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The International Day of the Girl: Celebrating Girls Around the World (CitizenKid)

The International Day of the Girl: Celebrating Girls Around the World (CitizenKid)

Current price: $18.99
Publication Date: September 1st, 2020
Publisher:
Kids Can Press
ISBN:
9781525300585
Pages:
32

Description

This introduction to the International Day of the Girl and its worldwide significance encourages children to recognize their own potential to make change, providing both a perfect lesson in social justice and a celebration of girl power.

The United Nations designated October 11th as the International Day of the Girl, a day to increase awareness of problems that affect girls — and only girls — around the world and to encourage progress toward gender equality. Nine stories inspired by the real-life experiences of girls from all over the globe bring to light the importance of this day. Each story is set in a different country and sensitively describes an inequity faced by a character and how she addressed it. The challenges include gender-based violence, illiteracy, lack of access to technology, sanitation, nutritional disparity and child marriage. Each story features a positive description of the main character — strong, smart, creative, inventive, brave, talented, caring, funny, ambitious — and each concludes with a realistic yet hopeful outcome, presenting the girls as more than victims of their circumstances. Their powerful, and empowering, experiences will stir the activist in every child.

Jessica Dee Humphreys’s well-researched and illuminating stories are both readable and age appropriate. Award-winning Simone Shin’s simple, warm illustrations bring the characters and their circumstances to life. Sidebars expand on the issues covered in each story. This book is a perfect choice for social justice discussions, as well as for social studies lessons on global communities, and for character education conversations on citizenship. It includes a foreword by the Honorable Rona Ambrose, who led Canada’s call for the day to be formally adopted by the United Nations. Also included are an annotated time line of the day’s creation and additional statistical information. A portion of the proceeds will go to Plan International Canada.

About the Author

Jessica Dee Humphreys has worked with several girls' rights organizations, including Save the Children and the United Nations Development Fund for Women. She is the co-author of a number of bestselling books, including Roméo Dallaire's Waiting for First Light and They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children. Jessica is also the co-author of the award-winning CitizenKid graphic novel Child Soldier: When Boys and Girls Are Used in War, with Michel Chikwanine.

Praise for The International Day of the Girl: Celebrating Girls Around the World (CitizenKid)

Engaging, age-appropriate, and eye-opening.—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

This powerful book highlights nine fictional girls ... from different corners of the globe, each of whom is struggling to bloom within a system that wants to keep her weak.—Booklist, starred review

... a solid addition to ... collections highlighting women's studies or gender equality.—School Library Journal

Eye-opening, thought-provoking and inspiring ...—CM Magazine