The best books for kids with smart, strong female protagonists

When we first meet Meg Murry, she’s restlessly awake late at night in the attic of her house—her bedroom—watching a violent storm rage outside. It’s a perfect example of how good writers use the exterior to reflect the interior.

She’s feisty, a fighter, vivacious, and verbose. Ultimately, her quest takes her across the entire universe to save her lost father, learn about her magical and enigmatic younger brother, Charles Wallace, and save the world from an entity not unlike what we’re dealing with now: AI, and how it will strip us of our souls.

Published in 1962, it’s a resonant, important, and prescient book. 

Cassie Logan is fiery-tempered, bombastic, and demonstrative. She’s rather like her mother in that way, who is considered a ‘radical’ because she speaks up and out about the racism in the American South during the Depression.

Cassie fights back, but learns the hard way that there is a time to fight racism, speak out about injustice, and a time to accept that there are things we just have to live within this complicated and unjust world. But before she can accept that fully, she utilizes her fierceness to hatch a plan of attack against her nemesis, a racist, privileged white girl named Lillian Jean.

As readers, we are left to admire her prowess but also to wonder if anything she does can truly make a difference, given what’s she’s up against. An essential book. 

Lyra ‘Silvertongue’ Belacqua is one of the most compelling young female protagonists ever wrought. It feels to me that she was brought to us on a bolt of liquid lightning.

She is a girl from another universe where the inhabitants’ souls exist externally in the form of animals. It’s mind-bendingly beautiful. And her quest is deep, dark, and dangerous. And while Pullman can sometimes get mired by his loftiness, preachiness, and pedantisms, ultimately this is the very touching and adventurous story of a girl who crosses dimensions, worlds, and precipices—including a dive into The Land of the Dead from which she risks never returning—to save her best friend, Roger.

Forget about Marvel—Lyra and her dæmon, Pantalaimon, are the most heroic duo in modern storytelling.   

12-year-old Yuriko, a girl living in Japan with her expanding family and navigating the tricky terrain of World War II, is unlike other tween female protagonists.

She’s not outwardly assertive, feisty, or heading off on a quest. She’s more of a jewel of innocence, love, and curiosity. But when we witness the bombing of Hiroshima through her eyes, we see unexpected heroism take flight. The losses she suffers, the setbacks, the nightmares, the horror, the pure honesty in how she conveys it.

Author Burkinshaw wrote the book in honor of her mother, who survived Hiroshima. It’s unlike most books for kids that come down the pike. It’s about bravery, family, and beautifully illuminates Japanese culture. The story is about facing unimaginable events but not losing your heart in the battle. 

Malú ((María Luisa O’Neill-Morales) is a tween punker who moves across the country with her ‘Super Mexican’ mom who will do anything to make her daughter into more of a respected senorita who embraces her heritage.

But Malú needs to find out who she is in her own way—a very punk way to do things. And her father reminds her of the most important part of being punk, (or not being punk at all for that matter) and it is this: be yourself. Malú finds her true self in creating a punk band with her newfound friends and defying the school administration who doesn’t want her to be who she truly is.

It’s a kick-ass book. And includes all the awesome visuals of Malú’s favorite pastime: making zines.