Mary Earps is “drawn to people with a rebellious nature, people who aren’t afraid to say what they really think”.

So it was “pretty cool”, the footballer says, when she was chosen to be one of the “rebels” included in the new edition of the global bestseller Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls.

Originally published in 2016 as a collection of “100 tales of extraordinary women”, the children’s book was a huge hit, and has since been translated into more than 50 languages and sold in more than 110 countries. The Rebel Girls team has since published numerous follow-up titles, including 100 Immigrant Women Who Changed the World and Rebel Girls Celebrate Pride.

While spin-off Rebel Girls titles – such as the Growing Up Powerful series aimed at the first book’s original, now teenage, fans – continue to be published, author Elena Favilli felt that the original book was due an update this year. The US-based Italian writer, who wrote the original Rebel Girls title with her then-civil partner Francesca Cavallo, has written 22 additional stories for the new edition, featuring Earps, Indigenous rights advocate Autumn Peltier, film-maker Greta Gerwig, actor Michelle Yeoh, climate activist Greta Thunberg and more.

With the new stories, Favilli wanted “to really try to focus on the women who have created cool inventions or trailblazed in different fields over the past 10 years”.

But how to pick just 22? Whittling down the contenders has “always been the sad part of the process”, Favilli says. But her criteria has remained the same since 2016: “To create a mix of famous and less famous people, and really try to cover all the different geographies in the world and not just focus on western countries.”

She also takes care to choose stories “that could expose girls to all the different challenges of life, not just the most successful aspects”.

Of course, the book celebrates women’s “extraordinary accomplishments”, but at the same time Favilli tries to “never shy away from also telling the hard or the sad parts”. She says it was important in the first edition to include Nina Simone, for example, who was in some ways “very flawed”.

“That’s one aspect of sexism, that women should be celebrated only if they are perfect,” Favilli says – instead, she is keen to celebrate the “very human stories” of women.

While researching the book, Favilli learned about some “incredible” women, such as Katalin Karikó, the Hungarian-American biochemist whose work led to the discovery of the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines. “It’s an incredible story of the resilience and talent of a woman who was dismissed for a long time as a researcher but who just kept following her instinct and her passion,” Favilli says. “She made an immense contribution to science and society in a moment that was so desperate and tragic for the entire world.”

Nottingham-born Earps, who won the Golden Glove award at the 2023 Women’s World Cup for best goalkeeper of the tournament, has become an inspiration for young players, as more girls than ever have started playing football in recent years in the UK.

As a child it would have been “fantastic to see” role models in a book such as Rebel Girls, Earps says. “When you’re younger, you’re told not to be a rebel. You’re told not to disrupt the status quo and just kind of keep quiet and go along with it.”

But it’s important to be a rebel sometimes, Earps says: “It’s about having the courage to speak your truth and say your opinion, and maybe challenging things which, in all fairness, should be challenged.”

Irish disability activist Sinéad Burke, who is also featured in Favilli’s new edition, is grateful that her nephews and nieces will now have this book. It’s so important children are “exposed to stories that represent their lived experiences and help them to not feel alone”, she says.

“When I was a child, there was very little representation of disabled protagonists in stories, particularly written by disabled authors,” she adds. “The representation of a little person living a fulfilled, complete life, not framed by charity or tragedy, while not erasing the difficulties, would have given me a new axis to work from.”

Nine years on from the original Rebel Girls book’s publication, feminism is in some ways under more threat than ever, with the rise of misogynistic influencers online and in boardrooms and governments.

“The fight for women’s rights is as urgent today as it was 10 years ago,” Favilli says, noting: “Every new push forward when it comes to civil rights or human rights has always, throughout history, been opposed by backward forces.”

She thinks we’re living in a period of such pushback, remembering that when she started working on the original book 10 years ago, there was a sense of “excitement” and “hope”.

When the book came out: “I thought that my work was really aligned with the zeitgeist. It almost felt as if we were all finally fighting the good fight together … like a wave that kept building and building. And now, unfortunately, it’s not.”

She hopes the new edition can be a “sort of beacon of hope for younger generations”.

“As long as we keep nurturing our younger generations with stories that show them that these things are possible and that they are achievable to them, I think we make sure that children have the most important vaccine against sexism,” she says. “If anything, this book is probably even more important now than it was when it first came out.”

• Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls (New Edition) by Rebel Girls (Rebel Girls Inc, £25). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.