I hope everyone had this moment at some point before age, oh, thirteen: You're reading a chapter book in the library or on the school bus or in bed with a flashlight after lights out, and suddenly you recognized in the heroine someone who thought how you thought and saw the world like you did. Whether she was Anne of Green Gables or Harriet the Spy, she, too, recognized the arbitrariness of grownup's rules and she also had big dreams that sometimes clashed with reality. The only difference between you was that she got to live in the world of the book, and you had to live with your family. She was, up to that point, the best thing that had ever happened to you.
For me it was Laura Ingalls (and yes, I had her little brown diary). For a lot of girls -- at least the fellow second-graders I met at Kate Gove's children's reading group at the GAR Memorial Library in West Newbury -- it was Meg Murry of Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time," a book that turns 50 this year. L'Engle showed a generation of young girls that men weren't the only ones who could save the universe (or read or star in Sci-Fi).
Paying tribute to "A Wrinkle in Time," Pamela Paul wrote in the New York Times:
for almost a century and a half, girls have fluctuated between seasons of Amy and Meg and Jo March, imagining themselves alternately with blond corkscrew curls, eldest sister wisdom or writerly ambitions ... It was under L'Engle's influence that we willed ourselves to be like Meg Murry, the awkward girl who suffered through flyaway hair, braces and glasses but who was also and to a much greater degree concerned with the extent of her own intelligence, the whereabouts of her missing scientist father, the looming threat of conformity and, ultimately, the fate of the universe.
Probably no one has better cataloged the positive influence books like L'Engle's have on girls than Lizzie Skurnick. In "Shelf Discovery," her 2009 book-length love letter to the heroines of Young Adult fiction, Skurnick argued that up until the 60s, young women "were in the story, but you'd be hard pressed to say it was our story," and credited L'Engle and her generation with putting "girls in the center of our own adventures."
But literature's influence on young women isn't always a positive one, or so The Observer's Samantha Ellis claims. Ellis has written that she spent most of her life aspiring to be more of a daring Cathy Earnshaw/"Wuthering Heights" type over the more staid heroine of "Jane Eyre," but with age, found her loyalties shifting (I mean, look at how poor Cathy turned out). Ellis began revisiting the books that influenced her as a young girl and found some had had pernicious effects on her life:
Hans Christian Andersen's got a lot to answer for; "The Little Mermaid" made intense, messy, painful love seem the only kind there is. I wish I hadn't loved Scarlett O'Hara so much - I might have realised unrequited love is just deeply boring. The same goes for Anne in "Valley of the Dolls," who only gets her man after a lot of ugly scheming.
What do you think? Which heroines from your childhood and teen reading influenced who you are today? Which do you wish hadn't? Tweet @HuffPostWomen with hashtag #GirlBooks.
SLIDESHOW: Literary Heroines We Love
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George RR Martin's cast of strong female lead characters in his (incomplete)Song of Ice and Fire series is astounding.
Arya Stark: Wild wolf-child of the north. Another girl that Tolken's Eowyn would be jealous of.
Daenerys Targaryen : Last surviving heir of House Targaryen. Mother of Dragons (yes the kind with scales). Exiled beyond the sea and raising an army to retake her throne.
Brienne "the Beauty": The female knight. Freakishly big, freakishly strong, horsefaced and broad-shouldered. Winner of the King Renly's Grand Melee and member of his personal guard. Social outcast. Disowned by her family.
Catelyn Stark: She spends much of the series as a stock-footage "mother/wife" support character. And then ... well ... lets just say Hell Hath No Fury like a woman hanged.
Melisandre - The Red Priestess: I honestly have no idea if she's a hero or a villain. But she's got King Stanis on her hook as surely as wormtougue ever did the horse lord.
Asha Greyjoy - Daughter of the Kraken and the only child of his that was not taken hostage when the Iron Islands rebelled. Thus the only child he considers fit to rule after him. Though her brothers disagree. So do her uncles if it comes to that.
The Queen of Thorns: Nickname for the Lord of Highgarden's mother. She is clearly the brains in that House.
So many more, but I'm at the word limit.
Liked Tolken but wished there were more Eowyn and Arwen characters? Look no further than Elizabeth Moon's "The Deed of Paksennarion" trilogy. Sheepfarmer's Daughter, Divided Allegiance, and Oath of Gold. Paks lives the life Eowyn dreams of living. There is no fear of Paks dieing with all hope of valor fled beyond ability or desire.
Like Military Scifi but think its silly for militaries to be all men when its machines doing the fighting? Well so does David Weber. His "Honor Harrington" books can scratch that itch.
And this topic clearly needs some comedy which can be found in Terry Pratchett's "Equal Rites" about the seventh son of a seventh son ... who happens to be a daughter. Something a dead wizard realized moments *after* passing on his staff and his power to her and keeling over. Getting a magical education for Eskarina at the Unseen University is more difficult than anticipated however and she just doesn't have a head for witchery so Granny Weatherwax is out of her depth (Not that she'd admit it and you'd better not say so to her face if you know what's good for you).
Out of all the books I read as a child no book is so tattered from re-reading as Oathbound and Oathbreakers (Mercedes Lackey).
Diana Tregaurde was another great Mercedes Lackey heroine.
Anne McCaffrey has a slew of great female characters, leads, and saviors. Lessa Rider of Ramoth, Melony Harper of Pern, Hulda the Ship Who Sang, Killashandra Crystal Singer ...
And for the Nancy Drew fans there was also Trixie Beldon.
Island of the Blue Dolphin was a great book featuring Karana ... another story of an abandoned child making good this time a native girl who escaped captivity and fended for herself on a small uninhabited island.
For classics there is Susan Calvin, the maker of the Robots and formulator of the Three Laws of Robotics in Asimov's books. (modern movie adaptation "I, Robot" sidelined her).
Sally Shears (aka Molly Millions) was a tremendous force in Neuromancer.
Y.T. is a 15 year old bicycle courier in Snow Crash, another seminal work of science fiction though she never reveals her name.
For younger children Neil Gaimen's "Coraline" and Adara in George RR Martin's "The Ice Dragon" as well as Mary Lennox in "The Secret Garden". Maureen in "Misty of Chincoteague". also who can forget Lucy and Susan (Mainly Lucy)in "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe"?
These days Kelly Armstrong's entire catalog is my guilty pleasure though. Elena, Eve, Savannah, Paige, Hope, Jaime, Nadia ... all great characters and fun to read.
When I was a teen, I found that a lot of stories that I was interested in did not have strong female roles. Lord of the Rings, for example which had exactly 3 females in it, one of them being a spider. I just kind of inserted myself into the stories with my imagination in a role similar to Arwen in the movies.
Books with Strong Female Leads - Elementary School to Young Adult
http://www.skinnyscoop.com/list/eden/books-with-strong-female-leads-elementary-school-to-young-adult