I love reading the Tiffany Aching books to my kid. A young-adult series written by Terry Pratchett, we follow the early life of Tiffany Aching as she learns how to be a smart, helpful, independent woman (called a “witch”). The series starts when she’s nine, and ends when she’s stepping fully into adulthood.
Tiffany is smart, fierce, brave, dumb, and scared. She makes mistakes, but demands to clean up her own messes. She almost always solves problems in ways you don’t expect, in ways that aren’t so much tricksey, but her not bowing to narrative convention or expectations—her making the world the way it should be.
I couldn’t recommend this series without also mentioning the Nac Mac Feegles, little blue fairy folk with Scottish accents (written phonetically). They drink, fight, and steal, but are immensely loyal to Tiffany and have a very strict moral code for their own definition of morals. Their leader, Rob Anybody, and his brother Daft Wullie, have lead to many shared guffaws with my kid.
Pick up these books wherever books are picked up.
