Today I am discussing the book Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls by the Italian writers Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo. The book has been illustrated by numerous different illustrators and was published in 2016 with the help of a Kickstarter campaign. I have heard a lot of influencers on social media be very positive about this book so I wanted to see for myself.
The book is made up of a hundred little stories about women from all over the world, from all kinds of eras. The stories resemble biographies and are accompanied by a full page illustration of the woman that the reader is just reading about. The writers seem to have tried their best to make a representative selection of women, not only based on era, and location, but also based on profession or the things they did that made them important role models for girls nowadays.
That selection is quite nice: the women vary from pharaohs in ancient Egypt to women who were just only adults in 2016. I also feel that a lot of countries and cultures are represented, although there still are quite a lot of women from the Western world featured in this book. I do really like the variety of professions of these women: from scientist to athlete and from activist to tattoo artist. All types of women are present in this book and I think that is a nice way for small girls to identify themselves, but also to get a feeling that they truly can do anything that they would like to do.
The stories themselves are very biographical and honestly do not really read as nice bedtime stories. I would not be surprised if some of the smaller girls find the stories a bit boring or a bit hard to understand, because they might not know what a certain profession entails. The reader gets a lot of details about the lives of the women and the discoveries that some of them made, but that is not always necessary in order to understand the importance of what these women did. It might for example be very hard for a young child to grasp the concept of what causes a disease and what doesn't. I do understand the writer's choice to stay true the women's lives, but I am just not sure that it worked for the best in all cases.
I think the concept of this book is great and I love the sentiment to empower girls all over the world to believe in themselves. Moreover, the women that are talked about in this book are often very interesting people, and the book is therefore not only fit to be read by little girls. Boys can enjoy these amazing accomplishments and discoveries as well. However, I would have liked it if the authors had tried a bit harder to really marry the idea of biographies of important women with bedtime stories, to make the stories a bit more accessible for young children.
The book is made up of a hundred little stories about women from all over the world, from all kinds of eras. The stories resemble biographies and are accompanied by a full page illustration of the woman that the reader is just reading about. The writers seem to have tried their best to make a representative selection of women, not only based on era, and location, but also based on profession or the things they did that made them important role models for girls nowadays.
That selection is quite nice: the women vary from pharaohs in ancient Egypt to women who were just only adults in 2016. I also feel that a lot of countries and cultures are represented, although there still are quite a lot of women from the Western world featured in this book. I do really like the variety of professions of these women: from scientist to athlete and from activist to tattoo artist. All types of women are present in this book and I think that is a nice way for small girls to identify themselves, but also to get a feeling that they truly can do anything that they would like to do.
The stories themselves are very biographical and honestly do not really read as nice bedtime stories. I would not be surprised if some of the smaller girls find the stories a bit boring or a bit hard to understand, because they might not know what a certain profession entails. The reader gets a lot of details about the lives of the women and the discoveries that some of them made, but that is not always necessary in order to understand the importance of what these women did. It might for example be very hard for a young child to grasp the concept of what causes a disease and what doesn't. I do understand the writer's choice to stay true the women's lives, but I am just not sure that it worked for the best in all cases.
I think the concept of this book is great and I love the sentiment to empower girls all over the world to believe in themselves. Moreover, the women that are talked about in this book are often very interesting people, and the book is therefore not only fit to be read by little girls. Boys can enjoy these amazing accomplishments and discoveries as well. However, I would have liked it if the authors had tried a bit harder to really marry the idea of biographies of important women with bedtime stories, to make the stories a bit more accessible for young children.
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