Books for a 9 year old girl with female lead characters that aren’t about fairies or cute animals..

[PurpleCloak]

I need some help with my 9 year old DD - her favourite books are the “The Boy Who Grew Dragons” series, would love anything similar to this but more female character focussed? Or just anything generally focussed on female characters that like being active, sporty and aren’t about fairies or cats etc. However, nothing with too much peril or talk of death (we are going for through a sensitive period with those subjects 🤣). Thank you!

Thank you, I’m amazed at so many suggestions! Really appreciate it.
Just to add, we talk about death/dying a lot (it really worries her and she is a big talker so we go over and over her worries), for some reason having it in books really freaks her out. Maybe it’s seeing the words written down, not sure. We are working on it. She is ok with some peril but again anything that is about death, murder, children without parents etc would be a no go. She is super sensitive but I know we need to keep working on it so book avoidance may not be doing her any favours! I just like her having an escape in books where she doesn’t need to worry - however she also doesn’t like the cute animal/fairy/unicorn books that seem to dominate the bookshelves and library for her age group so I got a bit stuck!

Anyway, I’m rambling. Thank you again, I will be off to bankrupt myself at the bookshop

My ds loves the Amelia Fang books.

I'd second Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf. Readable, funny and a great heroine. Likewise Pippi Longstocking.

The Alice-Miranda books

Drum roll please, it’s Stevie Louise by Tanya Hennessy.

Anything by Hilary McKay - she is fantastic. The Exiles series is hilarious. Also, Eva Ibbotson, Journey to the River Sea and the Crown of Kazan are ripping yarns!

Kelley Armstrong's 'A Royal Guide to Monster Slaying' series (third book came out recently, my DD is very excited for it)

She might like The House at the Edge of Magic by Amy Sparkes. Or The Secret Dragon by Ed Clarke. Both have strong female leads but no fairies, princesses or unicorns!

The two children in The Secret Dragon have both lost a parent before the story begins (the boy's mum has died, the girl's dad walked out on them though she has believes for most if the book that he died when she was little). My sensitive little one can cope with deaths of characters we never got to actually meet - is she OK with that or is it also a no go? It's a common device in children's fiction for this age group to get the parents out of the way to make space for the main characters to have adventures, so avoiding even books that reference pre-deceased parents is going to be quite limiting.

I agree with having an escape in books! Books got me through a lot when I was little. Reading for pleasure is a perfect escape.
I used to love Jill's Gymkhana books. Nonsense really but they took me away from my own reality

There is a dirth of female leads in older primary age literature

I would disagree with this. There are so many children's classics with female lead characters or a group of siblings where the girls are as important as the boys. If anything modern literature is worse, there are some great female leads (I love Katherine Rundell's books, probably because they have characteristics of the golden era children's novels) but there's a lot of Roald Dahl type exaggerated characters and books are very much boys books or girls books.

I suppose an important question to ask the OP is, is this to read to herself or are you going to read them to her? If you are reading them with her then something that is more challenging is fine, if she's reading to herself then books like Ramona or the Anna Hibiscus books might be good, they are both simple stories of family life.

Echoing Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle and its sequels, and the Dealing with Dragons series.

@JaninaDuszejko it’s both, for her to read but she also loves me reading to her every night in bed

Wizards of Once by Cressida Cowell. DD read them ages 9 and was obsessed by them. 4 books in the series

The Secret Garden
Pippi Longstocking

Mallory Towers?

I love the Tiffany Aching series but a huge background part of the first book is Tiffany coming to terms with the death of her grandmother (it's positively done) so maybe have a look first if it's a big issue at the moment.

I read Equal Rites at 11 and loved it (much earlier in the Discworld series).

Anne of Green Gables is wonderful but again there's a fairly major death.

The Queen's Nose by Dick King-Smith
Tracy Beaker/Hetty Feather by Jacqueline Wilson
Swallows and Amazons
Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf - I loved these at her age!
She might be too young for it, but in a year or so Homecoming by Cynthia Voight
Thursday's Child b Noel Streatfield

Swallows and Amazons. Short of having Boudicca on your team, can't get much more female empowerment.

I came to say Jill's Gymkhana too. Loved these as a kid, Jill is a fab heroine, very identifiable despite the 50s background (which I was fascinated by as a child) There is a whole series, I personally don't think you need to be interested in horses to enjoy them, there is lots going on.

I think a lot of the classics have a lot of illness and death in them - it’s a bit of an undercurrent. Secret Garden, Heidi, What Katy Did, Anne of Green Gables, Pollyanna, Little Women etc. However, the deaths -usually of parents - tend to be in the past, with the character moving on from that time. The death in Little Women is more major.

I was thinking Eva Ibbotson and Hilary McKay too, but when you think about it they are nearly all about being orphaned and the way families heal or children find new families. It's practically a genre. Exceptions would be the Exiles / Secret of Platform 13. I think the Howl Series is the only set of Diana Wynne Jones's books that meets your criteria too.

But if you wanted safe and loving stories about how orphans thrive and are loved, couldn't do better than McKay (Binny / Cassons) or Ibbotson (Star of Kazan, Journey to River Sea).

My nine year old girls loved Percy Jackson books x

Would probably avoid McKay's most recent two for now though - Starlings' War and Swallows' Flight. They are great books, almost Cazalet saga for children, set in WW1 and WW2. Some deaths in conflict. Binny in Secret is a prequel so maybe not that one either.

Yes! I think I loved them BECAUSE they were so different to my life. I loved her determination.

I re read Malory Towers recently. As a grown up, I was appalled at how bitchy and snobbish and judgemental even the "good" characters and the teachers are. Quite unpleasant.
Clearly they were the same when I read them as a child though, and they didn't turn me into a racist, snobbish bigot! But I not sure I could recommend them.