Bad Girls by Jane Yolen and Heidi E.Y. Stemple

History is full of women who would not behave - some were criminals while some were fighting for a place in a society that had no place for them.  Unfortunately, their stories have often gone overlooked and untold.  In Bad Girls, the mother-daughter team of Yolen and Stemple have profiled twenty-four infamous ladies, capping each woman’s chapter with a one-page comic of the authors performing their research, debating the subject’s badness, and discussing the cultural context for each subject’s actions.  The book’s conclusion focuses on this cultural context and how gender roles have changed over time.  It encourages readers to draw their own conclusions about the women featured within which may make for lively debate.  With an extensive bibliography and index, Bad Girls is an excellent text for inquiry, in addition to being an engaging read. --Regan Schwartz

Discussion guide available from the publisher here.

Yolen, Jane and Heidi Stemple. Bad Girls: Sirens, Jezebels, murderesses, thieves, and other female villains. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge, 2013. Print.