With winter break just around the corner, many of us will be spending time with family over the holidays. That’s why I’m recommending family books for girls. Not all families look or act the same, and I hope you’ll find something that speaks to your particular notion of family in these reads.
Shark Teeth
Twelve-year-old Sharkita has fought to keep her family together in the face of her mother’s alcoholism. She just wants to be a kid, but she can’t even hang with her friends without worrying about her younger siblings. Mamma gets a new job and promises things will be different this time. But when Mamma slips again, a dangerous accident results. Sharkita’s worst fears of her family being separated are about to come true.
Warrior Girl
Celina loves her Mexican heritage — but sometimes it feels as if the world wants to erase that part of her. Luckily, she has a large family standing beside her — including her beloved Gramma. She encourages Celina to build a shield of joy around her, because “when you’re celebrating, when you find a reason to sing or dance or paint or play or laugh or write, they haven’t taken everything away from you. Keeping up that shield becomes hard when Celina’s dad gets deported and a pandemic hits. Still, she’s more determined than ever to live up to the meaning of her last name, Guerrera — woman warrior — in this novel in verse.
The Infinite Questions of Dottie Bing
Dottie’s Grandma Ima told her that a question was the first step in solving any problem. But now Grandma Ima is gone, and Grandpa Walter has come to stay with her family. She has to give up her room and share with her younger sister instead, and he’s always using the bathroom when she needs to get ready for school. She wants him to feel better so her life can return to normal and so she doesn’t have to see him so sad. But she can’t find the answer to the hardest question of all. How do you heal a broken heart?
Across So Many Seas
1492: Benvenida and her family must leave Spain because the inquisition is persecuting Jews.
1923: Reina’s father disowns her for an act of disobedience, shipping her to Cuba and an arranged marriage.
1961: Reina’s daughter Alegra is proud to teach literacy until Fidel Castro’s regime forces her to flee.
2003: Alegra’s daughter Paloma is a keeper of memories, fascinated by the stories of the women who came before her. When she journeys back to Spain, where it all started, she makes a momentous discovery about her family.
West of the Sea
When her mom disappears from their small Texas town, Haven is determined to find her. Along the way, she uncovers a monstrous family secret — her mother could change into an amphibious creature called a kitskara. And now that Haven is getting older, she’s developing the ability, too. Along with her sister and a new friend, she’ll journey across the Texas gulf coast to her grandparents’ abandoned home in search of her mom … and answers.
More Family Books for Girls
Laura just wants to get out of foster care and get back home to her parents, and she hopes training a stray dog as a therapy animal will be the key to helping them get better in Something Like Home by Andrea Beatriz Arango, a novel in verse.
When Cordelia becomes queen, her triplet siblings Rosalind and Miles must foil an evil plot against her in The Raven Throne, sequel to The Raven Heir, by Stephanie Burgis.
Drest must flee along with her father and her brothers when a powerful lord wrongly accuses her of murder in The Hunt for the Mad Wolf’s Daughter, a companion to The Mad Wolf’s Daughter by Diane Magras.
Kayla transports to another world when she learns her father is The Dark Lord of Zarwadwin. And the only way she can leave is by mastering the dark arts herself in The Dark Lord’s Daughter by Patricia C. Wrede.
When Lucy’s older sister Gigi humiliates her in the cafeteria on her first day of middle school, Lucy challenges her to a fencing duel with high stakes: if Lucy wins, Gigi has to quit teasing her for good in the graphic novel Duel by Jessixa and Aaron Bagley.
What about you? Have you read any of the books above? What are your favorite family books for girls? Tell us about them in the comments!