Description
Book Synopsis During World War I, as young men journeyed overseas to battle, American women maintained the home front by knitting, fundraising, and conserving supplies. These became daily chores for young girls, but many longed to be part of a larger, more glorious war effort--and some were. A new genre of young adult books entered the market, written specifically with the young girls of the war period in mind and demonstrating the wartime activities of women and girls all over the world. Through fiction, girls could catch spies, cross battlefields, man machine guns, and blow up bridges. These adventurous heroines were contemporary feminist role models, creating avenues of leadership for women and inspiring individualism and self-discovery. The work presented here analyzes the powerful messages in such literature, how it created awareness and grappled with the engagement of real girls in the United States and Allied war effort, and how it reflects their contemporaries'' awareness of girls'' im
Trade Review
This book provides significant, well-researched, and much-needed information about early 20th century America and the role girls' series fiction of that era played in the changing dynamic of girlhood and young womanhood." —Diana V. Dominguez, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- One. Preparedness
- Two. Girls Who Stay at Home
- Three. Girls Who Nurse and Do Relief Work
- Four. Girls Who Drive and Fly
- Five. Uncovering Spies and Saboteurs
- Six. Girls Who Rescue Men
- Seven. Girls Who Fight
- Conclusion
- Appendix A: Book Series in Order of Publication
- Appendix B: Series Authors
- Appendix C: Summaries of the Wartime Volumes from Individual Series
- Chapter Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
