Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Smart and strong? Bring it.

I can't fault Ramin Setoodeh too much - it seems like half the pages in the latest issue of Newsweek have his work on them. But perhaps he wasn't the best person to try to put the longevity of Anne of Green Gables into context:
It's rare to find a best seller with a strong heroine anymore... "The literary smart girl is still showing up in literature, but she's often the sidekick," says Trinna Frever, an "Anne of Green Gables" scholar.
I don't have any BookScan sales numbers in front of me, but here are a few mainstream YA titles featuring "strong heroines" and "smart girls" the author and his expert have overlooked:

Best Foot Forward
Boy Proof
A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life
Carpe Diem
Climbing the Stairs
I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You and Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy
Dairy Queen and The Off Season
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature
Fact of Life #31
Gamma Glamma
Hattie Big Sky
Jason & Kyra
The Kayla Chronicles
Monsoon Summer
Nothing But the Truth (and a Few White Lies)
Princess Academy
Princess Ben
She's So Money
Vegan Virgin Valentine
Who's Your Daddy?
Zoe's Tale

And not one of those covers features a "cell-phone-carrying, bikini-clad princess," I assure you.

5 comments:

Liz B said...

Good Lord, we just cannot win, can we?

On the one hand are the "oh noes the boys dont have strong role models" and now we have "girls only exist as sidekicks."

Sigh.

Sarah Rettger said...

Now I can put Graceling on that list too - the heroine is literally the strongest person in her kingdom.

PJ Hoover said...

Good list! You gotta love those strong female heroines!

Vivian Mahoney said...

Yay for strong and smart girl heroines!

Cheryl said...

That's a great list; I'm glad you've put it together. I think it's so important to have strong girl heroes.