Reading Girls

Reading Girls captures the voices and literacy experiences of a diverse group of urban adolescent girls. The author—an experienced researcher and middle school teacher—intertwines investigations of multiple literacies, technologies, race, class, gender, sexuality, and gender expression to provide a provocative look at what helps and what hurts adolescent girls in school. Through engaging case studies, we see how traditional schooling fails to make room for crucial life topics, such as grappling with sexual or racial identity, understanding gang culture, or coming of age in urban America. Each chapter concludes with concrete strategies for improving both in- and out-of-school practices to better serve young girls, especially marginalized students.

This important book updates and expands the seminal work done by Margaret Finders in her bestselling book, Just Girls. It includes up-to-date technologies and media forms and addresses contemporary issues of interest to today’s adolescent girls.

Hadar Dubowsky Ma'ayan is an educational researcher, writer, and public middle school teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

"Will help readers see their own schools, classrooms, and students through a new lens that invites a stance of critical literacy."
—Ruth Shagoury, Lewis & Clark College

“Shows how schools and literacy pedagogy need to change in this new era.”
—From the Foreword by Margaret Finders, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse