Joy Worland, the director of the Joslin Memorial Library in Waitsfield, highly recommends The Amelia Bloomer Project, a project of the Feminist Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table of the American Library Association. Founded in 2002, its mission is to select and recommend quality feminist books for ages birth to eighteen. The committee of seven public, school and academic librarians from all over the country recently met at the ALA Midwinter Conference to create this year’s list.
Joy has been following this project since she first heard of it when working on her MLS, so was thrilled to get to participate this year, spending hours with smart, opinionated, passionate committee members evaluating over 100 books to create this year’s list of 68 books.
The list is a diverse compilation including a picture book about a girl sherpa, a graphic novel about a girl fencer with the potential to save the world, a zine of advice for teen girls, and many more works of fiction and non-fiction exploring and celebrating the stories of resilient and inspiring girls and women.
For more about the project and the complete 2011 list, go to http://ameliabloomer.wordpress.com/