Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Immigrant Women Who Changed the World

Favilli, Elena. Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Immigrant Women Who Changed the World
October 13th 2020 by Rebel Girls
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls came out in 2016, and the second volume in 2017. There are also wall calendars, journals, and coloring books with temporary tattoos. I had somehow missed these, although my own personal girls would have absolutely loved these books when they were young.

Each mini biography is just one page long, perfect for bedtime reading it you are in a hurry; you can always read more than one if you have time. I did appreciate that the years of birth and death were included at the bottom of this page, so the reader can place them in time. The accompanying illustrations on the facing pages are bright and energetic, and often include a quote from the subject. The women portrayed are widely varied in time period, area of interest, and location in the world; Gloria Estefan is followed by Golda Meir. Some of the subjects are well known, but others, like Canadian judge Rosalie Abella will be new to many.

My only complaint is a rather large one; the biographies are organized by the first name of the subject. My preference would be to have them arranged chronologically or by are of interest (sports figures together, humanitarians, activists, etc.), but as a librarian, I wanted these to at least these could be arranged by last name!

Books like this are great when students want an overview of people to consider researching for history projects, although some women may be a bit obscure or too recent for much else about them to have been written. My first though upon seeing books formatted like Rebel Girls is to take the book apart, laminate the pages, and make a bulletin board out of them, but reading these stories at bedtimes is a great use as well.