A Girl Can Build Anything

Imagination, ingenuity, and innovation come together in this ode to the building power of girls.

A sextet of girls dream, design, tinker, and fix as their skills expand. With the help of female-presenting grown-ups, the girls take up drills and drivers, paintbrushes, and glue to find ways to help

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their community, such as fixing up a derelict playground. Sometimes things don’t go as planned. That’s when the girls collectively take a breath and come up with new ideas to solve their design challenges. As the girls grow into women, they take on bigger projects, culminating in a multistory building. Staccato phrases accumulate, building to the repeated refrain, “A girl can build many things. / A girl can build anything.” The text maintains a determinedly motivational tone that leads to an unsurprisingly empowering ending. The brightly colored illustrations provide a bit of a throughline to tie this poem together as the girls grow from childhood to adulthood. Collage elements, including graph paper, measuring tape, and textured papers, draw the eye. The girls are diverse in skin color and hair color and texture. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A pleasant, confidence-building poem. (Picture book. 3-7)

-Kirkus Review

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