life that she misses a chance to create her own? Jess cleans houses to save money for college, because her dad, unemployed and off the wagon yet again and has moved the two of them out of the city into a decrepit borrowed tent and trailer. Jess wavers between anger at her father and fear that poverty and addiction may be her fate, too, and she decides she will do whatever it takes to avoid it. She gets a gig cleaning a gorgeous country home and discovers the trashed bedroom of the teenaged daughter, Quinn. Jess wonders how a girl with a perfect life, private school, horseback riding and could have wrecked such a beautiful room. As she cleans, she finds troubling clues, including, tucked behind the bed, a diary.

Gradually Jess learns that Quinn’s life is not what it’s supposed to be. Jess begins to imagine becoming friends with Quinn, and when she begins to write down a new story for Quinn, she risks turning her back on the opportunities that are right in front of her new friends, new interests, a fresh beginning.

Running With Changing Woman

Samantha is a Navajo girl attending Atsá Mesa Community School on the Navajo Reservation. Her life has seemed pretty average when one day at school her body suddenly changes. As a ́Diné, Samantha must now prepare for the Diné womanhood ceremony called the Kinaaldá, a ceremony once performed by the Navajo deity, Changing Woman. With her life now filled with more drama than ever before, she’s reluctant to participate in the demanding four-day ceremony. With a whirlwind of new adventures and pep talks from those closest to her, Sam’s family and her two best friends do their best to help Sam deal with bullies, boys, and her new responsibilities as a Diné woman.

Layers: A Memoir

Bagieu reflects on her childhood and teen years with her characteristic wit and unflinching honesty. The result is fifteen short stories about friendship, love, grief, and those awkward first steps toward adulthood.

Rima’s Rebellion: Courage In A Time Of Tyranny

In 1920s Cuba, Rima is bullied and shunned for her illegitimacy but finds solace in riding her horse and forges unexpected friendships with others who share her dreams of freedom and suffrage.

Strong As Fire, Fierce As Flame

Meera’s future has been planned for her for as long as she can remember. As a child, her parents married her to a boy from a neighboring village whom she barely knows. Later, on the eve of her thirteenth birthday, she prepares to leave her family to live with her husband’s–just as her strict religion dictates. But that night, Indian soldiers mutiny against their British commanders and destroy the British ammunition depot, burning down parts of Delhi. Riots follow, and Meera’s husband is killed. Upon hearing the news, Meera’s father insists that she follow the dictates of their fringe religious sect: She must end her life by throwing herself on her husband’s funeral pyre.

Queen Of Physics; how Wu Chien Shiung helped unlock the secrets of the atom

“When Wu Chien Shiung was born in China 100 years ago, girls did not attend school. But her parents named their daughter “Courageous Hero” and encouraged her love of science. This biography follows Wu as she battles sexism at home and racism in the United States of America to become what Newsweek magazine called the “Queen of Physics” for her work on how atoms split”–

Noisemakers: 25 Women Who Raised Their Voices & Changed The World – A Graphic Collection From Kazoo

In 25 distinct styles from some of the most exciting comic artists, Noisemakers makes for great Women’s History Month reading and is perfect for everyone who is not afraid to use their voice and for those who could use a little boos

Banned Book Club

A Junior Library Guild Selection When Kim Hyun Sook started college in 1983 she was ready for her world to open up. After acing her exams and sort-of convincing her traditional mother that it was a good idea for a woman to go to college, she looked forward to soaking up the ideas of Western Literature far from the drudgery she was promised at her family’s restaurant. But literature class would prove to be just the start of a massive turning point, still focused on reading but with life-or-death stakes she never could have imagined. This was during South Korea’s Fifth Republic, a military regime that entrenched its power through censorship, torture, and the murder of protestors. In this charged political climate, with Molotov cocktails flying and fellow students disappearing for hours and returning with bruises, Hyun Sook sought refuge in the comfort of books. When the handsome young editor of the school newspaper invited her to his reading group, she expected to pop into the cafeteria to talk about Moby Dick, Hamlet, and The Scarlet Letter. Instead she found herself hiding in a basement as the youngest member of an underground banned book club. And as Hyun Sook soon discovered, in a totalitarian regime, the delights of discovering great works of illicit literature are quickly overshadowed by fear and violence as the walls close in. In BANNED BOOK CLUB, Hyun Sook shares a dramatic true story of political division, fear-mongering, anti-intellectualism, the death of democratic institutions, and the relentless rebellion of reading.