International Day of the Girl: Celebrating Girls Around the World

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.(From Kids Can Press)

International Day of the Girl is a finalist for the 2022 Yellow Cedar Award, which celebrates nonfiction books for readers in Grades 4-8.

Jessica Dee Humphreys is a Canadian writer and researcher. She is also the author of Child Soldier: When Boys and Girls Are Used in War and has written two books with Roméo Dallaire.

Rona Ambrose is the former interim leader of the federal Conservative Party and the opposition leader between 2015 and 2017. She lives in Calgary and led the global movement to create the International Day of the Girl at the United Nations.

Simone Shin is an American children's book illustrator.

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• Here are the 2022 Yellow Cedar Award finalists

More about International Day of the Girl

International Day of the Girl: Strangers from different cultures interview each other about the lives of girls

5 years ago

Duration 4:00

Layla Owens is a Canadian Grade 9 student. She speaks with Sister Lissy Chacko, who's visiting Canada for the first time from India. It is a learning experience for both of them.