Être

This guidance-based site offers a great dose of positivity. Être presents a live-your-best-life approach to creativity, volunteering, and a number of other pursuits in sections to help girls be informed, brave, smart, charitable, happy, strong, connected, wise, innovative, and well-read. Girls are encouraged to be inquisitive, kind, engaged, and happy -- things parents can probably agree are good goals. But some may be less thrilled with the links to corporate partner sites kids will see -- in addition to nonprofit research organizations, the site contains links to companies like a subscription-based professional networking service, Huffington Post, which includes items on sex, crime, and other topics, and a tech start-up from the founder of Huffington Post.

Generally, the site's content is well-written and extremely upbeat; girls are, for example, told to be fearless, and they are given examples of brave entrepreneurs and other role models. Some sections offer links to resource sites that provide additional background and information on subjects. Some pages also feature a takeaway thought to summarize what girls have read. But the site unfortunately doesn't sport a lot of bells and whistles. The images and design aren't unattractive, and an attempt has been made to break up the text with different font sizes and colors, but girls won't find a lot of interactive elements that would engage them on a deeper level. If site visitors are OK with a fair amount of reading, though, they should enjoy scrolling through the sections. Girls may not repeatedly visit Être for information -- it doesn't seem like new items are posted daily or with any regular frequency, but the site can still serve as a solid resource when they need a dose of inspiration.