Girl Squads by Sam Maggs Illustrated by Jenn Woodall


Hello Readers,

Thank you, Jamie and Quirk Books for sending me a copy of Girl Squads: 20 Female Friendships That Changed History, Reviews by Sam Maggs Illustrated by Jenn Woodall for free in exchange for an honest review.
Spoilers

Girl Squads tells the story of twenty historically female friendships through five distinctive categories: athlete squads; political & activist squads; warrior squads; scientist squads and artist squads. It's also incredibly diverse: from 90-year-old mermaids in Jeju to the first all-female orchestra in Afghanistan, this book covers it all. One of the other keynote that needs to be noted about this book is that it focuses on women not only through time but strong women from all over the world.

The stories of women whose friendships and contributions have impacted their community, culture, or the world. I am ashamed to say out of all the incredible groups of women in this book, there were only a few I was familiar with beforehand but i was only really knew a great deal about the ladies from Hidden Figures because I’ve read the book and seen the movie.

 The true story of Three brilliant African-American women named Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson who worked at NASA and served as the brains behind the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, restoring the nation's confidence in NASA and turned around the Space Race. Read the book then watch the movie! But each and every one of them led fascinating and incredible lives that deserve to be told. I'm so glad that Sam Maggs is telling their stories for people to hear.

I love any book that wants to bring a bright light to women who have impacted history. I adore how Sam explores the connection between the women who were actively friends and women who teamed up to fight for a common cause, even if their relationships wasn’t well-known. Sam points out that women have always been active participants and change-makers, but their contributions have often been overlooked, erased, or ignored and are so often left out of history books. 

Girl Squads highlights the power women can have when they stand united rather than divided. This book was extraordinary, I loved the way this book was structured. It means that you can find a section you are interested in and start there or easily find your favourite stories after finishing the book. Also, side note look how stunning this book is without its dust jacket!

Sam writing style is casual and conversational and helps brings the stories to life. I love that this book while being quite compact, contains a lot of information which is presented concisely. The pacing of this book is absolutely fabulous; Sam writes as if she’s telling you a story at a party and I honestly didn’t want to put this book down.

L x


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