Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls

"Yes, Rosa Parks, Maria Callas, Amelia Earhart. The range is amazing. It’s spectacular. I wish I had had this book when I was a child. In terms of female role models, it’s wonderful. I took this on holiday over the summer and my 14-year old niece was reading it to my 8-year old daughter and they just couldn’t stop. They were sharing the stories, they’d read one to each other and we’d be regaled with facts. ‘Did you know?’ Or ‘This chemist did this and this astrophysicist did that.’ They’re beautifully potted mini biographies, perfectly phrased. The Maria Callas one brings a lump to my throat every time I read it and it’s only two or three paragraphs long. Yes, from around the world, from the last couple of hundred years or even more, right up until the present day. The facts they’ve chosen about these women’s lives and their achievements are just charming. And it’s a different illustrator for each individual. It isn’t preachy or overly political. It’s just a celebration of lives well lived, and a huge variety within it, so there really is something for everyone. My daughter now has at least 10 female role models that she can read more about, find out more about, and be inspired by. But it’s not just a book for girls by a long way. I’ve got my husband flicking through it. It’s a lovely reference book. There’s been a lot about gender neutrality in the press, but I think children genuinely are less sensitive about gender. I used to go into a lot of schools and do reading. 10, 12 years ago, you’d never have got a little boy to pick up a book with a pink cover, because society had so many references to say, ‘Don’t do that.’ Whereas I’ve found that today, they don’t differentiate in that way anymore. It’s more fashionable to not make that judgment."