| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Growing Girls: The Natural Origins of Girls' Organizations in America. By Susan A. Miller. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007. xii, 270 pp. Cloth, $68.00, ISBN 978-0-8135-4063-4. Paper, $23.95, ISBN 978-0-8135-4064-1.)

In recent years, a burgeoning literature on the history of childhood has expanded in many directions. Paralleling the contemporary interest in girls, evidenced by best sellers such as Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia (1994) and Rachel Simmons's Odd Girl Out (2002), scholars have approached from a number of angles what was known at the turn of the last century as "the girl problem." Some have focused on discourse about youth and gender, while others have used a variety of methodologies and sources to explore girls' lived experiences. Susan A. Miller's book falls into the former category, as girls themselves make only rare appearances in the book. Instead, Miller analyzes the rhetoric surrounding girls' organizations, particularly the summer camps run by the Camp Fire Girls, Girl Scouts, and Girl Pioneers. She argues that the "constellation of 'natural' activities offered by girls' organizations" during the first decades of the twentieth century reveal a great deal about the fears and hopes attached to modernizing American girlhood (p. 3).

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