‘Good night Stories For Rebel Girls’ is a collection of biographies of 100 extraordinary women from 1500 BC to today, written by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo. As the name suggests, ‘Good Night Stories’ gives the feeling of reading fairy tales differently. Most fairy tales end with ‘They lived happily ever after’. The ultimate fact is that it is unpredictable if a girl gives more importance to pursuing their dreams than their married life. This book helps us to change our vision toward women in the past.
Each woman illustrated in the book is distinct, and the sketches of these women are outstanding and drawn by 50 female artists from different countries. All the great women in the book reached the pinnacle of success through hard work and determination. The stories are not just biographies. It flows like a fairy tale with a difference. It is tough to memorise each woman in the book; probably, we don’t remember their name. But when we finish reading, the question ‘why’ comes to mind.
Whenever we think about a war situation or a pilot’s job, the name of men will unquestionably come into our minds. Most of us dedicate hazardous tasks to men. People have misconceptions such as women are not strong enough to do adventurous activities. Each and everyone’s story in this book touched our hearts deeply. Sometimes people try to remove them from history. For example, a woman named Hatshepsut, one of the most important queens of Egypt, after her death, a few men broke her statue and tried to remove her from documents. Another famous woman Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer program in history, but the father of the computer was called Charles Babbage.
After reading each story in this book, one question that arose in our mind was, “Why don’t we read this book before? The apparent reason for this is in history; men remember more than women. The women in this book follow their dreams and do not listen to what other people say about them. One disadvantage noticed with this book is the name of the book. Unfortunately, the name suggests this book is for girls, but each woman’s story certainly influences boys. It gives a valuable message to all the boys about women. Another drawback of this book is that not all women are in the ‘good girls’ category. The book mentioned a woman who wanted to become a pirate because pirates are dangerous.
As the title suggests, in Good Night Stories, we feel like reading one story every night, but we never stop with one when we start reading. This book sold a million copies in 35 different languages, and the second part of the book probably does the same.