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.