At last, girls are at the centre of the action in books and films

Amanda Craig interviews Allan Boroughs in The Telegraph newspaper on 1st Feb 2014. Female characters in adventure stories like The Hunger Games no longer obey the sexist stereotype. The heroine is central, and her 'quest’ is not to find love, but to save the world

Amanda Craig interviews Allan Boroughs in The Telegraph newspaper on 1st Feb 2014.

Click here to read the complete story on  The Telegraph website. 

Female characters in adventure stories like The Hunger Games no longer obey the sexist stereotype. The heroine is central, and her ‘quest’ is not to find love, but to save the world

The Tolkien franchise creaked into action recently with the second instalment of The Hobbit, but a very different kind of adventure is gaining ground. Instead of the questing hero or band of brothers, the questing heroine is emerging as the big new thing in popular culture. From The Hunger Games to Disney’s Frozen to Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, the female protagonist on a mission has become the defining feature of the millennial adventure story.

Nor is this trend confined to film. Last month saw the publication by Macmillan of Ironheart, Allan Buroughs’s thrillingly plotted adventure story about a girl searching for her lost father in post-apocalyptic Siberia. Next month, J K Rowling’s first publisher, Barry Cunningham, brings out Philip Webb’s dystopian thriller, Where the Rock Splits the Sky (Chicken House). Later this year sees the conclusion to Moira Young’s Dust Lands trilogy, a kind of Mad Max for girls, whose first instalment, Blood Red Road, won the 2011 Costa Prize for children’s literature.

Click here to read the complete story on  The Telegraph website.