When Women Were Dragons (2022) by Kelly Barnhill is a fabulous and moving coming-of-age novel…with dragons! We watch pre-teen Alex Green grow up through her experience with and repercussions of the mass dragoning of over 100,000 women in 1955. Alex’s aunt Mae turns into a dragon while her mother does not, making her young dragon obsessed cousin Beatrice become her sister. The family never speaks of the aunt again-as though she never existed. While Alex faces the reality of women choosing to take up space and have power with unlimited prospects versus remaining ‘small’ in both size and life limitations, she must also deal with the idea of how and why some women become dragons. And why the world pretends it is not happening.
If you enjoy the thought-provoking and moving female story in When Women Were Dragons, also try The Power by Naomi Alderman (2017) and The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman by Molly Lynch (2023)