Hooray for Heroines!

The characters in these novels are full of the kind of energy that one would hope to find every day. Young women, who go out, seek the world, venture into the unknown and have proved to be genuine, intricate, and strong. As a woman, with two daughters, I would only hope that the kind of excitement and intricately fascinating details portrayed in these novels will be available to each and every one of us. As females, young and old, we balance on a fine line of feeling strength and weakness, confidence and insecurity, intrigue and disdain, and these characters give us the right to cheer for the aggressive, stubborn, type-a personalities, but to also connect to the anguish they feel when their heart is broken.

In Graceling, by Kristin Cashore, the heroine chose her life and love, while helping the country fight an evil mastermind. Also, a pillar of strength was the young girl who chose to escape her fate, avoid prison because she was female, protect one sister while saving another from death, and rode off into the sunset on a dragon in Shadow of the Dragon, by Kate O’Hearn. And lastly, A Curse Dark As Gold, by Elizabeth C. Buntz, develops a young woman who fights off a dark figure looming over her tragic and simple but heroic life, as she saves the family business, her sister, and her own young child. Hooray for the REAL heroines – people who wear dresses (when they choose) while saving princesses (themselves, as well), tame dragons (no person had been able to before), fall in love (and show it openly), and be themselves (all in a day's work)! All of these young women show charisma and self-control while defeating the odds stacked against them, but they never lost their smart wit and capacity to defend themselves - traits I think we all hope for!