Girls Will Be Boys: More Gender Pretenders for Young Readers
Explore 'Girls Will Be Boys'—a curated list of books featuring gender-pretending characters for young readers. Perfect for kids who love stories about boys and girls defying norms!
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The Root Cellar
by Janet Lunn
Twelve-year-old orphan Rose, sent to live with unknown relatives on a farm in Canada, ventures into her aunt's root cellar and finds herself making friends with people who lived on the farm more than a century earlier.
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I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade
by Diane Lee Wilson
In early 14-century China, Oyuna tells her granddaughter of her girlhood in Mongolia and how love for her horse enabled her to win an important race and bring good luck to her family.
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Nobody's Princess
by Esther Friesner
Helen of Sparta wants to be more than a princess and a pretty face—she wants to be a hero. The traditions of ancient Sparta would have Helen know her place: a beautiful princess, a loyal daughter, a perfect bride. But Helen wants adventure, and she's not looking back. Not one to count on the gods to take care of her, she sets out to see the world and seek her own fate with steely determination. Her rebellious will makes Helen dangerous enemies—such as the self-proclaimed "son of Zeus" Theseus—but it also gains her true friends, from the famed huntress Atalanta to the young priestess who is the Oracle of Delphi. If she is strong enough, if she is cunning enough, if she is brave enough, Helen will find her destiny . . . but what does destiny have in store for her? In Nobody's Princess, author Esther Friesner deftly weaves together history and myth as she takes a new look at the girl who will become Helen of Troy. The back of the book includes further facts about Helen of Troy and Ancient Greece. Hand to readers who love Tamora Pierce and Leigh Bardugo, particularly if they just finished Wonder Woman: Warbringer and want to know more about Helen of Troy. "A must-read for fans of fantasy and mythology."—VOYA "Along the way, Friesner skillfully exposes larger issues of women's rights, human bondage, and individual destiny. It's a rollicking good story."—Booklist
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Nobody's Prize
by Esther M. Friesner
Still longing for adventure, Princess Helen of Sparta maintains her disguise as a boy to join her unsuspecting brothers as part of the crew of the Argo, the ship commanded by Prince Jason in his quest for the Golden Fleece.
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The Misadventures of Maude March
by Audrey Couloumbis
Eleven-year-old Sallie March is a whip-smart tomboy and voracious reader of Western adventure novels. When she and her sister Maude escape their self-serving guardians for the wilds of the frontier, they begin an adventure the likes of which Sallie has only read about. This time however, the "wanted woman" isn't a dime-novel villian, it's Sallie's very own sister! What follows is not the lies the papers printed, but the honest-to-goodness truth of how two sisters went from being orphans to being outlaws—and lived to tell the tale!
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Alphabet of Dreams
by Susan Fletcher
Mitra and her brother Babak are exiled royals living on the streets as orphaned beggars. Babak possesses a strange gift of being able to know someone's dreams, and soon they find themselves on the road to Bethlehem in this biblical epic.
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Seven Daughters and Seven Sons
by Barbara Cohen
In an ancient Arab nation, one woman dares to be different.Buran cannot -- Buran will not-sit quietly at home and wait to be married to the man her father chooses. Determined to use her skills and earn a fortune, she instead disguises herself as a boy and travels by camel caravan to a distant city. There, she maintains her masculine disguise and establishes a successful business. The city's crown prince comes often to her shop, and soon Buran finds herself falling in love. But if she reveals to Mahmud that she is a woman, she will lose everything she has worked for.
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Sovay
by Celia Rees
In 1794 England, the rich and beautiful Sovay, disguised as a highwayman, acquires papers that could lead to her father's arrest for treason, and soon her newly-awakened political consciousness leads her and a compatriot to France during the Revolution.
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Far Traveler
by Rebecca Tingle
When King Edward gives his niece Elfwyn two choices--marry one of his allies or become a nun--Wyn is at a loss to decide. Her strong, warrior mother has just died, so it's impossible to know what she would have wanted. Wyn takes the first risk of her life and flees. Disguising herself as a boy, she adopts a new identity as a traveling storyteller called Widsith (far traveler) and reinvents herself, drawing upon the books she has loved all her life. Soon she finds her fate inextricably tied with the dark-eyed King Wilfrid, who knows her only as Widsith, and wants her help in a plot against her own uncle.
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Toliver's Secret
by Esther Wood Brady
When her grandfather is injured, 10-year-old Ellen Toliver replaces him on a top-secret patriotic mission. Disguised as a boy, she manages to smuggle a message to General George Washington.
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Jackaroo
by Cynthia Voigt
"False, they were all of them false, the stories; as false as the stories of fairies dancing in moonlight glades on Midsummer Night." But they served a purpose. In a distant time and far-off kingdom, life is hard. People don't have enough to eat, and winter is upon them. There's little that offers hope, and many turn to the legends of Jackaroo -- the masked outlaw hero who rides at night giving aid to the helpless and coin to the destitute -- for solace. But Gwyn, the Innkeeper's daughter -- sensitive, industrious, and independent -- is too practical to believe such tales. But when a snowstorm forces her and a young Lordling to seek refuge in an abandoned house, Gwyn wonders if perhaps she has been too cynical. Hidden away in an old forgotten cupboard, Gwyn discovers a package -- a cloak, a mask, a sword....Jackaroo? Could the stories be true? It takes a shock and a devastating betrayal for Gwyn to begin to understand what -- and who -- Jackaroo really is. And she comes to know what part she will play in discovering the truth, such as it may be, behind the legends.
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Behind Rebel Lines
by Seymour Reit
Recounts the story of the Canadian woman who disguised herself as a man and slipped behind Confederate lines to spy for the Union army.
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Dove and Sword
by Nancy Garden
This is a story of the Hundred Years' War and its great heroine, Joan of Arc. When Joan sets out to lead an army against the British, her friend Gabrielle stays loyally by her side until the wrenching finish.
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