Girls Who Rocked the World 2: Heroines from Harriet Tubman to Mia Hamm

by Michelle R. McCann

With the Girls Who Rocked the World series, we want to show that you don’t have to wait until you grow up. The girls in this book didn’t wait until they were twenty-one to start rocking the world. The Brontë sisters wrote novels as teenagers, Margaret Knight thought up her first invention at twelve, and Oprah Winfrey broke into show biz at seventeen. If you have a dream, carpe diem: seize the day! Make it happen!

Genres: Nonfiction

212 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2000

About the author

Ever since I was a girl, I've always wanted to create books. In college I studied children's lit at Brown University, then I got my MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College. For the past 25 years I've been editing and art directing children’s books, collaborating with authors and illustrators on hundreds of titles. I've also written some children’s books of my own, which have won awards like the Oregon Book Award, Jewish Book Council’s Best Illustrated Book, IRA Notable Book, and Simon Wiesenthal’s Once Upon A World Award. For 13 years I shared my passion teaching Children’s Book Publishing at Portland State University. And when I don't have my nose buried in a book, I'm an adrenaline junkie--I love to snowboard, whitewater raft and scuba dive. I live in Portland, Oregon, with my husband, two kids and three cats.

Reviews

[Kyisha Walter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was not crazy about the first book in this set but as you can see by my rating, I was very pleased with this entry. I am not sure why, but this book felt much more touching and emotional, and each biography felt like a story rather than a fact list. I felt that there were more inspiring acts of defying gender-norms and I definitely benefited mentally from this reminder of greatness. There were also structural changes that I liked like the girls' interests lining up with the biographies and some current (in 2000) women listed at the end. I feel that I as an adult learned from both books but this one in particular stood out to me. The biographies are also written in an age-appropriate manner while still facing and discussion issues like racial prejudice and violence against women.

[Cecelia · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were several typos and grammatical errors in this book. Other than that, I enjoyed reading this collection of short biographies of famous women.