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Books Teenage Girls Should Read

Reading can empower young women!

By Sarah SparksPublished 7 years ago 3 min read
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I've tutored a lot of teenage girls in English Literature and I'm often asked what books I recommend for young female readers. Here is the list of books that impacted my teenage life in some forceful and empowering way:

A novel about a young Inuit girl ripped from her family's culture and forced into marriage. Rather than face potential rape from her fiancé, she flees across the tundra using the traditional knowledge her father taught her to survive. Along the way she meets a pack of wolves that, through intelligence and wit, she becomes a member of as they travel together across the tundra to find Julie's lost father.

This book had a huge impact on me as a 12-year-old girl. It gave me a window into a traditional culture that was slowly being colonized and a heroine that relied on herself and her knowledge of her culture to survive. Throw in some truly harrowing moments and some very sad moments and you have a life-changing novel.

This novel features a heroine that not only resists the handsome prince's constant tries at wooing her through heroic deeds but saves her own kind in a fight against the terrifying Red Bull. A beautiful, lush fantasy story with many strong female characters and some amazing myth creation. Even if you don't normally read fantasy, you may enjoy this book, as the storytelling is truly compelling and intense.

A story about the wrong side of the tracks and the poor kids, known as greasers, who survive there as a surrogate family. The novel centers around the conflict between the poor kids and the affluent kids (the socs) and an eventual murder in the midst of rising violence. Set in the late 50s, it gives the reader a very different view of the era than the glossy TV images one gets from Happy Days. The bonds of friendship and family are examined in the face of the harshness of a working class reality.

Although this book's characters are mostly male, I think it is still an important read as the woman who wrote it, Susan Hinton, was told no one would read a book about young male hoods written by a woman and she was forced to publish under the name S. E. to finally get it to print. Susan's books tend to be about working class boys (my other 2 favorites being Tex and Rumble Fish) that give you a real insight into the world of the working poor. Even though most of Susan's characters were male, I always felt a connection to them as they were living a reality I was familiar with. After reading her books, I realized I wanted to be a writer, and finding out she was a woman from my teacher galvanized my drive to write.

Francis Ford Coppola directed amazing versions of The Outsiders and Rumble Fish in the early 1980s to which S. E. Hinton wrote the screenplays. If you watch closely, you will also see that Susan makes a cameo in each movie.

Although I read this book as an adult (it only came out in the last few years), I definitely suggest it to my students. It's a great exploration of Caitlin coming into womanhood and all the bumps and bruises along the way. From teenage angst to motherhood, we follow Caitlin's trials and tribulations of being a woman and all the baggage and joy that comes with it. Written with genuine wit and at times great sadness, I think this memoir can really give teenage girls someone to guide them through the insanity of becoming a woman. Moran's first novel, How to Build a Girl, is also a great read about the dysfunction and nuttiness of being a teenage girl and trying to find your place in the world. Again, I find it easy to identify with Moran and her characters as they hail from the working class world I am very familiar with. Both books are definitely worth the read.

I do hope you'll give one of these books a try and enjoy them as much as I did.

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About the Creator

Sarah Sparks

Witchcraft poet, neurotic sex symbol, over-educated sadist, and generally only dangerous to herself and a few unfortunate bedmates. Found haunting the halls of academia, frequenting shady establishments and eating candy at home in bed.

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