Saturday, July 14, 2012

What Is The All-Time Best Book for Young Girls?


by . Flavorpill -  Thursday July 12, 2012

Last month, we read a great article by Deborah Weisgall entitled The Mother of All Girls’ Books, which extolled the virtues (and “secret subversiveness” of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women. “It was Alcott’s genius,” Weisgall writes, “to fill the didactic frame of a girls’ book with her ambition — with disturbing ideas, anger, and frustration as well as her father’s inspiring and impossible striving for moral perfection, to which her mother provided a humane antidote.” Though she makes no overt claim in the article, it’s clear that for Weisgall, Little Women is the epitome of what a book for girls should be: vivid and captivating, intense but relatable, full of wisdom, and just good literature. Of course, we agree.

But Weisgall’s article got us to thinking about what really makes a book great for young girls. It’s a nebulous thing. Whether a certain book is about girls shouldn’t matter all that much — in my experience, there seems to be a strange phenomenon where young boys don’t like reading books about girls, but girls read about either sex with equal interest — though passing the Bechdel test (which Little Women does) has never hurt a piece of literature yet. Obviously, women should be portrayed respectfully, though in 2012 I expect this from pretty much all fiction (the characters don’t necessarily have to be treated respectfully at all times by the other characters, of course — just by the author), but what else?
Read the full story, read what others suggest and make your own suggestion at Flavorpill.

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