Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2 Read online

  Goodnight Stories

  for Rebel Girls 2

  Elena Favilli

  Francesca Cavallo

  Copyright @ 2017 by Timbuktu Labs, Inc.

  Timbuktu supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting indie writers and allowing Timbuktu to continue to publish books for rebel girls wherever they may be.

  Timbuktu Labs and Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls are registered trademarks.

  Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2, and I Am a Rebel Girl: A Journal to start Revolutions, are available for bulk purchase for sale promotions, premiums, fundraising, and educational needs. For details, write to [email protected].

  This is a work of creative nonfiction. It is a collection of heartwarming and thought-provoking bedtime stories inspired by the life and adventures of one hundred heroic women. It is not an encyclopedic account of events and accomplishments of their lives.

  www.rebelgirls.co

  Reprinted in 2019

  10 9 8 7 6 5

  Editorial Direction + Art Direction by Francesca Cavallo and Elena Favilli

  Cover design by Pemberley Pond

  Graphic project by Cori Johnson

  Good Night Stories For Rebel Girls is FSC certified.

  Printed in Italy by Graphicom

  ISBN: 978–0–141–98600–5

  TO THE REBEL GIRLS OF THE WORLD:

  YOU ARE THE PROMISE

  YOU ARE THE FORCE

  DON’T STEP BACK,

  AND EVERYONE

  WILL MOVE FORWARD.

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  AGATHA CHRISTIE ● WRITER

  AISHOLPAN NURGAIV ● EAGLE HUNTRESS

  ALICE BALL ● CHEMIST

  ANDRÉE PEEL ● FRENCH RESISTANCE FIGHTER

  ANGELA MERKEL ● CHANCELLOR

  ANITA GARIBALDI ● REVOLUTIONARY

  ANNE BONNY ● PIRATE

  AUDREY HEPBURN ● ACTRESS

  BEATRICE VIO ● FENCER

  BEATRIX POTTER ● WRITER AND ILLUSTRATOR

  BEYONCÉ ● SINGER, SONGWRITER, AND BUSINESSWOMAN

  BILLIE JEAN KING ● TENNIS PLAYER

  THE BLACK MAMBAS ● RANGERS

  BOUDICCA ● QUEEN

  BRENDA MILNER ● NEUROPSYCHOLOGIST

  BUFFALO CALF ROAD WOMAN ● WARRIOR

  CARMEN AMAYA ● DANCER

  CELIA CRUZ ● SINGER

  CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE ● WRITER

  CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN ● QUEEN

  CLARA ROCKMORE ● MUSICIAN

  CLARA SCHUMANN ● PIANIST AND COMPOSER

  CLEMANTINE WAMARIYA ● STORYTELLER AND ACTIVIST

  CORRIE TEN BOOM ● WATCHMAKER

  ELEANOR ROOSEVELT ● POLITICIAN

  ELLEN DEGENERES ● COMEDIAN AND TV HOST

  FLORENCE CHADWICK ● SWIMMER

  GAE AULENTI ● ARCHITECT AND DESIGNER

  GEORGIA O’KEEFFE ● PAINTER

  GERTY CORI ● BIOCHEMIST

  GIUSI NICOLINI ● MAYOR

  GLORIA STEINEM ● ACTIVIST

  HEDY LAMARR ● ACTRESS AND INVENTOR

  HORTENSIA ● ORATOR

  ISADORA DUNCAN ● DANCER

  J.K. ROWLING ● WRITER

  JEANNE BARET ● HOUSEKEEPER AND EXPLORER

  JOAN BEAUCHAMP PROCTER ● ZOOLOGIST

  JOHANNA NORDBLAD ● ICE DIVER

  KATHERINE JOHNSON, DOROTHY VAUGHAN, AND MARY JACKSON ● COMPUTER SCIENTISTS

  KATIA KRAFFT ● VOLCANOLOGIST

  KHOUDIA DIOP ● MODEL

  LAUREN POTTER ● ACTRESS

  LEYMAH GBOWEE ● PEACE ACTIVIST

  LILIAN BLAND ● AVIATOR

  LORENA OCHOA ● GOLFER

  LOWRI MORGAN ● ULTRAMARATHON RUNNER

  LUO DENGPING ● EXTREME ROCK CLIMBER

  MADAM C. J. WALKER ● BUSINESSWOMAN

  MADAME SAQUI ● ACROBAT

  MADONNA ● SINGER, SONGWRITER, AND BUSINESSWOMAN

  MARIE THARP ● GEOLOGIST

  MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ ● PERFORMANCE ARTIST

  MARTA VIEIRA DA SILVA ● SOCCER PLAYER

  MARY FIELDS ● MAIL CARRIER

  MARY KINGSLEY ● EXPLORER

  MARY SEACOLE ● NURSE

  MARY SHELLEY ● WRITER

  MARYAM MIRZAKHANI ● MATHEMATICIAN

  MATA HARI ● SPY

  MATILDA OF CANOSSA ● FEUDAL RULER

  MERRITT MOORE ● QUANTUM PHYSICIST AND BALLERINA

  MOLLY KELLY, DAISY KADIBILL, AND GRACIE FIELDS ● FREEDOM FIGHTERS

  NADIA COMANECI ● GYMNAST

  NADIA MURAD ● HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST

  NADINE GORDIMER ● WRITER AND ACTIVIST

  NEFERTITI ● QUEEN

  OPRAH WINFREY ● TV HOST, ACTRESS, AND BUSINESSWOMAN

  PAULINE LÉON ● REVOLUTIONARY

  PEGGY GUGGENHEIM ● ART COLLECTOR

  POORNA MALAVATH ● MOUNTAINEER

  QIU JIN ● REVOLUTIONARY

  RACHEL CARSON ● ENVIRONMENTALIST

  RIGOBERTA MENCHÚ TUM ● POLITICAL ACTIVIST

  ROSALIND FRANKLIN ● CHEMIST AND X-RAY CRYSTALLOGRAPHER

  RUBY NELL BRIDGES ● ACTIVIST

  SAMANTHA CRISTOFORETTI ● ASTRONAUT

  SAPPHO ● POET

  SARA SEAGER ● ASTROPHYSICIST

  SARINYA SRISAKUL ● FIREFIGHTER

  SELDA BAĞCAN ● SINGER AND SONGWRITER

  SERAFINA BATTAGLIA ● ANTI-MAFIA WITNESS

  SHAMSIA HASSANI ● GRAFFITI ARTIST

  SIMONE VEIL ● POLITICIAN

  SKY BROWN ● SKATEBOARDER

  SOFIA IONESCU ● NEUROSURGEON

  SOJOURNER TRUTH ● ACTIVIST

  SONIA SOTOMAYOR ● JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT

  SOPHIA LOREN ● ACTRESS

  SOPHIE SCHOLL ● ACTIVIST

  STEFFI GRAF ● TENNIS PLAYER

  TEMPLE GRANDIN ● PROFESSOR OF ANIMAL SCIENCES

  TROOP 6000 ● GIRL SCOUTS

  VALENTINA TERESHKOVA ● COSMONAUT

  VALERIE THOMAS ● ASTRONOMER

  VIOLETA PARRA ● COMPOSER AND MUSICIAN

  VIRGINIA HALL ● SPY

  VIVIAN MAIER ● PHOTOGRAPHER

  WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA ● POET

  YEONMI PARK ● ACTIVIST

  WRITE YOUR STORY

  DRAW YOUR PORTRAIT

  GLOSSARY

  REBELS’ HALL OF FAME

  ILLUSTRATORS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  PREFACE

  Dearest Rebels,

  As you read this letter, the first volume of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls is on the nightstands of about three million people. All over the world, children and grown-ups are talking about their favorite rebel girl. Teachers are designing lessons around these pioneers. Politicians are reading these stories at political conventions, young women are opening the book to cheer up after a bad day, and soon-to-be dads are buying it to welcome their daughters into this world.

  Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls has been translated into more than forty languages, and every day we have the feeling that we hear all of your accents when we receive the messages you send us via email, Facebook, and Twitter. When we see the Instagram pictures of this book in your homes, it’s a lot like looking at a family album. A family made up of people of every religion, every nationality, every color, every age, every kind. A global family whose members come from small villages (like the ones we grew up in) and from big cities.

  One year ago, in our small Los Angeles apartment, we started a little fire. A fire we could gather around to tell each other new kinds of stories.

  You joined us. You invited your friends and brought more firewood. You came bringing your hopes, your frustrations, your courage and your fear, your weakness and your strength. You came to listen, but you also came to speak. The fire got bigger. The family grew.

  And this is what Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2 is about. It’s about the stories you told us by that fire. It’s about the Asian American female firefighter whom Christine told us about in New York City. It’s about the first all-female anti-poaching unit in South Africa, which Rita told us about on Snapchat. It’s about the Irish pilot who built herself a plane. Aidan told us about her at a signing event.

  Some say that stories can’t change the world. But we disagree.

  Time and again, you messaged us to say you had discovered a story in our book, and sometimes the story you mentioned wasn’t there. The fact is that Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls is training hundreds of thousands of people to see stories they couldn’t see before. It’s inspiring them to look for talent where they thought there was none. It’s making it easier to find potential in unpredictable places.

  When we tap into the talent of an entire population—instead of just half of it—endless possibilities open up.

  When we see each other for what we are, free of harmful stereotypes, we create real progress.

  When we recognize oppression and take action to end it, we all become stronger.

  As you rest your head on your pillow after reading one or three of these stories—whether it’s after an exhausting day of play or a long day at work, whether you’re in Cape Town or
Aotearoa, whether someone read you the story or you read it by yourself—know that you’ve just sat by a fire with hundreds of thousands of fellow rebels who, just like you, are on a journey.

  The Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls series is a small part of a conversation that is bigger than each of us. Bigger than our individual hopes. Certainly bigger than our fears.

  Thank you for sitting with us by this fire.

  Now let’s get started.

  Francesca Cavallo

  Elena Favilli

  AGATHA CHRISTIE

  WRITER

  Once upon a time, there was a girl who loved to write. Poems, love stories, mysteries, letters—she tried them all. Agatha wanted to be a professional writer more than anything. She talked about her dream with her dog, George Washington, during their daily walks. Each new place she and George visited, Agatha looked at as a setting for a story, and every time she met someone, she wondered if that person could be one of her characters.

  Agatha sent her stories to magazines but got turned down. The rejection letters kept piling up, but Agatha didn’t let that stop her. She was an avid reader and especially loved murder mysteries.

  So she wrote her own detective novel.

  The Mysterious Affair at Styles featured Hercule Poirot, a Belgian detective with a glorious mustache. Many publishers turned down Agatha’s manuscript, but finally one said yes.

  When the novel was published, it was a huge success and marked the beginning of an unbelievable career. Agatha Christie’s books have sold more than two billion copies and have been translated into over a hundred different languages, making her the best-selling novelist of all time.

  Hercule Poirot with his pointy mustache and Miss Marple with her cute hats became two of the most popular literary detectives ever. They appeared in TV shows and movies, and kept millions of people guessing as they figured out whodunnit.

  Through her remarkable career, Agatha wrote sixty-six detective novels, fourteen short story collections, and the world’s longest-running play, The Mousetrap.

  SEPTEMBER 15, 1890 – JANUARY 12, 1976

  UNITED KINGDOM

  ILLUSTRATION BY

  GIULIA TOMAI

  “THE BEST TIME TO PLAN A BOOK IS WHILE YOU’RE DOING THE DISHES.”

  – AGATHA CHRISTIE

  AISHOLPAN NURGAIV

  EAGLE HUNTRESS

  Once there was a thirteen-year-old girl named Aisholpan who lived in the icy-cold Altai Mountains. For seven generations, the men in her tribe had hunted with golden eagles to provide their families with food and fur.

  Golden eagles are big, fierce creatures with sharp claws and curved beaks that can be extremely dangerous. But to Aisholpan, they were simply beautiful. She longed to train an eagle of her own, so one day she said to her father, “Dad, I know that no girls have ever done this, but if you teach me, I’ll be good.” Her father, who was a great eagle hunter, paused to think. Then he said, “You are strong. You are not afraid. You can do it.”

  Her heart sang with joy.

  Aisholpan and her dad rode their horses high into the snowy mountains. Finding an eaglet to train wasn’t easy. Aisholpan reached a nest with a rope tied around her waist, trying not to slip on the sharp rocks. In the nest, she found a tiny golden eagle, all alone.

  She covered the bird’s head with a blanket to calm her down, then brought her home. Aisholpan sang and told stories so that the eaglet would recognize her voice. She fed her small chunks of meat and taught her how to land on her glove. “I treat her with respect, because if she trusts me, she won’t fly away. We will be a team for a few years. Then I’ll return her to the wild. The circle of life must continue.”

  Aisholpan became the first woman to enter the Golden Eagle competition in Ölgii, Mongolia. After her, three more girls started training to become eagle hunters.

  BORN 2003

  MONGOLIA

  ILLUSTRATION BY

  SALLY NIXON

  “I PLAN TO TEACH MY YOUNGER SISTER EAGLE HUNTING.”

  – AISHOLPAN NURGAIV

  ALICE BALL

  CHEMIST

  Once upon a time, there was no cure for leprosy, a disease that attacks the body and can leave victims terribly disfigured. Because there was no treatment and people believed leprosy was very contagious, sufferers used to be isolated in leper colonies with nothing to do but wait for death—or for a cure to be found.

  In search of that cure, an incredibly talented young Hawaiian chemist called Alice Ball was studying the properties of an oil extracted from the chaulmoogra tree. This oil was used in traditional Chinese and Indian medicine to treat skin diseases, and it also had been used for leprosy, with mixed results: sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t.

  “Why?” was Alice’s burning question. “Why doesn’t it work every time?”

  She teamed up with an assistant surgeon at a Honolulu hospital to try to find the answer to that question. She developed a way to separate out the active elements of chaulmoogra oil and created a new extract that could be injected directly into a patient’s bloodstream—with amazing results.

  Unfortunately, Alice died before she was able to publish her findings. So the University of Hawaii did it for her—without giving her credit! The president of the university even called the extraction technique the Dean Method, as if he had invented it himself.

  Many years later, Alice Ball’s amazing contribution was finally recognized. Now, every four years on February 29, Hawaii celebrates Alice Ball Day.

  Alice was the first African American and the first woman to graduate from the University of Hawaii.

  JULY 24, 1892 – DECEMBER 31, 1916

  UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  ILLUSTRATION BY

  MARTINA PAUKOVA

  ANDRÉE PEEL

  FRENCH RESISTANCE FIGHTER

  Once upon a time, there was a young woman who ran a beauty parlor. Andrée was smart and stylish, and she always had a bright smile for her customers. “ Bonjour, madame, ” she would call out. “How would you like your hair cut today?”

  Then the Second World War broke out, and everything changed.

  When Hitler invaded her country, Andrée joined the French Resistance, a network of ordinary people who worked in secret against the Nazis. She helped distribute underground newspapers to other members of the Resistance. It was risky and dangerous work. Andrée was soon promoted to sergeant and given the code name Agent Rose.

  Many times she risked her life. She would sneak out at night and line up a row of flaming torches to signal to Allied planes as they crossed enemy lines. The pilots looked for these bright spots and knew that they could land safely there, thanks to Agent Rose. She helped save over a hundred British pilots from being captured by the Nazis before she herself was captured and sent to a concentration camp.

  Sick, starving, and dressed in blue-and-white-striped pajamas, Andrée was lined up with other prisoners in front of a firing squad, about to be shot, when Allied troops arrived and saved them.

  Andrée was hailed as a hero. The president of the United States and the British prime minister both sent her letters to thank her for everything she had done. She went on to live a long life—but she always kept a scrap of that blue-and-white material to remind her of those terrible days, and to confirm that, as she said, “Miracles do exist.”

  FEBRUARY 3, 1905 – MARCH 5, 2010

  FRANCE

  ILLUSTRATION BY

  ZOSIA DZIERZAWSKA

  “I WAS DESTINED ALWAYS TO BE A FIGHTER.”

  – ANDRÉE PEEL

  ANGELA MERKEL

  CHANCELLOR

  Once upon a time, in Templin, Germany, there lived a seven-year-old girl called Angela. One Sunday, she was listening to her father’s sermon in church when her mother started to cry.

  “What’s the matter?” Angela asked.

  “They are going to build a wall,” her mother said. “They want to seal off the border between East Germany and West Germany.”

  Angela was stunned. “Why would they build a wall?” she thought. “People should be free to go wherever they like.” Not only would East Germans be stopped from going to the West, but they would be barred from listening to the news coming from the other side.