I feel that reading a ton of genre fiction as a kid did a lot to make me a relatively healthy feminist. Some of my favorite books as a kid were Harriet the Spy (it's a lot less rewarding to spy on your neighbors in suburban Cleveland than in NYC), the Westing Game (which still makes me punch the air at regular intervals), and The Hero and the Crown, which I read so many times in grade school that the librarian gave me the library's copy when I left - I'd been the only person who checked it out for something like three whole sign-out cards.

It wasn't just books with female main characters, or with female authors, either. The women in the fantasy, SF & Mystery books I like are smart, funny, strong - great companions, competitors, enemies, friends, and heroines. Jessica from Dune, Kali from Zelazney's Lord of Light, Polgara and Ce'Nedra as CE Murphy notes (and their equivalents in the Sparhawk books), not to mention the great ladies in Heinlein's juvies, the heroine brigade in Jordan and the tons of well-drawn female scientists, adventurers, starship captains, and so forth in Peter F Hamilton's Nightsdawn series. And of course the crown princess of sci fi heroines at least in my childhood, Leia Organa, senator, guerilla leader, senator again, and president of the republic -- she doesn't become a Jedi Knight because she's TOO BUSY. Han Solo, especially in the expanded universe books, taught me to be comfortable when professionally overshadowed by a romantic partner's accomplishments. :)