Books Rock: Good Night Stories For Rebel Girls

I remember a few years ago when I was seriously preoccupied with the idea of feminism, I came across this Kickstarter campaign on my Facebook feed. I thought it was a brilliant idea. When you are a girl or a woman, you tend to just see stuff and bad things that happen as given and just the way things are because ''boys will be boys'' and other nonsense like that. But when you get female children you start to ask yourself a lot more questions. At least I did. Is it really given? Is the current order of things really the way it's supposed to be? There are certain questions, quotes, lectures and articles that can be the microfiber cloth you never had and once you start scrubbing the dirty windows of your bubble you tend to see that no, it's not the way it has to be. Lots of progress have been made. And there is room for more. But it's not the known that is prevailing. It's the unknown and it's the thing we sometimes don't dear to question.
You start to search for role models for your children. And there is this unbelievable comfort in having yourself, or even better them seeing themselves, represented out there. You. A girl. Because it's a man's world still. And before you clap that ''post comment'' I just want to say that I know, #notallmen.

So that was about two years ago, the Kickstarter campaign started in May of 2016. and it was a great Kickstarter success: the goal was to raise $40,000, and to print their first 1,000 copies but they raised over $600 000. And today Good Night Stories For Rebel Girls is a global bestseller, translated in 30 languages and loved around the globe. There is even a 2nd volume for sails. But the idea for the book, according to the authors, “didn’t happen overnight, it was more of a process. We started to send pieces of content out with our newsletter, short stories about extraordinary women, and at some point, we realized that the response we were getting just from sending the newsletter was so great, so intense. This doesn’t happen often with you send a newsletter; usually, people don’t open it. So it became clear this was a book we had to make.”

This book was created by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo, co-founders of children’s media company Timbuktu Labs. It tells stories of 100 great women, from all kind of backgrounds, professions, ethnicities and all across the globe. From Queens, activists, ballerinas, lawyers, pirates to computer scientists, weightlifters, and inventors. The possibilities for your daughter to envision herself in are endless. The stories are written in a fairytale form, many of them starting with ''a long, long time ago'' or ''once upon a time''. The thing that I loved as much, if not more, about the book, are the illustrations. 100 women artists did the portraits of the women. As my eldest is really into art and painting I found that part equally thrilling.

My girls loved many of the characters and so did I. I loved that I knew about many and that I meet some new women. I also liked that some of the women portrayed were not ones I would consider good role models or influence, like Hillary Rhodam Clinton or Margaret Thacher, but I think that can be a great teachable moment for my kids and that possibility of me upgrading the stories for them and putting them in context is both honor and responsibility. For example, googling Frida Kahlo's paintings or watching ''Julie&Julia'' with them. I liked that there was sister featured, like the Bronte sisters or "Las Mariposas". We have still not read every story and we read some stories a thousand times (the fish bombs by Julia Child are their favorite thus far) and I see this being a book that they can come back to both with me and later, when they'll be old enough to take their own interest in the woman. If you are interested in more here is https://www.facebook.com/rebelgirls/videos/1187850057915524/ ">a video about the book.

And here is why such books and influence at an early age is vital: A 2011 Florida State University study found that just 7.5 percent of nearly 6,000 picture books published between 1900 and 2000 depict female animal protagonists; male animals were the central characters in more than 23 percent each year. No more than 33 percent of children’s books in any given year featured an adult woman or female animal, but adult men and male animals appeared in 100 percent of the books.

Women create more children's' literature and girls more often read, there is even such thing as a literacy gender gap and yet the majority of characters in kids books are either mail or not assigned a gender, and when later is the case the parents tend to make the character a boy. I read this anecdote while researching for this post: A few years ago, Ian McEwan, the celebrated English novelist, decided to reduce the size of the library in his London townhouse. He and his younger son selected thirty novels and took them to a local park. They offered the books to passers-by. Women were eager and grateful to take the books, McEwan reports. Not a single man accepted. The author’s conclusion? “When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.”

The other important reason for empowering young girls through literature is an alarming study that came out last year
that found that girls as young as seven (that's 7!!) thought of themselves as less smart than their male peers. Both boys and girls associated states such as brilliance or logic or giftedness with being a man. It has a huge impact on their later self-esteem and achievements and perceptions of their own abilities. It has been long known that in many instances in life girls had to work twice as hard to achieve half the things boy do. I've read that women tend to choose assignments that they are sure they are good at and thereby can miss many opportunities. If you take the other gender stereotyping we tend to teach our girls through toys and books and movies and song (which we, as adults, offer to them) you can see why women are generally more educated then men but work at less paid jobs. Men aren't smarter. Nor are they more hard working. It's just that girls are, consciously or unconsciously, being taught otherwise.

When I talk to my male friends they tend to get offended and defensive by these facts. I believe it is because I have fairly intelligent male friends and they can see by themselves that this is generally the case, more often than not. This is the part when they start to pull out all three examples of me being wrong out of their asses, but that's ok. I just hope that those of them that have kids, both male and female, will admit the problem and name it so that we can start to work towards a better society, for both mine and their daughters, and sons, together. I mean, if we are to believe Queen Bee, Who run the world?

We can also search for cartoons that feature female heroines like The Power Puff girls or DC Super Hero Girls, even tho I don't like the hypersexualization in that one. I also like that strong female characters in Octonauts (Dashy the mechanic) and Wild Kratts (Aviva the genius inventor) and others. Even some Disney princesses are good if they are watched and partially narrated by an adult to help the child make sense of the underlying message. For example Pocahontas, Mulan, Brave or Moana. If you have some more suggestions, for both books and cartoons, let me know in the comments.

We also tend to present them with some strong girls that are their great women
strong girls that are their contemporaries like for example Malala Yousafzai, Ann Makosinski, a girl inventor from Canada or this badass girl who trolled the trolls, and I shall note that most miserable trolls are male, just sayin', by cooking for them. You know a troll likes his woman in the kitchen best.

If you are in Croatia and want to buy this book you can do so here and if you are from some other country you can order it on Amazon or directly from them. In Croatia it is publisher by Znanje and translated, and very well I might add, by Morana Šimat.

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To the rebel girls of the world:

Dream bigger

Aim higher

Fight harder

And, when in doubt, remember

You are right

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I look forward to expanding the theme of children's literature through a series of posts and I would love to hear, well, to read, your input. Wich books do you pick for your kids? Did you read this one? Do you have any book recommendations? If you wrote something about kids books send me a link or if you plan to write something use the hashtag #booksrock so I can find you.

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