Alanna: The First Adventure
by Tamora Pierce
Way back when, in the worlds of dragons and knights, girls weren’t allowed to train and become knights. One little girl, Alanna, wants nothing more than to fight and defend her realm. Unfortunately, her family is sending her to study the magical arts instead. This sounds like an ordinary premise to a middle-grade series, a thinly veiled attempt to show young girls they can be anything they want to be when they grow up.
This is not an ordinary book, nor is it solely for pre-teens. The story is imaginative, and the language doesn’t pander to young readers. Alanna is stubborn, determined, but kind and without attitude, which is refreshing for this genre. She is easy to root for, as are the supporting characters, from knights-in-training to princes to thieves.
The “Alanna books,” as they’re described in my household, are a staple in any young girl’s literary path to maturity. Tamora Pierce has created an absorbing world with irresistible characters. Feminism was never a cornerstone of my adolescence, and I still loved the Alanna books more than life itself. I can only imagine how much more I would have treasured them if I’d identified with the gender discrimination Alanna faces.
If you like to root for the underdog, if you feel a kindred connection to women empowerment stories, if you are drawn to the Middle Ages fantasy world, if you enjoy adventure and suspense and secrets and magic and--
Just read the Alanna books. My copies are worn, torn, and tattered. I first read them when I was Alanna’s age, and I’ve probably read each of them thirty times over the past fifteen years. Of all the books of my pre-teen years, these are the most memorable.
The books are sold separately, and the only disappointment is the redone cover illustrations in the re-released versions. My copies have the original drawings (seen in my reviews) of the mass market paperbacks published in the 1980s. You can try to find them, and you can also buy all four books together in an Amazon set.
Finished? Head to the bookstore to read In the Hand of the Goddess (reviewed here on The Rag).
This is not an ordinary book, nor is it solely for pre-teens. The story is imaginative, and the language doesn’t pander to young readers. Alanna is stubborn, determined, but kind and without attitude, which is refreshing for this genre. She is easy to root for, as are the supporting characters, from knights-in-training to princes to thieves.
The “Alanna books,” as they’re described in my household, are a staple in any young girl’s literary path to maturity. Tamora Pierce has created an absorbing world with irresistible characters. Feminism was never a cornerstone of my adolescence, and I still loved the Alanna books more than life itself. I can only imagine how much more I would have treasured them if I’d identified with the gender discrimination Alanna faces.
If you like to root for the underdog, if you feel a kindred connection to women empowerment stories, if you are drawn to the Middle Ages fantasy world, if you enjoy adventure and suspense and secrets and magic and--
Just read the Alanna books. My copies are worn, torn, and tattered. I first read them when I was Alanna’s age, and I’ve probably read each of them thirty times over the past fifteen years. Of all the books of my pre-teen years, these are the most memorable.
The books are sold separately, and the only disappointment is the redone cover illustrations in the re-released versions. My copies have the original drawings (seen in my reviews) of the mass market paperbacks published in the 1980s. You can try to find them, and you can also buy all four books together in an Amazon set.
Finished? Head to the bookstore to read In the Hand of the Goddess (reviewed here on The Rag).