Books with Strong Female Characters

HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS
by Julia Alvarez
Four sisters adjust to their Dominican-New York City move over almost 30 years.

SPEAK
by Laurie Halse Anderson
A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect of Melinda's freshman year in high school.

WINTERGIRLS
by Laurie Halse Anderson
Eighteen-year-old Lia comes to terms with her best friend's death from anorexia as she struggles with the same disorder.

ALT ED
by Catherine Atkins
Participating in a special after-school counseling class with other troubled students, including a sensitive gay classmate, helps Susan, an overweight tenth grader, develop a better sense of herself.

THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF CHARLOTTE DOYLE
by Avi
As the only passenger, and the only female, on a transatlantic voyage in 1832, thirteen-year-old Charlotte finds herself caught between a murderous captain and a mutinous crew.

TITHE: A MODERN FAERIE TALE
by Holly Black
Sixteen-year-old Kaye, who has been visited by faeries since childhood, discovers that she herself is a magical faerie creature with a special destiny.

DANGEROUS ANGELS: THE WEETZIE BAT BOOKS
by Francesca Lia Block
Love is a dangerous angel...Francesca Lia Block's luminous saga of interwoven lives will send the senses into wild overdrive. These post-modern fairy tales chronicle the thin line between fear and desire, pain and pleasure, cutting loose and holding on in a world where everyone is vulnerable to the most beautiful and dangerous angel of all: love.

ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT'S ME, MARGARET
by Judy Blume
Faced with the difficulties of growing up and choosing a religion, a twelve-year-old girl talks over her problems with her own private God.

FOREVER
by Judy Blume
Two high school seniors believe their love to be so strong that it will last forever.

DEBBIE HARRY SINGS IN FRENCH
by Meagan Brothers
When Johnny completes an alcohol rehabilitation program and his mother sends him to live with his uncle in North Carolina, he meets Maria, who seems to understand his fascination with the new wave band Blondie, and he learns about his deceased father's youthful forays into "glam rock," which gives him perspective on himself, his past, and his current life.

ALL-AMERICAN GIRL
by Meg Cabot
A sophomore girl stops a presidential assassination attempt, is appointed Teen Ambassador to the United Nations, and catches the eye of the very cute First Son.

GRACELING
by Kristin Cashore
In a world where some people are born with extreme and often-feared skills called Graces, Katsa struggles for redemption from her own horrifying Grace, the Grace of killing, and teams up with another young fighter to save their land from a corrupt king.

FIRE
by Kristin Cashore
In a kingdom called the Dells, Fire is the last human-shaped monster, with unimaginable beauty and the ability to control the minds of those around her, but even with these gifts she cannot escape the strife that overcomes her world.

THE PLAIN JANES
by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg
When transfer student Jane is forced to move from the confines of Metro City to Suburbia, she thinks her life is over. But there she finds her tribe: three other girls named Jane. The four girls form a secret art gang, but can art really save the hell that is high school?

THIS IS ALL: THE PILLOW BOOK OF CORDELIA KENN
by Aidan Chambers
Using a pillow book as her form, a 19-year-old young woman sets out to write her life for her unborn daughter. What emerges is a portrait of an extraordinary girl, who writes frankly of love, sex, poetry, nature and herself in the world.

THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET
by Sandra Cisneros
A Chicago Latino neighborhood comes alive in stories about family and friends.

WALK TWO MOONS
by Sharon Creech
After her mother leaves home suddenly, thirteen-year-old Sal and her grandparents take a car trip retracing her mother's route. Along the way, Sal recounts the story of her friend Phoebe, whose mother also left.

THE MIDWIFE'S APPRENTICE
by Karen Cushman
In medieval England, a nameless, homeless girl is taken in by a sharp-tempered midwife, and in spite of obstacles and hardship, eventually gains the three things she most wants: a full belly, a contented heart, and a place in this world.

MARE'S WAR
by Tanita S. Davis
Octavia and Tali are dreading the road trip their parents are forcing them to take with their grandmother over the summer. But somewhere on the road, Octavia and Tali discover there’s more to Mare than what you see. She was once a willful teenager who escaped her less-than-perfect life in the deep South and lied about her age to join the African American battalion of the Women’s Army Corps during World War II.

DREAMLAND
by Sarah Dessen
After her older sister runs away, sixteen-year-old Caitlin decides that she needs to make a major change in her own life and begins an abusive relationship with a boy who is mysterious, brilliant and dangerous.

FOR THE WIN
by Cory Doctorow
A group of teens from around the world find themselves drawn into an online revolution arranged by a mysterious young woman known as Big Sister Nor, who hopes to challenge the status quo and change the world using her virtual connections.

A NORTHERN LIGHT
by Jennifer Donnelly
In 1906, sixteen-year-old Mattie, determined to attend college and be a writer against the wishes of her father and fiance, takes a job at a summer inn where she discovers the truth about the death of a guest. Based on a true story.

HARRIET THE SPY
by Louise Fitzhugh
Harriet's ambition to become a writer motivates her to write down in a secret notebook everything she sees, which causes her to get into big trouble when her notebook is found and read out loud by her classmates.

CROSSING STONES
by Helen Frost
In their own voices, four young people, Muriel, Frank, Emma, and Ollie, tell of their experiences during the first World War, as the boys enlist and are sent overseas, Emma finishes school, and Muriel fights for peace and women's suffrage.

ANNIE ON MY MIND
by Nancy Garden
Liza tries to put aside her feelings for Annie after the disaster at Foster Academy, but eventually she allows love to triumph over the ignorance of others.

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, AND A FEW WHITE LIES
by Justina Chen Headley
Fifteen-year-old Patty Ho, half Taiwanese and half white, feels she never fits in, but when her overly-strict mother ships her off to math camp at Stanford, instead of being miserable, Patty starts to become comfortable with her true self.

OUT OF THE DUST
by Karen Hesse
In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.

THE DISREPUTABLE HISTORY OF FRANKIE LANDAU-BANKS
by E. Lockhart
Sophomore Frankie starts dating senior Matthew Livingston, but when he refuses to talk about the all-male secret society that he and his friends belong to, Frankie infiltrates the society in order to enliven their mediocre pranks.

THE BERMUDEZ TRIANGLE
by Maureen Johnson
The friendship of three high school girls and their relationships with their friends and families are tested when two of them fall in love with each other.

ANOTHER KIND OF COWBOY
by Susan Juby
In Vancouver, British Columbia, two teenage dressage riders, one a spoiled rich girl and the other a closeted gay sixteen-year-old boy, come to terms with their identities and learn to accept themselves.

WHITE SANDS, RED MENACE
by Ellen Klages
It is 1946, and Dewey Kerrigan is now living near the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico with the Gordon family. Dewey and her "sister," Suze, share secrets, art, and science as they adjust to high school in an isolated desert town. Then, Dewey's long-lost mother, Rita Gallucci, reappears in their lives.

TENDER MORSELS
by Margo Lanagan
A young woman who has endured unspeakable cruelties is magically granted a safe haven apart from the real world and allowed to raise her two daughters in this alternate reality, until the barrier between her world and the real one begins to break down.

VOICES
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Young Memer takes on a pivotal role in freeing her war-torn homeland from its oppressive captors.

ELLA ENCHANTED
by Gail Carson Levine
A Cinderella story of a girl, cursed with obedience, risks losing her prince in order to save his life.

ASH
by Malinda Lo
In this variation on the Cinderella story, Ash grows up believing in the fairy realm that the king and his philosophers have sought to suppress, until one day she must choose between a handsome fairy cursed to love her and the King's Huntress whom she loves.

HUNTRESS
by Malinda Lo
Seventeen-year-olds Kaede and Taisin are called to go on a dangerous and unprecedented journey to Tanlili, the city of the Fairy Queen, in an effort to restore the balance of nature in the human world.

NUMBER THE STARS
by Lois Lowry
In 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark, ten-year-old Annemarie learns how to be brave and courageous when she helps shelter her Jewish friend from the Nazis.

SOLD
by Patricia McCormick
Sold into prostitution, Lakshmi lives a nightmare and gradually forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new world. Then the day comes when she must make a decision to risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life.

THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING
by Carson McCullers
The story of the inimitable twelve-year-old Frankie, who is utterly, hopelessly bored with life until she hears about her older brother’s wedding. Frankie takes on an overly active role in the wedding, hoping even to go, uninvited, on the honeymoon, so deep is her desire to be the member of something larger, more accepting than herself.

THUNDER OVER KANDAHAR
by Sharon E. McKay
Best friends Tamanna and Yasmine cannot believe their good fortune when a school is set up in their Afghan village; however, their dreams for the future are shattered when the Taliban burns down the school and threatens the teacher and students with death.

As Tamanna faces an arranged marriage to an older man and the Taliban targets Yasmine's western-educated family, the girls realize they must flee. Traveling through the heart of Taliban territory, the two unaccompanied young women find themselves in mortal danger. After suffering grave injuries, the girls are left without the one thing that has helped them survive – each other.

ZAHRAH THE WINDSEEKER
by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
Zahrah, a timid thirteen-year-old girl, undertakes a dangerous quest into the Forbidden Greeny Jungle to seek the antidote for her best friend after he is bitten by a snake, and finds knowledge, courage, and hidden powers along the way.

NIGHT FLYING
by Rita Murphy
As the time for her solo flight on the sixteenth birthday approaches, Georgia begins to question the course of her life and her relationships with the other women in her unusual family.

A STEP FROM HEAVEN
by An Na
A young Korean girl and her family find it difficult to learn English and adjust to life in America.

ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS
by Scott O'Dell
Left alone on a beautiful but isolated island off the coast of California, a young Indian girl spends eighteen years, not only merely surviving through her enormous courage and self-reliance, but also finding a measure of happiness in her solitary life.

SISTERS RED
by Jackson Pearce
After a Fenris, or werewolf, killed their grandmother and almost killed them, sisters Scarlett and Rosie March devote themselves to hunting and killing the beasts that prey on teenaged girls, learning how to lure them with red cloaks and occasionally using the help of their old friend, Silas, the woodsman's son.

RAMPANT
by Diana Peterfreund
After sixteen-year-old Astrid Llewelyn survives a vicious unicorn attack, she learns that she is a descendant of the most famous unicorn hunter of all time and she must travel to Rome, Italy, to train in the ancient arts in order to carry on her family legacy and save the world from the threat posed by the reemergence of lethal unicorns.

KEEPING YOU A SECRET
by Julie Anne Peters
As she begins a very tough last semester of high school, Holland finds herself puzzled about her future and intrigued by a transfer student who wants to start a Lesbigay club at school.

LUNA
by Julie Anne Peters
Fifteen-year-old Regan's life, which has always revolved around keeping her older brother Liam's transsexuality a secret, changes when Liam decides to start the process of "transitioning" by first telling his family and friends that he is a girl who was born in a boy's body.

WHAT HAPPENED TO LANI GARVER
by Carol Plum-Ucci
Sixteen-year-old Claire is unable to face her fears about a recurrence of her leukemia, her eating disorder, her need to fit in with the popular crowd on Hackett Island, and her mother's alcoholism until the enigmatic Lani Garver helps her get control of her life at the risk of his own.

IMANI ALL MINE
by Connie Rose Porter
Imani All Mine tells the story of Tasha, a fourteen-year-old unwed mother of a baby girl. In her world where poverty, racism and danger are daily struggles, Tasha uses her savvy and humor to uncover the good hidden around her. The name she gives her daughter, Imani, is a sign of her determination and fundamental trust despite the odds against her: Imani means faith.

THE RUBY IN THE SMOKE
by Philip Pullman
In nineteenth-century London, sixteen-year-old Sally, a recent orphan, becomes involved in a deadly search for a mysterious ruby.

BENEATH MY MOTHER'S FEET
by Amjed Qamar
When her father is injured, fourteen-year-old Nazia is pulled away from school, her friends, and her preparations for an arranged marriage, to help her mother clean houses in a wealthy part of Karachi, Pakistan, where she finally rebels against the destiny that is planned for her.

THE SWEET-IN-BETWEEN
by Sheri Reynolds
Kenny Lugo has grown up in a family that’s not really hers. Her mother died of cancer when Kenny was very young, and Aunt Glo – who is, in fact, her daddy’s girlfriend – took her in when her father was sent to jail for drug trafficking. Now, as Kenny approaches her eighteenth birthday and the end of the government checks Glo has been receiving looms, she is desperate to prove that this house and these people really do belong to her. But when a senseless murder occurs next door in their small coastal town, Kenny can’t get it out of her mind.

FLYGIRL
by Sherri L. Smith
Ida Mae’s passion for flying leads her into the dangerous life of an African American trying to pass as white in the early days of World War II, in this vivid depiction of military life as well as the many challenges faced by a young black girl who wants to follow her dreams.

LUCY THE GIANT
by Sherri L. Smith
Fifteen-year-old Lucy, the largest girl in her school, leaves her small Alaska town and her alcoholic father and discovers hardship – and friendship – posing as an adult aboard a commercial fishing boat.

LIVING DEAD GIRL
by Elizabeth Scott
After being abducted when she was ten and abused for five years by her kidnapper, Ray, Alice's only hope of freedom is in death, but her only way to achieve such an escape is to help Ray find the next girl for his collection.

ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY
by Mildred D. Taylor
A black family living in the South during the 1930's are faced with prejudice and discrimination which their children don't understand.

BIG FAT MANIFESTO
by Susan Vaught
Overweight, self-assured, high school senior Jamie Carcaterra writes in the school newspaper about her own attitude to being fat, her boyfriend's bariatric surgery, and her struggles to be taken seriously in a very thin world.

CLIMBING THE STAIRS
by Padma Venkatraman
In India, in 1941, when her father becomes brain-damaged in a non-violent protest march, fifteen-year-old Vidya and her family are forced to move in with her father's extended family and become accustomed to a totally different way of life.

NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL
by Siobhan Vivian
High school senior and student body president, Natalie likes to have everything under control, but when she becomes attracted to one of the senior boys and her best friend starts keeping secrets from her, Natalie does not know how to act.

IZZY, WILLY-NILLY
by Cynthia Voigt
A car accident causes fifteen-year-old Izzy to lose one leg and face the need to start building a new life as an amputee.

ONE CRAZY SUMMER
by Rita Williams-Garcia
Fourteen-year-old Gayle is in trouble again. This time mama is determined to change things, sending her to relatives down South to experience a life drastically different from the urban environment she's always known.

PARROTFISH
by Ellen Wittlinger
Grady, a transgendered high school student, yearns for acceptance by his classmates and family as he struggles to adjust to his new identity as a male.

MAKE LEMONADE
by Virginia Euwer Wolff
In order to earn money for college, fourteen-year-old LaVaughn babysits for a teenage mother.

THE HOUSE YOU PASS ON THE WAY
by Jaqueline Woodson
When fourteen-year-old Staggerlee, the daughter of a racially mixed marriage, spends a summer with her cousin Trout, she begins to question her sexuality to Trout and catches a glimpse of her possible future self.

WHEN THE BLACK GIRL SINGS
by Bil Wright
Adopted by white parents and sent to an exclusive Connecticut girls' school where she is the only black student, fourteen-year-old Lahni Schuler feels like an outcast, particularly when her parents separate, but after attending a local church where she hears gospel music for the first time, she finds her voice.

SWEETHEARTS
by Sara Zarr
After losing her soul mate, Cameron, when they were nine, Jennifer, now seventeen, transformed herself from the unpopular fat girl into the beautiful and popular Jenna, but Cameron's unexpected return dredges up memories that cause both social and emotional turmoil.

THE BOOK THIEF
by Markus Zusak
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel – a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.

SERIES

GEMMA DOYLE TRILOGY
BOOK ONE: A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY
by Libba Bray
After the suspicious death of her mother in 1895, sixteen-year-old Gemma returns to England, after many years in India, to attend a finishing school where she becomes aware of her magical powers and ability to see into the spirit world.

THE HUNGER GAMES SERIES
BOOK ONE: THE HUNGER GAMES
by Suzanne Collins
In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss' skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place.

TIME QUINTET
BOOK ONE: A WRINKLE IN TIME
by Madeleine L'Engle
When an atomic physicist disappears on a secret mission, his son, daughter and their friend search for him, going on an interplanetary journey through time and space.

ALICE SERIES
BOOK ONE: THE AGONY OF ALICE
by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Eleven-year-old, motherless Alice decides she needs a gorgeous role model who does everything right; and when placed in homely Mrs. Plotkins's class she is greatly disappointed until she discovers it's what people are inside that counts.

SONG OF THE LIONESS SERIES
BOOK ONE: ALANNA: THE FIRST ADVENTURE
by Tamora Pierce
Eleven-year-old Alanna, who aspires to be a knight even though she is a girl, disguises herself as a boy to become a royal page, learning many hard lessons along her path to high adventure.

DAUGHTER OF THE LIONESS SERIES
BOOK ONE: TRICKSTER'S CHOICE
by Tamora Pierce
Alianne must call forth her mother's courage and her father's wit in order to survive on the Copper Isles in a royal court rife with political intrigue and murderous conspiracy.

HIS DARK MATERIALS TRILOGY
BOOK ONE: THE GOLDEN COMPASS
by Philip Pullman
Accompanied by her daemon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North.

UGLIES SERIES
BOOK ONE: UGLIES
by Scott Westerfeld
Just before their sixteenth birthdays, when they will will be transformed into beauties whose only job is to have a great time, Tally's best friend runs away and Tally must find her and turn her in, or never become pretty at all.

ENCHANTED FOREST CHRONICLES
BOOK ONE: DEALING WITH DRAGONS
by Patricia Wrede
Bored with traditional palace life, a princess goes off to live with a group of dragons and soon becomes involved with fighting against some disreputable wizards who want to steal away the dragons' kingdom.

This list features titles from Bitch Magazine's 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader.

MORE FEMINIST BOOKS: THE AMELIA BLOOMER PROJECT LIST