Reddit reviews Alanna: The First Adventure (The Song of the Lioness, Book 1)

I am in absolute agreement. I feel like my childhood and who I am today is really driven by her works. I love the idea of a female knight.

Alanna: The First Adventure is a great place to start.

Tamora Pierce! She's almost the perfect age, and if you start her off on the clunkier fare (sorry, Alanna), it will only get better from there!

A Series of Unfortunate Events is also Worthy, but they're a one-time read for me: not something I return to as brain candy.

I loved Anne of Green Gables at that age. And it depends on her reading level, but most of this list would be a bit beyond the average nine-year-old. Then again, kids who like to read will devour just about anything; I struggled through LotR when I was in fifth grade, something that I wouldn't voluntarily do now.

Some other fun, easy reads for girls are the Tamora Pierce books.

You might try Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness series.

Tamora Pierce has a great compilations of books if you wanna shake things up and read fantasy with a female lead. Most of her stories are usually Quartets.

I've read the Song of the Lioness series, which was about a girl who pretended to be her twin brother in order to become a knight. Of course, only boys train to be knights.

The Protector of the Small is a series that follows the generation of knights after the Song of the Lioness, which explores the world as it tries to adjust to it's new understanding of gender equity.

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes has a saga about shapeshifters that are pretty unique. It starts with Hawksong, which is set at the end of a war that spanned through generations. Each book has a different main character and some of the stories are more interesting than others (Falcondance was my personal favourite). One book even has a queer main character! wow!

My coworker's wife is a psychologist and she's been recommending Exercise for mood and anxiety : proven strategies for overcoming depression and enhancing well-being by Michael Otto and Jasper A. J. Smits, Mind over mood : change how you feel by changing the way you think by Dennis Greenberger and Christine Padesky, and The happiness trap : how to stop struggling and start living by Russ Harris and Steven Hayes

Personally, my go-to comfort books are Harry Potter and any of the Tortall series' by Tamora Pierce (though if you haven't read them before, I recommend starting with Alanna)

You have so much wonderful reading ahead of you! I am almost a tiny bit jealous. :-)

Try Tamora Pierce's novels for sure. They are all good, but her earlier books are geared more towards young readers than some of her newer ones. Personally, I would start with the [Protector of the Small] (http://www.amazon.com/First-Test-Protector-Small-1/dp/0375829059/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407034954&sr=1-1&keywords=first+test) series. If you like it, you can go back and read the two earlier Tortall series (the Song of the Lioness series and the Wild Magic series). If you like it but find it a little juvenile, read the [Daughter of the Lioness] (http://www.amazon.com/Tricksters-Choice-Daughter-Lioness-Book/dp/0375828796/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407035106&sr=1-1&keywords=tricksters+choice) series and the [Beka Cooper] (http://www.amazon.com/Terrier-Legend-Beka-Cooper-Book/dp/0375838163/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407035135&sr=1-1&keywords=becca+cooper) series instead.

For the Arthurian element, definitely consider the Mists of Avalon, which is the Arthurian myth retold from all female POVs, including Morgaine (aka Morgan Le Fay).

However, without a shadow of a doubt, my all time favorite fantasy novel with a female POV is the Deed of Paksenarrion, by Elizabeth Moon. It's actually a trilogy published as an omnibus edition and is one of my all-time favorite books. I have read it a million times and I still feel the same sense of joy when I get ready to start reading it again. Honestly, I can't really describe the impact this book has had on me, especially as a woman who loves fantasy and sci-fi. I hope you will give it a try!

*edited to add links and fix a few embarrassing typos!

You should read Alanna: The First Adventure, by Tamora Pierce. It's YA, so it's easy to get through. It's fantasy, and she builds a great world. She writes about strong young women, often who don't fit in. If you enjoy her world, she has written several two-to-four-book series.

/u/Morthy you shall now be dubbed Dr. Morthy-o. Let's play a pill version of Tetris.

Anything by Tamora Pierce (I would recommend this) is excellent. It might be a tad too mature for an 8 year old, as the first novel mentions the main character (a female pretending to be a boy so she can go to knight training) getting her period and wearing a gem so she doesn't get pregnant. She might have sex in the third or fourth novel, as well.

I'm pretty sure I read them in 4th or 5th grade and my mom read them along with me. She was a book behind me so when I got to the "sex" book I gave it to a friend so she didn't know I had read a book that mentioned sex. It was done tastefully, in passing, and was not erotica by any means, but if you don't want your daughter exposed to it at all I would wait for a little bit.

Good Omens is a written comedy example of some serious trope plays. I'm not sure if it calls any out by name, but there's a distinct level of self-awareness there.

One of my favorite writing prompts has been to pick a trope and deliberately work around it or inject enough factual details to justify it (like matching soap opera disease to an actual illness). To that end, I've built up a fantasy world with equal gender roles (which apparently isn't that unusual in fantasy, I just don't read much high fantasy to have come across this), no magical healing, battles won through supply lines instead of solely acts of bravado, and last minute plans that go horribly, horribly wrong. I suppose these are all plot subversions rather than character subversions like you say.

However, I've noticed that the world is still fairly Euro-centric and although a good portion of the characters (including the MC) are non-white, the cultures they abide in could probably just be seen as an identifiable European country minus technology. That still leaves it almost the standard fantasy setting. There seem to be very few fantasy works that are in worlds distinct from European cultural relevance. Offhand, the only ones I can think of are the Bazhir in Song of the Lioness, the Calormen in The Horse and His Boy, and a few countries in ASOIAF.

The problem is that she probably hasn't found the right genre yet that interests her. Schools are absolutely horrible at this sort of thing, so she probably thinks all books are like the ones they make her read at school.

So go back to basics. Introduce her to Nancy Drew (mystery), Babysitter's Club (random social life), Alanna: The First Adventure (Girl power fantasy), Dealing with Dragons (more sort of straight up fantasy that's not to long), etc.

That and there are some amazing comics out there. Take her to a comic shop and have her look around.