The International Day of the Girl Child focuses attention on the need to address the challenges girls face and to promote girls’ empowerment and the fulfilment of their human rights. Girls are breaking boundaries to create a world that is relevant for them and future generations.

 

Children’s Books

The International Day of the Girl Child: Celebrating Girls Around the World by Jessica Dee Humphreys

Who can be a changemaker? Anyone! Nine positive profiles raise awareness of problems that affect individual girls and how they address it. Their powerful choices will activate the potential in every child.

Dear Girl by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Enjoy this love letter as a gentle reminder that girls are powerful, strong, and hold a valuable place in the world. Any girl reading this book will feel that she's great just the way she is!

Small by Gina Perry

Go on an adventure with a spunky heroine who realizes that she is anything but small. This creative picture book vividly portrays gains in self-confidence as a little girl reimagines her world.

The Dress and the Girl by Camille Andros

Filled with warm prose and stunning pictures, this story shares the significance of a favourite item and the meaning it still holds many years later. A little girl loses her red dress, they both have their own adventures, and reunite with a new perspective in the fullness of time. 

No Ordinary Day by Deborah Ellis

This socially conscious story tells how a young girl living rough fears the monsters (lepers, actually) then contracts the disease and copes with her new reality. This story offers a positive outlook and carefully weaves in details about leprosy to educate young readers.

 

Adult Non-Fiction

A Girl Named Lovely: One Child’s Miraculous Survival and My Journey to the Heart of Haiti by Catherine Porter

International reporter Catherine Porter shares an unforgettable account of the devastation left in the wake of a catastrophic earthquake through the eyes of a toddler pulled from the wreckage. This young survivor’s toughness amazes the journalist who becomes directly involved in her life.

Hidden Girl: The True Story of a Modern-Day Child Slave by Shyima Hall

This memoir about a human trafficking survivor rescued by child services from bondage to an American family brings awareness to a disturbing worldwide issue that is closer than we’d like to think.

Dear World: A Syrian Girl’s Story of War and Plea for Peace by Bana Al Abed

This gripping memoir written by a young girl and her mother shares the girl’s pleas for the world’s help on Twitter amid wartime bombings juxtaposed with normal scenes as well as her mother’s pleas to create a better future for her daughter. 

Whatever Gets You Through: Twelve Survivors on Life After Sexual Assault by Stacey May Fowles

These personal stories of the aftermath of sexual assault impart the survival strategies women employ to endure the lingering effects of trauma. These stories of strength share hope for recovery.

I am the Central Park Jogger: A Story of Hope and Possibility by Trisha Meili

A sexual assault survivor left for dead reveals her identity to tell her story. Comatose from the savagery of the violations, she eventually recovered all basic functions but still navigates vision and balance problems. Community support forms part of her courageous story.

 

Adult Fiction

The Butterfly Girl by Rene Denfeld

This gritty yet hopeful mystery features a detective with a painful past who searches for her missing sister and comes across children experiencing homelessness who are at risk of abduction. She forms a bond with the children in need and rediscovers her lost innocence.

Girl A by Abigail Dean

This NYT bestselling psychological thriller is a compelling story of the ways in which toxic relationships haunt us. When a grown woman returns to the home where she was abused as a child, she gets entangled with her estranged siblings as estate executors. A fascinating portrait of the secrets we keep. 

The Break by Katherena Vermette

This culturally diverse suspenseful story traces what happens when a Metis woman who witnesses a sexual assault reports the incident. Offering a mosaic of voices, it is told from multiple perspectives of the people involved, starring a cast of strong, complicated women.

Women Talking by Miriam Toews

Inspired by real events, this disturbing story shares how a community of Mennonite women support each other after learning that many of them have been drugged and raped by men from their community. The story tracks how they react and decide what to do as individuals and as a group.

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

Based on a true story, this candid novel relates the story of a young woman institutionalized in a renowned mental hospital after a brief session with an unfamiliar psychiatrist in the late sixties. It offers a thoughtful foray into our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery, vis a vis our shifting expectations we hold for women.

 

Learn more about The International Day of the Girl Child here.