The eleven contributors to The Girl's Own explore British and American Victorian representations of the adolescent girl by drawing on such contemporary sources as conduct books, housekeeping manuals, periodicals, biographies, photographs, paintings, and educational treatises. The institutions, practices, and literatures discussed reveal the ways in which the Girl expressed her independence, as well as the ways in which she was presented and controlled. As the contributors note, nineteenth-century visions of girlhood were extremely ambiguous. The adolescent girl was a fascinating and troubling figure to Victorian commentators, especially in debates surrounding female sexuality and behavior. The Girl's Own combines literary and cultural history in its discussion of both British and American texts and practices. Among the topics addressed are the nineteenth-century attempt to link morality and diet; the making of heroines in biographies for girls; Lewis Carroll's and John Millais's iconographies of girlhood in, respectively, their photographs and paintings; genre fiction for and by girls; and the effort to reincorporate teenage unwed mothers into the domestic life of Victorian America.

The Girl’s Own Paper, founded in 1880, both shaped and reflected tensions between traditional domestic ideologies of the period and New Woman values in the context of the figure of the New Girl. These selections from the journal demonstrate the efforts of its publisher (the Religious Tract Society) to combat the negative moral influence of sensational popular literature while at the same time addressing the desires of its audience for exciting reading material and information about topics mothers could not or would not discuss. Selected fiction gives a rich sense of the conventions and the domestic ideology of the time; the nonfiction prose ranges from essays on conduct and household management to articles on new opportunities in education and work.

A colorful chronicle of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, as recalled by the very women and men who were a part of it. From Philip K. Wrigley, the chewing-gum mogul who had the idea for the league, to "Gabby" Ziegler, captain of the Grand Rapids Chicks, Girls of the Summer is about dreams and about making those dreams come true.

A delightful dip into the pages of the popular magazine for girls that originally aimed to help to train them in moral and domestic virtues.

Growing up, Pat Brown had two dreams: to play baseball and to attend college. She was told she couldn't play baseball because she was a girl and couldn't attend college because she had no money, but in spite of the obstacles, she achieved both of these dreams, playing for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1950 and 1951 and going on to attend college. She is among the few women professional baseball players to be included into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. "As the only former AAGPBL player to have written about the League," Brown says, "I feel like I have finally pitched my no hit game." This is a memoir of playing baseball on the sandlot, discovering and playing in the AAGPBL, and playing basketball in college. Brown shares her thoughts on the League's history, including what Philip K. Wrigley sought to do by creating the AAGPBL, what happened after Wrigley left to give more attention to the Chicago Cubs, and why the League ended. She also considers the future for women's professional baseball. Interviews with such former AAGPBL players as Helen Hannah Campbell, Patricia "Pat" Courtney, Madeline "Maddy" English, Lenora "Smokey" Mandella, Jacqueline "Jackie" Matson, Jane Moffet, Mary "Sis" Moore, and Janet "Pee Wee" Wiley are included.

After returning to Fairyland, September discovers that her stolen shadow has become the Hollow Queen, the new ruler of Fairyland Below, who is stealing the magic and shadows from Fairyland folk and refusing to give them back.