What's on Display?: All About the Girls

We have this weird cubby hole at work where two stand up OPACs* used to reside. When I came to LPL a year ago this was affectionately known as the Harry Potter Shrine. It housed all eleventy-two thousand copies of the seven books in print and audiobook format. Somewhere around January we agreed to dismantle the shrine (even Deathly Hallows wasn't on hold for anyone anymore) and interfile the books, with a healthy handful going into storage as replacement copies for when some of them wore out.

Thus began the advent of me, back to the rest of the room, crawling around three and a half feet off the ground putting up various backdrops. Wallpapered concrete is not the easiest to decorate--but I'm pretty good with a role of tape and Madame Director and our Guru of Facilities just said they'd get me cork board to make my life easier going forward.

But after a summer of butterfly boxes where we grew two rounds of Brassica Butterflies (the first set we hatched did the whole mating thing) and talked about caterpillars and how they eat cabbage and plants in the mustard family, it was time for a change. So break out the purple backdrop, it's time for the girl books.

There are a lot of emerging female protagonists who have some nice backbone as well as some classics. A few (not comprehensive) recommendations for elementary aged girls:

Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls: Moving Day (Meg Cabot)
Sarah Simpson's Rules for Living (Rebecca Rupp)
Moxy Maxwell Does Not Like Writing Thank You Notes (Peggy Gifford)
Judy Moody (Megan McDonald)
Mallory (Laurie Friedman)
Enola Holmes (Nancy Springer)
Mercy Watson (Kate DiCamillo)
The Mysterious Case of the Allbright Academy (Diane Stanley)
Beacon Street Girls (Annie Bryant)
Main Street Girls (Ann M. Martin)
Rodzina (Karen Cushman)


Ramona (Beverly Cleary)













The Alice Books (Phyllis Reynolds Naylor)












Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (Betty MacDonald)













Harriet the Spy (Louise Fitzhugh)










Matilda (Roald Dahl)









Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)








Nancy Drew (Carolyn Keene)












Ella Enchanted (Gail Carson Levine)











I'm using LibraryThing's Free Covers!! This is most incredibly awesome.

*OPAC-- computers that just have the library catalog on them