Books like Like a Girl — picked by fans

Celebrate girls who love to tinker and build! It begins with an idea for something big or small. Materials found, tools gathered, and building begins! If a creation wobbles or collapses, “failure isn’t final,” the book reassures.

I am grateful that my parents recognized my early love of woodworking and bought me a tool kit at a young age. This is the perfect picture book to pair with a set of tools for small hands!

This book captured my heart from the first time I read it. As a toddler, the main character is praised for being “a big girl,” but as she continues to grow, she discovers that being a “big girl” soon becomes a negative thing that prevents her from doing what she wishes.

The illustrations are amazing, and fold-out pages can barely contain the growing main character and the empathy you’ll have for her. 

A book you will hug when you’re done reading it, then immediately read it again.

Cars and trucks and things that go are not exclusively the realm of boys. In this rhythmic read-aloud, a dozen girls hit the road and sky with a rumble, vroom, and roar.

Kids will love the sound words and the repetitive “Go, Girls, Go!” The bold illustrations are a joy. And an invitation near the end (“What about you?”) encourages little imaginations to race away with possibilities.

I can’t resist adding this book about being a writer since it’s my job and my passion. As a child, I don’t recall ever reading a picture book about writing. There were spelling books and penmanship books, but nothing about turning an idea into a story.

If you know a budding writer, this book is the perfect place to begin. Written in simple steps, it offers encouragement to keep going and even gives tips on revising. The journey of a future author could start with this book!

Athletes, Activists, Achievers. Rad Girls Can is chock-o-block with engaging biographical sketches of girls and young women who have taken the world by storm in nearly every discipline. Whether they’re succeeding in traditionally male-dominated sports, fighting for climate action, or for education for girls, or accomplishing great things as scientists and inventors, each story is compelling and awe-inspiring. I wish this existed when I was young – it literally gives concrete examples of real girls doing just about anything they put their minds to. The wide-ranging topics and diverse women enhance the engagement factor. I loved how readers are free to browse and focus on the stories that most appeal to them (chances are good, that will be most, if not all of them). Comprehensive, engaging, inspiring. What more can you ask for?

When news editor Earl Janoth murders his mistress, there's only one witness who can tie him to the crime scene. Janoth doesn't know who the witness is, but he knows everywhere the man went in the 24 hours before the murder, because the murder victim told him before he killed her.

Janoth is determined to find and silence him. He assigns reporter George Stroud to track the man down, not knowing that Stroud himself is the man he's looking for. Stroud is forced to assemble a team to hunt himself, knowing that when he's found, he'll be killed.

This is the best-plotted book I've ever read, both in concept and execution. Little details sprinkled through early chapters of the book keep coming back to have major significance as the noose tightens around Stroud.

Even though this is a work of anthropology, it also provides unique insights into rural history. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Margery Wolf did fieldwork in a poor village in rural Taiwan. At that time, modernization was just beginning to affect the countryside, so most aspects of village life were still traditional. Although Taiwanese society differed from the mainland in certain ways, in most aspects of life there carried on the traditions of Chinese village life. This book looks at rural society from a female perspective. Due to poverty, both women and men had few options. They did whatever it took to survive. Many of the people the author interviewed seem very discontent with their lives, but they usually had no other choice.

This book kicked off my obsession with stories about young women who are trying to make sense of all the versions of themselves they have inside and weighing up which one to present to the world at any given time. The protagonist, Ruth, is an American living in London who works at a department store, spritzing perfume during the day, watching all the people go past, and trying to understand how the other young women who work there seem so self-assured. This is not a plot-driven book so much as a character study of a character who doesn’t know who she is yet.

Kate Zambreno’s writing is absolutely gorgeous. She creates a distance between Ruth—the ‘green girl’—and the world, like she’s looking through a window and can see people inside talking but not understand what they’re saying. At the same time, I recognized myself in Ruth,… show more.

Sure, you could say con artist Meg Williams, or any of the aliases this woman goes by, is a vigilante, determined to right the wrongs done to her by society through the many lies she tells. Or you could see her as a sociopathic opportunist.

Kara Roberts is out to catch Williams and bring her to justice for being instrumental in both destroying Roberts’ career and her personal life. But once Roberts gets close to Williams, she falters…and falls under her spell. See a pattern yet? Yep, that’s right. The sociopath always charms the victim.

While the book skews toward a Machiavellian “the ends justify the means” philosophy, the characters are duplicitous and amoral at best, sociopathic and self-serving at worst.

I love reading stories of how ordinary people achieve extraordinary things by overcoming challenges, believing in their dreams, and not accepting defeat.

The 100 stories of women featured in this book, along with exquisite portraits of each by female artists, start with the words of a traditional fairy tale “Once upon a time…”, but instead of tales of helpless princesses there are inspiring portraits of women with grit, smarts, and tenacity. Heroes in every sense of the word, for all of us, young and old, to admire.