Good Books for Tween Girls Nail These 5 Qualities

These books capture how funny, smart, responsible, supportive and complex girls are.

By Ashley Austrew
Jan 04, 2019

Ages

10-13

©FatCamera/iStockPhoto

Jan 04, 2019

If you know a tween or teen girl, or you were one yourself at some point, then you know that being a young girl is a complicated experience. Girls have so many individual talents, strengths, and opinions. But the representation of girls in books and other media doesn't always match the reality. Unfortunately, many stories still present girls as vapid, boy-obsessed, and permanently glued to their cell phones. That’s why when writer Saladin Ahmed asked people on Twitter to tell him what male authors consistently get wrong when writing adolescent girl characters, his tweet got over 14,000 likes and 2,700 responses. Here are five things most people said writers forget about young girls, paired with books that we think actually get it right.

1. Girls are funny.

Books often feature male pranksters and class clowns, while girls are presented as overly mature for their ages or driven by drama. “Teen girls in YA written by men are so rarely funny,” wrote @amelia_r_mellor. “They're not allowed to be silly or dumb or witty, or get into ridiculous situations. They have to play the straight man, so to speak, to the goofy boys.” But girls are funny, and the experience of growing up is often humorous and awkward. Randa Abdel-Fattah does a great job showing this in her novel Does My Head Look Big In This?, which captures a teen girl’s quest to embrace her true self with humor and heart.

2. Girls have meaningful friendships.

If you’ve ever read any of The Babysitter’s Club books, then you know how important friendship is to young girls, and just how supportive of one another they really can be. But too often, tween and teen girls in stories are shown fighting over boyfriends, starting rumors about other girls, and being too “catty” and self-absorbed to be good friends, which is so off-base. As Twitter user @Smoph wrote, girls and women “have deeply fulfilling friendships with other women our age” that often get glossed over in books and media. If there is conflict in teen and tween friendships, she added, it’s usually because the girls are young people still “figuring out interpersonal relationships and how they work, not being ‘drama queens.’”

3. Girls have varied interests and hobbies.

Think all girls love nail polish, Instagram, and obsessing over Justin Bieber? Think again. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with loving nail polish and The Biebs, teen girls are also educated, passionate, and talented in many other ways. “They care about politics, the environment, everything that's happening in the world and they talk about it to each other and their parents,” wrote @VirginiaLW. Just look at the tweens and teens represented in the American Girl books, which often center around diverse girls competing in sports or educational endeavors, taking action on causes related to social justice, and making real changes in the world.

4. Girls are responsible, powerful, and determined.

Books like Kelly Yang’s Front Desk and Pam Muñoz Ryan’s Esperanza Rising both feature young girls who carry the weight of familial burdens and face difficult challenges with grace and determination. Unfortunately, not all books show that side of girls. “...I don’t see many authors touch on how much responsibility teen girls have,” wrote @AnythingMuppet. “As a teen I cared for my 3 year old brother after school while doing homework plus waitressing on weekends.” The modern classic, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, portrays a terminally ill young girl, Hazel, navigating relatable teenage situations with grace, courage and humor.

5. Girls are smart, and it’s cool to be smart.

Intelligence is sometimes presented as a quality reserved for nerdy outcasts. Girls in books can be smart or cool or brave or funny, but rarely more than one of those things at the same time. But that’s nonsense, as @finch960 pointed out on Twitter when she wrote, “There is an entire spectrum of girls between ‘ultra nerd’ and ‘Shopping Prom Princess.’” Lots of different kinds of girls are smart, and it’s actually awesome to be smart. Just look at a character like Meg Murray in A Wrinkle In Time, who is neither social outcast nor butterfly. She is complex, passionate, and uses her brilliant mind to save the day.

Most importantly, young girls are all different. They have unique interests, thoughts, opinions, and experiences. There is no one way to be a girl or to experience growing up in a female body, and it’s the hope of women, girls, and girl moms everywhere for books that better represent the complex and rich experience of girlhood.

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