Battling in All Her Finery: Historical Accounts of Otherworldly Women Leaders Edited by Dawn Vogel and Jeremy Zimmerman

Dawn: I’m both an author and an editor, but some of the things that I write and edit really aren’t geared toward children. I’m also an aunt to two nieces and two nephews by blood, three nieces and three nephews by marriage, and a handful of other unofficial nieces and nephews through friendships. When we planned out our fifth anthology, Battling in All Her Finery: Historical Accounts of Otherworldly Women Leaders, we wanted to edit a book that we could share with our nieces, nephews, and other kids looking for female role models.

And we’ve got a wide array of role models in this anthology. We’ve got women travelling the stars, the cities, and other dimensions. We’ve got women of different races, both human and alien. We’ve got those who were born into leadership, as well as those who had to fight to reach their position of power. We’ve got young girls and old women. We’ve got leaders with disabilities, whether they be physical or mental. While we don’t have a story that represents every potential demographic, we’ve got a few stories featuring protagonists who are nebulous enough to be adopted by any girl or woman looking for a role model who is like them.

We’ve made sure to keep the swearing to a minimum, the violence non-graphic, and the sexual situations off camera, making this an anthology that you can share with kids. I’m always a strong proponent of parents reading things they want to share with their kids first if they’re not entirely certain of the appropriateness of those books or stories, and I encourage parents and other adult friends to children to read the stories themselves first, to determine if they’re too violent or too scary for the kids in question. Because it’s one thing for me to say “sure, this is basically PG with one or two PG-13 bits,” but another thing entirely for a parent to decide if it’s the right kind of PG or PG-13 for their kids.

Battling in All Her Finery is meant to be a book to be shared amongst generations, and we hope that it will be enjoyed by all of them!