Girl Reviews
Our Girl Reviews showscases blogs that discuss how girls are portrayed in and impacted by books, movies, television shows, live performances, museums and exhibits, games, and products.
Feel free to comment and share your thoughts about these reviews. If you would like to submit a review, send us an email with your name, country, and a 250-750 word review discussing how that media, museum exhibit, or product portrays and impacts girls.
Girls at the Georgian House in Edinburgh, Scotland
Junior Girl Monique Brough talks about her experience at the Georgian House, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and what girls’ lives might have been like.
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Book Review: A Murder for Her Majesty
Associate Editor Sage Daugherty reviews one of her favorite childhood books, A Murder for Her Majesty by Beth Hilgartner and talks about its heroine’s journey in Elizabethan England.
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Teen Dramas: John Hughes, Part 1 – The Problem with Sixteen Candles
The king of teen movies in the 1980s is without question John Hughes. Between 1984 and 1987 he released six movies: Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Some Kind of Wonderful. These are all movies still...
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Film Review: Pan’s Labyrinth
Junior Girl Lydia Henning reviews Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth and specifically talks about the girl protagonist in the film, Ofelia.
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Teen Dramas: Riverdale: Chapter Three – Body Double
The TV show Riverdale debuted in 2017, and is based on characters from Archie Comics. The show has a mystery element to it with the murder of Jason Blossom in the first episode. While the characters try to figure out who is responsible they also have their own issues...
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Book Review: 1001 Cranes
Associate Editor Sage Daugherty reviews 1001 Cranes by Naomi Hirahara, about a Japanese-American girl named Angela and her eventful, cultural summer spent with her grandparents in Los Angeles.
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TV Review: Friends
Junior Girl Hannah Kelly revisits one of her favorite TV series, Friends, and talks about the societal and gender role shift pertaining to girls, from the 1990s to today.
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Book Review: The Secret Garden
Junior Girl Sophia Lee talks about one of the beloved books from her childhood, The Secret Garden, and its strong female protagonist, Mary Lennox.
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TV Review: Santa Clarita Diet
*SPOILERS THROUGHOUT* I finished watching (read: binge watching) Santa Clarita Diet this weekend, and had to write about the unsung hero, Abby Hammond. The new Netflix-original series tells the story of Sheila and Joel Hammond, married realtors raising their teenage...
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Film Review: The Shallows
Junior Boy Jake Goforth reviews The Shallows, a horror movie about one girl’s struggle for survival in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
read moreBook Review: Milly-Molly-Mandy
About ten years ago I was browsing in a bookshop and I came across a book I had long since forgotten about. I couldn’t resist opening it up to see if this modern publication was the same as the book that I remembered from my childhood. The book was Milly-Molly-Mandy...
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Review: Nancy Drew
Back in my school days when we couldn’t order books off the Internet, one way for young students to have access to reading materials outside of the general bookstore or school library in New Zealand was the monthly catalogue Scholastic. Here is where I picked up my...
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Exhibition Review: Beyond Suffrage
In November 2017, I had the opportunity to go to a new exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York about women in politics — obviously my favorite topic! The exhibition, Beyond Suffrage: A Century of New York Women in Politics, traced women's political activism...
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Exhibition Review: Women Doing Men’s Jobs
During World War One, there were countless stories of badass women who defied norms and contributed to the war effort in incredible ways. Mary Boden set up and funded a mobile hospital unit on the Western Front that nursed soldiers wounded in Ypres and Somme, serving...
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TV Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer – "Ted" "Ted" is the 11th episode of season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and while it aired in 1997, one of the main themes of the episode is still prevalent today. Buffy’s mother begins dating Ted, a man whom her mother and all...
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Film Review: Scream
Horror Heroines: Sidney Prescott (Scream, 1996) Scream was released 22 years ago with the teenage Sidney Prescott as the main character. One year after her murder of her mother, Sidney is trying to move on with her life. Her world is turned upside down when two of her...
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TV Review: Gilmore Girls
 Review: Gilmore Girls — "They Shoot Gilmores, Don't They?" Confession time: I'm a woman in my mid-twenties who loves teen dramas. Not just shows from when I was a teenager but current shows, as well as those from the '90's. When I was a teenager we only had a...
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Review: The Worst Witch is Heartwarming and Hilarious
I had heard about The Worst Witch from a friend of mine who had watched the first few episodes and loved them. I was looking for something new to watch on Netflix and it was one of the suggested shows in my profile, so I settled down and started the show. Two minutes...
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Book Review: Mandy
I recently moved away from home and had to leave the majority of my library behind, except for a few of my favorite books. One day, I was browsing Amazon and I came across a book in my cart that I absolutely loved as a child. I received Mandy by the incomparable Julie...
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Book Review: Divergent
Divergent is another addition to the YA dystopian genre. This series of books follows the life of the teenage Tris who lives in a dystopian version of Chicago. The city is divided into different factions that all have different virtues. One day a year, all sixteen...
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