Equality Girls & the Purple Reflecto-Ray, by Aya de Leon

Equality Girls & the Purple Reflecto-Ray, by Aya de Leon (published by the author, May 2020) is a really fun chapter book full of radical girl power!

Daniela's an ordinary fourth-grader, disappointed that budget cuts means there's no coach for her soccer team.  Then there's a freak accident, involving her dog and her mom's top secret science experiment.   She doesn't think much about it, but when she and her friends ask if they can play soccer with two 7th grade boys, and are met with sexist stereotypes, she becomes furiously angry, and purple beams shoot out from her eyes!

When the boys get hit by them, suddenly they are embodying the very stereotypes they'd taunted the girls with--one tries to use flowers as makeup to make himself pretty, and the other becomes obsessed with  a little cat.  The effect has worn off the next day, and the girls think it's maybe a one time thing, until Daniela gets angry again at the man presenting sexist puppet show at school.  Once more the purple beams flash out, and once more their target starts acting out the stereotype, begging to be saved from the fierce girls!

Now Daniela and her friends know what she can do, they decide to tackle the sexist in chief, the president of the United States, who's coming to town to judge a beauty pageant.  He's not named, but he certainly evokes our current president (here's the back cover, that makes that clear!).  And it's lovely to see him get his comeuppance for his sexism, when he gets zapped and wants to take part in the pageant himself, wearing his own bikini bottoms and proclaiming that he's the loveliest of all.

It might seem heavy handed and didactic, but it's actually a lot of fun, and I chuckled out loud several times (kids will probably find it even more entertaining!)  The sci fi powers are cool, though little effort is made to explain them, and though there's not a lot of page time for characterization, Daniela and her diverse group of friends manage to be believable.   And as well as the more egregious examples of sexism, the girls talk to each other about the issue, in healthy ways, such as this conversation:

“What is beauty anyway?” Malaya asked. The crew walked past a pair of
girls taking pictures, both of them wearing “Miss Tween” T-shirts.
“I think it’s just an idea somebody made up to get girls to worry about
things that don’t really matter,” Daniela said.
“But sometimes I like putting on fancy clothes and enjoying how I look,”
Jalisse said.
“That’s different,” Malaya said. “That’s about enjoying fashion and color
and style. There’s so much creativity in that. You sew a lot of your own clothes.
It’s not about competing with other girls for who some guy thinks is prettiest.” 

So in short, I enjoyed it lots, and if I had a kid 7-9 years old on hand, I'd certainly offer it to them. And I'd certainly enjoy reading more adventures of the four equality girls!

disclaimer: e-arc received from the author's publicist.