A favorite childhood book is lucah lakilike a treasure that holds secrets about our long-held hopes and dreams. We revisit them to remember who we were and who we became.
While the best children's stories teach us an important truth about the human condition, they have too often lacked something universal: girls and women.
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There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, and you'll find them in worn and dog-eared copies of A Wrinkle in Time, To Kill a Mockingbirdand Their Eyes Were Watching God. But until recently, a young female reader couldn't stock her bookshelf with inspiring picture books, fairy tales, novels and biographies about unconventional girls and women.
Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo, co-founders of the children's media company Timbuktu Labs, felt this longing firsthand and decided to do something about it. Last month, the pair launched a Kickstarter campaign for Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, an illustrated book featuring biographies of 100 women who have shaped and changed history.
The response from backers was electric. They met their goal of $40,000 within days. On Monday, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls became the most-funded children's book in Kickstarter history. More than 8,600 backers have contributed $435,000 as of press time, far surpassing a 2014 campaign for an adventure story about a "scientifically precocious young girl in a world of fantasy."
"Of course, it’s very rewarding on a personal level, because you spend so much time hearing that people don’t care about the female perspective, or 'Oh you shouldn’t complain, nobody wants to hear that,' or 'Don’t be boring, no one wants to talk about feminism anymore,'" says Favilli.
"Inspiring girls to dream big is something I think we all need to take responsibility for."
The campaign's success is no fluke. From strategic product development to savvy marketing, Favilli and Cavallo had a clear vision well before launching. Yet, there's something business acumen can't explain about the triumph of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, and that seems to be an intense desire on the part of backers to make a statement about how we nurture the inner lives and imaginations of girls.
"In this case, it’s more than pre-ordering a book," says Lisbeth Sinclair, an early backer who pledged $99 for three books, one for her daughter and two for her nieces. "If [other backers] are like me, they probably feel like they’re part of a movement. Inspiring girls to dream big is something I think we all need to take responsibility for."
Favilli and Cavallo developed the idea for the book last year. Both were already attuned to the need for children's media products that defied gender stereotypes; Timbuktu's mobile games and magazine both have that aim.
But their disheartening experiences as female entrepreneurs, which Favilli wrote about in the Guardian, offered new motivation, as did statistics about the representation of girls in the media.
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The pair began testing the idea for Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls through a newsletter about "girl empowerment" that started with a membership of nearly 4,000 people. They started sending readers brief stories about impressive women. An issue dedicated to Hatshepsut, the first female pharaoh, received noticeable engagement from users who wrote back with positive comments.
"That was actually one of the moments where we said, 'Wow, there’s really something here. People are responding to this, they want to know more about these stories,'" says Favilli.
Prior to launching the Kickstarter campaign, Favilli and Cavallo wrote several of the stories and commissioned a half-dozen illustrations. Each of the portraits will be drawn by a female illustrator, which became another selling point of the project.
Sinclair calls the available portraits, which include renderings of Frida Kahlo and Serena Williams, "breathtakingly beautiful, [a] big piece of the emotional attachment."
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Since exceeding their original goal, the campaign has added "stretch goals" that include an audio book, temporary tattoo pack and a poster.
Sinclair, a Los Angeles-based community builder who knew of Favilli and Cavallo prior to the campaign, introduced them to the literacy organization Read to a Child. That turned into a partnership and a $400,000 stretch goal that, when met, would send 400 copies of the book to the nonprofit.
"When every day people...have the power to green-light ideas, they choose a much more diverse and vibrant set of projects."
Comparatively few Kickstarter campaigns reach this level of success. Of the 105,000-plus fully-funded campaigns, only 2,848 have raised more than a $100,000, according to the company's statistics.
Julie Wood, director of global communications for the company, tells Mashable in an email that girl empowerment themes pop up frequently on the crowdfunding platform.
"Instead of accepting the common tropes handed down to us by mainstream or traditional producers of mass culture, Kickstarter creators are able to propose new and different ideas," she says. "And when every day people, instead of the traditional gatekeepers, have the power to green-light ideas, they choose a much more diverse and vibrant set of projects."
Corporate tastemakers, however, have taken note. Favilli says they've been approached by traditional publishers, but she plans on remaining in full control of the process, at least for the first edition. That book should be in the hands of backers in time for the holidays. In the meantime, Favilli and Cavallo are considering using the excess funds to build a digital component like an app.
While the success of Good Night stories for Rebel Girls is timely proof that stories starring girls and women are bankable, Carolyn Danckaert, co-founder of the site A Mighty Girl, worries it may inadvertently send the wrong message.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable "I think there’s definitely always room for great girl empowerment books like this," she says. "At the same time, perhaps one of the unintended consequences of this campaign is that it sends a message that there aren’t books like this, and I would argue there are a lot."
Danckaert, who maintains a collection of 2,500 book recommendations for young readers, many of of them about "smart, courageous girls doing interesting things," says this category has grown significantly in recent years. Some notable examples include the titles Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World, Amelia to Zora: Twenty-Six Women Who Changed the World and Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science — And The World.
If consumers feel there's a dearth of books celebrating women, Danckaert says it may reflect marketing and promotion realities. When such books aren't on display at the local bookstore, or are produced by publishers with slim budgets, it's hard for readers to discover them.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable "It would be wonderful if more of these [books] would receive the kind of wide recognition this campaign is getting," she says.
That level of enthusiasm, however, may be difficult to generate in the traditional book buying market. Sinclair says watching Favilli and Cavallo's idea turn into a crowdfunding blockbuster provides its own unique form of motivation to strive for personal goals. Of course, there's also what Sinclair envisions for her own daughter.
"I just could immediately picture this book in her room,"she says, "not only for the good night stories, but as a resource, a tome of inspiration."
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