Today I have a post up on my company’s blog, PhilanthroPost, about how inspiring I found Tamora Pierce’s books when I was growing up. I’d very much appreciate it if you’d drop past the blog to read it, and maybe leave a comment or a like! Here’s the beginning of the post:
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“Girls are 50% of the population. We deserve to represent 50% of the heroes.”
– Tamora Pierce
Sometimes the people who inspire us never existed. And sometimes it’s the people who created those fictional characters who furnish the inspiration.
Tamora Pierce is an author of young adult fantasy novels, and at the risk of sounding like I’m exaggerating, I can tell you that she changed my life. Tamora Pierce writes books about strong women, or “sheroes.”
When Pierce was starting out in writing, there was (and to some extent, still is) a belief that books about boys were more marketable. The theory goes that young adult girls will read stories about male heroes, but young adult boys won’t read about female leads—write about a boy and you have twice the market, meaning there weren’t as many stories about heroic girls, and not as many role-models for girls to read about.
But almost thirty years ago, Pierce wrote Song of the Lioness…
Read the rest of the story on PhilanthroPost!
This is a great post that shows what a difference an author can make in a reader’s life. I personally have worked with many inspirational women in my profession and I try to be a mentor to younger ones coming up in my field who also want to pursue the same type of career. It’s important to help each other.