Literature about Young Girl Heroes Today

ended

The LYGHT (Literature about Young Girl Heroes Today) project was born like a response to the under-representation of girls in youth literature. Nowadays there are changes in family patterns, living spaces, and situations in life; so female role models have also changed. Older, classic youth books have also reinforced the stereotype that is extremely important that besides classical and traditional stories readers should meet tales and stories that are closer to present life, and girls can be positive characters in many different ways: they can be dominant, independent, competitive, able to lead others, good at mathematics and science, and can be interested in sport, business and politics. It is important that they should be able to define themselves and their roles, make their future plans and decide what they want to become. With the help of the selected literary works we would like to show that everyone has the right and the possibility to govern their own lives and take control of their own destiny. The under-representation of girls in youth literature and the entrenched stereotypes of sexual identity automatically trigger the social and literary needs of young people to meet more versatile and more types of characters. This is the aim of LYGHT project. We have chosen 9 high-quality literary works about young girl heroes, all of them written in lesser used languages: Hungarian, Finnish, Norwegian, and Romanian, and we intend to translate them to German, English, French, Italian and Hungarian. This way, we can contribute to the translation and promotion of literature for young people written in lesser-used languages, and to encourage their circulation in Europe and outside Europe. Also, through our books translated to German, English, French, and Italian, published in e-book format, we can reach new audiences, worldwide. By our choice of topic, the focus on young female characters in youth literature, we are fostering gender equality, and non-discrimination.