Girls to the Rescue is a series created in the 1990s by Bruce Lansky. While the genres of the stories vary from traditional fables to Twice Told Tales to realistic fiction, the focus on the heroines and their competence remain the same. Each book consists of multiple stories by different authors.
Girls to the Rescue provides examples of:
- Adaptational Heroism: Malik from "Chardae's Thousand and One Nights" adored his original wife (who died of illness, not execution) and wants the best for his people. His wives before Chardae also present him with some reason to be offended (rather than him executing them preemptively) and instead of executing them, he simply divorces them (which admittedly leaves them unable to remarry).
- Chekhov's Gun: In "Mai's Magic", the spicy peppers Mai's father uses when cooking (and their painful effect on eyes if even the residue touches them) comes up before Mai uses them to prove who stole the money.
- Curtain Clothing: While the Fairy Godmother is on vacation, her assistant receives a visit from Cinderella, who begs for help attending a ball. After giving her the bad news, the assistant tells her that she should go to the ball regardless of whether she can obtain magical help if it's important to her. Ella asks how she's supposed to attend without formal clothes, and the assistant asks if her stepfamily has any silk sheets or velvet curtains.
- Divide and Conquer: The queen in "For the Love of Sunny" gives an Engagement Challenge to the heroine to slay a dragon and a troll and to answer three questions before she can marry her son. The heroine deals with the first part by telling the dragon and the troll falsehoods that pit them against each other.
- Face Your Fears: In "Hidden Courage", Kirsten, a girl afraid of horses and especially her uncle's mare, Thunder, has to take charge of the situation when a sled crash leaves her cousin injured and Thunder so spooked she comes close to trampling him.
- Hear Me the Money: "Sarah's Pickle Jar", adapted from a folktale, tells about a poor man who gets taken to court by a baker who wants money for his having sniffed the aromas of his goods. Sarah brings a jar of money she has saved...and shakes it, saying that she has paid the baker in full.
- Hunter of Monsters: Kimi from "Kimi Meets the Ogre" bluffs the ogre by addressing him casually as a small forest spirit and claiming she's bringing lunch to her brother, who's on the hunt for a ferocious, gigantic ogre. She even brings her family's heirloom samurai sword and claims it's just a kitchen knife; Taro's ogre-killing sword is much bigger and sharper. This bluff scares the ogre into relocating.
- Masquerading As the Unseen: In "The Royal Joust", Lindsey uses her injured brother's armor and stallion to pose as him and win the jousting tournament. Her refusal to lift her visor during the event does draw considerable attention and disapproval, but nobody actually makes her take it off.
- Mischief-Making Monkey: Lek's pet monkey in "Mai's Magic" serves as his partner in crime. It's able to steal and plant items for him. However, the story presents Lek as the real problem; the end shows that Mai and her family took in the monkey for a while while Lek served time in jail for his scam.
- Poor Communication Kills: Keesha captures a rat and brings it to class to show the mayor the problem with her tenement. However, the mayor doesn't listen to her explanation and by the time she tells him not to take the lid off, it's too late. This raises a ruckus as the rat runs around the room and even chases some of the officials who try to corner it before ultimately escaping out a window.
- Scary Stinging Swarm: Invoked in "Kamila and the Thieves." Having successfully earned quite a lot of money for her family, partially by scamming a gang of thieves, Kamila tricks the thieves into thinking a hornet's nest in the tree is the money bag. She notes with satisfaction that the scheme killed two birds with one stone.
- Second Love:
- Sultan Malik in "Chardae's Thousand And One Nights" believes he can never love again after his first wife, Kalila, dies of illness. Initially he only marries Chardae because as king he's expected to produce an heir to rule well once he's gone. However, after Chardae has completed her Scheherezade Gambit, enough time has passed that Malik has come to love her after all.
- Subverted in "Savannah's Piglets". A widower moves to town with the woman he has been seeing, believing he'll never have another chance at love out in the wilds. The woman, Billie, proves to be a Gold Digger who makes him miserable. Ultimately, he has enough and returns to the farm to be with his daughter.
- Slave to PR: In "Save Wellington Woods", a class successfully preserves their local forest with a demonstration. Ultimately, they find out that Mr. Dubois, who wanted to raze the woods, intends to run for office and discontinued his building plans just to avoid the negative publicity ignoring the protest would have caused.
- Staging the Eavesdrop: Knowing that the thieves she scammed into digging up the land for her are listening, Kamila tells her husband that she hid the money bag in the tree for safekeeping.
- These Questions Three...: In "For the Love of Sunny", Prince Sean's mother demands that the princess answer three questions before she will consent to the marriage. The princess wonders how she'll pass the test without even knowing what the questions will be. Ultimately, she gets around it by behaving bizarrely once she enters the throne room and taking the chancellor's responses to the insanity as the three questions.
- Thieving Pet: Lek's pet monkey in "Mai's Magic" helps him with his thefts, and it actually gets into Mai and her father's house to steal everyone's money, rather than its master.
- We Need a Distraction:
- In "Skateboard Rosie and the Soda Kids", Rosie distracts a pair of ferocious pit bulls long enough to get her brother behind a fence by yelling and then throwing a skateboard down an alley.
- In "Young Maid Marian and Her Amazing, Astounding Pig", Marian sets up the pig as a fortune-teller to distract the Sheriff of Nottingham's tax men while Robin sneaks the taxes back out of their cart.
- You Dirty Rat!: "Keesha and the Rats" pits a young girl against the bureaucracy of Harlem when she makes up her mind to do something about the rats infesting her tenement. After being given the runaround by the Director of Housing, she captures a rat to show to the mayor while he's making an appearance at her school. Chaos ensues, but she ultimately gets her point across.
