Celebrating Women

We’re celebrating Women’s History Month on Good Day Alabama on WBRC Fox 6 with female-focused reads for readers of all ages.

Band of Sisters

By Lauren Willig 

This brand-new book (it hit shelves March 2) tells the story of the Smith Relief Unit, a group of young women from Smith College who traveled to war-torn France and risked their lives to help the people there during the height of World War I. It’s a novel based on facts; the author, with a graduate degree in history from Harvard and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, recreated the Smith Relief Unit’s time in France based on thousands of pages of letters, diaries, and memoirs by the Unit’s members.  She reimagined their journey into a novel about friendships, feuds, struggles and bravery. Kate Moran, a scholarship girl from Brooklyn, ends up joining several Smith College classmates to help French civilians decimated by the Germans. The volunteers, including two trailblazing female doctors, are armed with money, supplies, and the best intentions. They arrive in France to find the chateau that was supposed to be their headquarters is in ruins, so are the surrounding villages with poisoned wells and destroyed homes and crops. There’s also the constant shelling from the Germans, the frustrating French bureaucracy, and the threat of being ousted by the British army. Nonetheless, the Smith volunteers bring aid—and hope—to the region. But to be a true band of sisters, they have to overcome their own differences.  

The Book of Awesome Girls:  Why the Future is Female

By Becca Anderson and Brenda Knight

This bestselling book for teens and young adults is filled with women who began impacting their world, changing society, and inspiring future generations before they could even vote. At 17, Malala Yousafzai became the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Anne Frank was only 13 when she began writing her poignant coming-of-age story amid the Nazi occupation. The book offers lots of mini biographies of strong-voiced sheros—some you know, some whose stories never made the history books. And there’s a bonus chapter on girl empowerment today, focused on modern figures like Greta Thunberg and Mari Copeny—an activist who, at age 16, began delivering clean water to residents of Flint Michigan and remains on the forefront of America’s water crisis. From artists to athletes to entrepreneurs, The Book of Awesome Girls highlights inspiring voices, passions and skillsets to illustrate exactly why strong and smart are the new pretty.

Poet, Pilgrim, Rebel:  The Story of Anne Bradstreet, America’s First Published Poet

By Kate Munday Williams, illustrated by Tania Rex

This biography in picture-book form for very young readers is the inspiring story of a Puritan woman whose passion for writing poetry broke barriers. In the 1600s, when being a writer was an unheard-of occupation for women, Anne Dudley Bradstreet blazed a trail for the rights of women to study, write, and achieve. She eventually became the first woman to be recognized as an accomplished New World Poet. Bradstreet wrote her poems at night—her children in bed, her husband away on business—memorizing each poem line by line before putting her words on scraps of parchment. Her poems brought respite to a life of duty to family and the Puritan church, and for years, she walked a fine line between that duty and rebellion. She finally was published in 1650, overcoming countless obstacles facing women of her era, and she became one of the most famous poets in history. Here’s an educator’s guide to this book with resources, activities and even a recipe.

I link to Amazon to show you exactly what book I’m talking about, but I love to shop locally at Church Street Coffee and Books, The Alabama Booksmith, Little Professor, and Thank You Books in Crestwood. And I visit my local library often in person and online!