Book recommendations for a 9 year old

[motherrunner]

Afternoon all,

Bit of a lurker to the Fem board but a proud Feminist.

Just wanted some advice. My DD is 9 and have raised both DD and DS with a Feminist mindset. DD is still emotionally young but am aware it will come to the point where she will suffer overt of covert misogyny. Has anyone got any good book recommendations for her age which will help explain/deal with these issues when they are presented?

Thanks in advance.

Books like Fearless Fairy Tales by Konnie Huq and James Kay and Forgotten Fairy Tales of Brave and Brilliant Girl (forward by Kate Pankhurst) aren't explicitly about this but they're good for seeing positive role models of girls.

Lots of books about suffragettes came out around 2018 too.

Brilliant, thanks!

As this has dropped down, am bumping.

Or even any advice how I approach ‘that conversation’.

Frances Hardinge's books are very good.

The Cuckoo's Song and The Lie Tree are both historical novels with female characters trying to overcome the restraints of their "place" in society.

Thanks!

Anything by Jaqueline Wilson says my dd.
Little Women.

It's kind of down to finding cool female characters as well, Hermione, Princess Leia, Eowyn etc

Agree re characters. Ronya the Robber’s Daughter is one my dds enjoyed at that age.

I really enjoyed Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness series at that age- again lots on the constraints placed on women and men by gender norms, and kick ass storytelling as well.

I second Jacqueline Wilson, the Hetty Feather series is great for covering misogyny. Wave Me Goodbye is very good also.

Agree with Tamora Pierce, JW, Little women etc.
A Little Princess and Alice in Wonderland both have strong, kind, individual heroines. And the brilliant Joan Allen - Wolves of Willoughby Chase sequence.
I like these older books because the girls in then are just getting on with their own lives, no bother with sex at all, just personhood.
If she likes historical stuff then The Roman Mysteries by Caroline Lawrence are also very good.

Joan Aiken, not Allen!

Thank you all. She does have some J Wilson and the ‘Bedtime stories for rebel girls’, but its great to have all these suggestions to widen her reading.

Definitely The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill is wonderful

I would say don't have the conversation, not yet. She's only 9 years old and has years to find out what a shit place the world can be for women. At that age it had never dawned on me that women were seen as being inferior, historically. She best approach is a more subtle one - making sure she has access to books with good female characters in them for a start.

The polar bear explorer' club series.

The premise is that there Stella, the main character, wants to become an explorer in the Polar Bear's Club but it is ran by old men and they have rules that no girls can join. Her father (who is gay and a great character) advocates for her and brings her up to be an explorer. She ends up going in an expedition and being all fantastic. She's with a group of boys, takes no nonsense and it's great. My son loves those books, and it was great to really have a series with strong female character standing up to the patriarchy and showing them they were wrong.

I should say I thought they were great reads for boys because they should be exposed to female characters like that early on, and be exposed to the idea of institutionalised misogyny but they're probably even better for girls because it will feel a lot more personal for her.