Book Review: Lilla Feminist-boken (The Little Feminist Book)

Lilla Feminist-boken (The Little Feminist Book) by Sassa Buregren

Category: Children’s Non-fiction (ages 9-12 I would think)

Challenges: Women Unbound

Synopsis: The book features ten year old Ebba who discovers that the world isn’t as equal as she thought.

My Thoughts: Some days everything comes together. I was at the library the other day and wandering the shelves I came across this little gem. It is geared at children but it is a fantastic little book, especially considering that I have been hip deep in feminism for my thesis lately.

The book starts with Ebba leafing through the paper to get to the comics, instead she comes across this picture. Ebba wonders why it is titled “The Worlds Most Powerful Men”. What about women. This leads to a great deal of questioning by Ebba and her friends. I loved how the book didn’t focus on how things should be more equal for women but also how men (and boys) should be allowed to do what they want too. That men shouldn’t be penalised for being home with their children. How we shouldn’t have jobs that are male or female.

The book is a nice mixture between history, biography and call to action. It tells this story of some of the most important figures in the feminist movement in the world in general and Sweden in particular. It explains Mary Wollstonecraft’s arguments along with Simone de Beauvoir’s. And it does so it a way that children could understand without being patronising. As I have been reading extracts from both A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and The Second Sex lately I felt that it was a very accurate summation of the different authors arguments.

The book is a lovely little introduction to what feminism is, why it is important and where it started and where it is going. It shows how far we have come and how far we have yet to go. It mixes the history and philosophy with the story about Ebba and her friends and their awakening to the issues of feminism. I felt that this made the book more accessible. I also liked how it discussed many of the issues involved in feminism without ever sounding heavy handed. I really want to find something similar in English to send to my little cousins and honorary niece. Although Ebba’s story is fiction this is firmly a non-fiction book, and thus a perfect addition to the Women Unbound Non-Fiction requirement.

I have not been able to find this book in translation unfortunately

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