Deb­bie Ja­cob

Make no mis­take about it, girls gen­er­al­ly need a nudge in the di­rec­tion of a book­shelf just as much as boys do. Here are the books that are picked most of­ten by girls in my school. We have stu­dents from about 50 dif­fer­ent coun­tries around the world so you could say these are books that have a world-wide ap­peal.

1. Katie Ka­zoo by Nan­cy Kru­lik–This se­ries for young read­ers fea­tures Katie Carew, who is nick­named Katie Ka­zoo by the class bul­ly. Katie finds a va­ri­ety of cre­ative ways to deal with the prob­lems and is­sues in her life. Katie Ka­zoo ap­peals to girls six through ten.

2. The Eng­lish Ros­es by Madon­na–Yes, the singer Madon­na wrote this sev­en-part se­ries about the ad­ven­tures of five British school­girls. This se­ries, with its hip graph­ics, is im­mense­ly pop­u­lar with young read­ers from sev­en to 11.

3. The Rain­bow Fairies se­ries by Daisy Mead­ows–is es­pe­cial­ly pop­u­lar with girls six through ten. The se­ries fea­tures sev­en fairies who come up miss­ing. Each book search­es for one of the miss­ing fairies.

4. Ki­ra-Ki­ra by Cyn­thia Kado­ha­ta–This nov­el about two Japan­ese-Amer­i­can sis­ters who strug­gle to cope with life while their par­ents work all the time is a high-in­ter­est/low-read­ing-lev­el book. It's writ­ten for read­ers at a ten-year-old lev­el, but even teenage girls who strug­gle with read­ing find it in­ter­est­ing. The themes of fam­i­ly, love, loss and home tran­scend cul­ture. Ki­ra-Ki­ra is still the best book I have come across to teach the con­cept of theme with­out be­ing di­dac­tic or preachy.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers