Once upon a time, an app set out to change the world by reinventing the fairy tale.

“We no longer have the princess who is waiting to be rescued by the prince,” says Rebel Girls CEO Jes Wolfe, “but we do still have the princess.”

The inspiring audio stories in her company’s app, Rebel Girls, celebrate women and girls who are shaping the world. Here, kids can learn about famous figures past and present (like Frida Kahlo, Olivia Rodrigo, and Jane Goodall) as well as lesser-known changemakers like math prodigy Esther Okade and free climber Luo Dengping.

The Rebel Girls app is based on a series of books, the first of which came out in 2016 “because only 19 percent of children’s books had a female character with any kind of agency at all,” Wolfe says.

While female heroes may be more common now, she says, they’re often treated differently than their male counterparts. “Usually, if it’s a female protagonist, she uses magic to save the day, whereas a male protagonist uses STEM skills or strength,” Wolfe says.

The message is undermining at best. “You’re telling girls they have to posses this impossible thing in order to win,” she says.

Writers Francesca Cavallo and Elena Favilli launched the 2016 children’s book Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls as a Kickstarter project to push back against that narrative. It became one of the most successful publishing campaigns in Kickstarter history.

The Rebel Girls app deepens the book’s stories by using immersive audio, exclusive interviews, and original illustrations from female and nonbinary artists. Stories in the app are more expansive than those in print; while the book blurbs are around 300 words, the audio versions come closer to 2,000. The app won an Apple Design Award for Social Impact in 2022.

“Rebel Girls exists because there is a gap in the market for girls through every lens that you can imagine,” Wolfe says.

“There have always been women out there doing incredible things, but there certainly wasn’t a lot of visibility,” says legendary rocker Joan Jett. “We are still working on that today.”

Jett was among the 100 women featured in the first Rebel Girls book. “I was honored, but I didn’t even know until my goddaughters ended up with it,” she says.

Since her initial inclusion, she’s gone on to collaborate closely with the project—including writing the introduction to the book Rebel Girls Rock: 25 Tales of Women in Music. (Audio versions of some of those stories are available in the app, which you can access by scanning a QR code in the book.)

By combining audio, visual, and written elements, stories in the Rebel Girls app bring together an interesting mix of artists, Wolfe says. Jett’s story, for example, is read by musician Donita Sparks, cofounder of the all-female band L7, while Jett narrates the story of Kathleen Hanna, pioneer of punk’s riot grrrl movement.

You can see a similar interchange in the 2023 Webby Award–winning story of Isabella Springmühl, a Guatemalan fashion designer who has Down syndrome. The accompanying illustration is based on Springmühl’s own clothing designs, and her story is read by actor Jamie Brewer, who was the first model with Down syndrome to walk the runway at New York Fashion Week.

“We had a little girl who has Down syndrome write in, saying how much it meant to her to hear someone who sounded like her,” Wolfe says. “I can’t stress enough that all kids need to see the vast world they can be a part of.”

However, woven into the app’s stories are the more difficult parts of these women’s journeys too.

“These are real women and they have real-life stories, which means some parts of that can be rough,” Wolfe says. “There’s a sensitivity to how we contextualize that for 6-to-12-year-olds in a way that doesn’t talk down to them but treats them like thinking humans. Showcasing the imperfection is important as well.”

After skiing down the southeast ridge of Mount Everest in 2006, Kit DesLauriers became the first person in history to scale and ski the Seven Summits—the highest peak on each continent.

DesLauriers was first featured in the app in 2021, and she quickly became a fan. Her two teenage daughters “have been raised on Rebel Girls,” she says. “They were younger when I was first included, and I don’t think they totally grasped it. They just knew me as their mom.”

That changed as her daughters got older.

“I remember them coming home from middle school and saying, ‘Did you actually ski Everest? Because my classmates are saying that and they’re calling you a badass.’”

For DesLauriers, the range of women and girls profiled in the app is key.

“That’s something I love about the stories—the juxtaposition of those who are well known with those who are not. There are ancient Egyptian rulers and 16-year-old Black changemakers,” she says.

Seeing that range is profound, says DesLauriers, “even for my adventurous girls, who were 7 and 8 when we trekked to Everest base camp as a family. Rebel Girls is another input for them. It’s not just their mum who is out there making history. It’s all sorts of women.”