Kidlit Celebrates Women's History Month 2011

The Women's History Month Celebration continues in 2012

2011-11-19T19:47:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to announce that we are in the midst of planning another great celebration for Women's History Month in March, 2012.

The inaugural edition of Kidlit Celebrates Women's History Month was a huge success thanks to the many talented authors, illustrators and bloggers that provided thirty-one great posts for over 20,000 blog readers during Women's History Month 2011. Readers, commenters, and contributors worked together to create a dynamic resource of thoughtful and thought-provoking women's history essays, commentaries, and book reviews.

The 2012 National Women's History Month Theme is Women’s Education – Women’s Empowerment, and we are excited about the year's possibilities.

Bookmark or follow us, and watch for updates on the schedule for 2012. We will again feature one post for each day of Women's History Month. In the meantime, look around the site and enjoy.

Thanks,
Margo Tanenbaum, The Fourth Musketeer
Lisa Taylor, Shelf-employed

Thanks!

2011-04-01T05:00:00.000-07:00


(not pictured--Alex Baugh, The Children's War)

With over 15,000 visitors to this site during the month of March, we hope we've done our small part in honoring Women's History Month through the medium of children's literature. Our sincere thanks to all the wonderful authors and bloggers who contributed their time and their thoughts about women's history; without all of you, the project would not have been possible. For both contributors and those who have been following along, we'd be interested in your feedback as to whether we should continue next year and whether you'd be interested in participating again or helping to identify other contributors. Please leave us a comment below with your thoughts.

Women Heroes of WWII

2011-03-31T05:00:00.000-07:00

March 31 - Today's post provided by The Children's War

Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance and Rescue by Kathryn J. Atwood

When I was 10 years old, I decided to dress up as my mother for Halloween. My costume was simple: shoes, dress, a church hat and a big old purse she no longer used. Nothing really fit, but I didn’t care. Why my mother? Well, as a World War II nurse, she was my hero, the first in what was to become a long list of women heroes who have served as historical mentors in my life. So, when I think of this year’s theme for Women’s History Month, Our History Is Our Strength, I know exactly what that means.

Now Kathryn Atwood has written a very moving account of 26 strong, courageous women who stood up and said no to the Nazi scourge at great risk to their lives. Some of these women joined underground resistance movements in Nazi-occupied countries, others rescued Jews and Allied soldiers caught behind enemy lines, and still others worked as spies, mingling with the enemy to gather useful information. Some of these women were quite young. In Poland, 19-year-old Irene Gut worked for a high ranking German officer in his villa. She was able to hide 12 Jews in the basement of the house, right under his nose. When he found out, he gave Irene a choice: become his mistress or he would turn them all over to the Gestapo. She made the first choice, never told anyone about it and eventually Irene was able to lead these Jews into the forest, where they were liberated.

Sophie Scholl

Sophie Scholl, a college student in Munich, Germany wasn’t much older than Irene when she began her Resistance activities. Along with 10 others including her brother Hans, Sophie belonged to the White Rose (die weiße Rose.) The group wrote and distributed six extensive anti-Nazi leaflets urging people to denounce Hitler’s government in word and deed. Anti-Nazi behavior was considered treason, punishable by death. Sophie and Hans were arrested, and later tried and executed on the same day. In a country where people no longer had any civil liberties, her actions were courageous and heroic. Silence, I believe, is a sign of acceptance, and these students refused to accept what the Nazis were doing in their beloved country.

Josephine Baker

Other women in Women Heroes of World War II were surprises to me, for example, Josephine Baker and Marlene Dietrich. Josephine Baker, an African-American, had lived in Paris for many years after leaving the US in part because of the racism she encountered here. As an entertainer, Josephine had the perfect cover for a spying. Before France fell to the Nazis, Josephine did some espionage working for the Deuxième Bureau, a French intelligence agency. Her celebrity status allowed her to mingle at parties where she would listen in on conversations and acquire much need information. Later, when France was occupied by the Germans, Josephine retired to her chateau. Her chateau was then used as a stop-off for resistance workers, a safe house for refugees, and storage space for weapons. Later, Josephine toured Spain, Portugal and North Africa, again partying in order to gather information.

Marlene Dieetrich

Marlene Dietrich, though German born, was an American citizen who worked against the Nazis and volunteered to entertain troops for the USO, often at great risk to herself. Sometimes, she was so close to the front lines, she could hear gunfire and bombs going off. When she started to use her signature song, Lilie Marlene, in English for the troops, the Nazis were livid, that had been their World War I song. But she also sang it in German for the Soldatensender West, an Allied radio program broadcast in German and directed at Hitler’s soldiers, along with other anti-Nazi propaganda. It turned out, German soldiers has listened to Soldatensender West, even though it was forbidden.

These are just a few examples of the lives of the extraordinary women who risked everything to help others in very dangerous situations that are included in this book. Though every story is different, the women were motivated by the same thing: when the time came, they did what they felt was right. Later, many received awards and medals for they work and some were even awarded the title “Righteous among Nations” by Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the Holocaust, for the Jews they saved.

Women Heroes of World War II is a well written, well researched book. Ms. Atwood profiles the resistance activities of women from eight countries: Germany, Poland, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Great Britain and the United States. There is a brief summary of the way in which each country entered World War II. This information really helps the reader appreciate the dangers and obstacles these woman faced. Each woman’s story is also supplemented with additional material, for example, passages from the leaflets written by Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, or the edict issued when Denmark was forced to surrender to the Germans. At the end of every woman’s story is a list of resources where the reader can go to find more information about her. The beauty of the organization of this book is that it can be read from cover to cover, as I did, or in parts. Each narrative stands on it own. This makes it ideal as a teaching tool and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Out of curiosity I asked Ms. Atwood what made her decide to write Women Heroes of World War II. She said that her dad had been a young tail gunner in Europe during World War II (tail gunner, I have learned, was a very lonely, dangerous position) and she was always fascinated by his war stories. Another parental hero!

Because of her Dutch heritage, Ms. Atwood was also familiar with women resistance workers in the Netherlands, such as Corrie ten Boom and Diet Eman, both included in her book, and both amazing women.

Women Heroes of World War II is recommended for readers age 12 and up.

This book was purchased for my personal library.

For an interesting story about how Kathryn Atwood touched history while writing Women Heroes of World War II, please visit http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/511628-touching-history to read her story.

For the last 30 days, I have been introduced to and celebrated a wide variety of other incredibly strong, brave, daring women. Among their accomplishments, they are trailblazers who broke barriers, crossed lines, saved lives and gave us beautiful music. These women certainly embody the theme “Our History Is Our Strength.” They all refused to live in the margins of their time, and we are women who refuse to let they live in the margins of history. And now we have come to the last day of celebrating Women’s History Month and since I can’t say let the celebrations begin, I will say

Let the Celebrations Continue!

Editor's Note:
Watch for a final wrap-up post tomorrow from organizers Margo and Lisa!

Amelia Lost

2011-03-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

March 30 - Today's post provided by Candace Fleming

I began work on Amelia Lost back in 2007, but Amelia Earhart has been on my radar (no pun intended) for much longer. Years ago, my mother told me a story about how she felt after learning of Amelia’s 1937 disappearance. Mom was ten years old at the time, and couldn’t believe the news. It was impossible. Amelia Earhart was the woman who could do anything. She couldn’t be lost at sea. So my mother, who lived in a small town on Lake Michigan, stood on the beach and gazed up into the sky. She was convinced that if she stood there long enough, she’d eventually spot the aviatrix, winging her way through the clouds to safety. Isn’t that wonderful? Can’t you just see her there? That’s how connected my mother felt to Earhart, how vividly the pilot’s life had captured her imagination. And through my mother’s retelling decades later, Amelia captured mine. I knew I would someday have to write about her.

And really, who wouldn’t want to research and write about Amelia Earhart? She is, after all, America’s favorite missing person. So I spent two weeks at the Purdue University Library, shifting through the vast holdings of the George Putnam Palmer Collection of Amelia Earhart Papers. I gathered digitized files from the collection of the National Air and Space Museum, as well as from the Schlesinger Library, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the USCG National Maritime Center, and the Seaver Center for Western History Research. Best of all, Ric Gillespie, executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), generously shared his organization’s miles of documents, including those marvelous pages from Betty Klenck’s notebook.

It was my exploration of TIGHAR’s documents that made me eager to tell about the seventeen-day search for her downed plane --what the press called “the greatest rescue expedition in flying history.” It’s a dramatic, suspenseful tale. And believe it or not, it’s never before been told in a book for young readers. Sure some of the pieces of the search are well-known, and have been used selectively in the past to support various theories about her disappearance, but the entire picture, scattered and dispersed among dozens of archival files and private collections has been hard to decipher. Luckily, Ric Gillespie and the smart people at TIGHAR helped guide me through the historical record, providing me with a day-to-day, in some cases minute-by-minute view of what really happened. That view can be found in the book.

(Amelia Earhart source:
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/
assets/aa/earhart/
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{{PD-USGov}})

As for Amelia herself, the most surprising part of my research was the discovery that she was… well… sort of a fibber. Time and again, I unearthed a telling detail, or charming anecdote only to learn that it wasn’t true; that Amelia had made it up to maintain her public image. Take, for example, the often-repeated story of the flier’s first glimpse of an airplane. According to Earhart, this happened at the Iowa State Fair in 1908, when she was just eleven years old. “It was a thing of wire and wood,” she wrote in her memoir, The Fun Of It. “I was much more interested in an absurd hat made of an inverted peach basket which I purchased for fifteen cents.” It’s a sweet story, but placed in the context of aviation history it can’t possibly be true. Or, take that popular anecdote about Fred Noonan and the around-the-world trip. According to Amelia, Fred was confined to the navigator’s station in the rear cabin and could communicate with her only in notes passed forward over the fuel tanks by means of a bamboo fishing pole. True? Absolutely not. In fact, Fred spent much of his time in the cockpit with Amelia, clambering over the fuel tanks in the rear cabin only when he needed room to spread out a chart. At first, I was frustrated by these (and so many more) fabrications. I started to think I should retitle the book, Flyer, Flyer Pants On Fire. But then I began to see her fibs as a challenge – a challenge to finding the real Amelia behind the public persona, and discovering the events that led to her disappearance. My hope is that readers will be able to glimpse the real woman through the pages of this book.

Editor's Note:

"Candace Fleming awarded herself the Newbery Medal in fifth grade after scraping the gold sticker off the class copy of The Witch of Blackbird Pond and pasting it onto her first novel—a ten page, ten-chapter mystery called Who Done It? She’s been collecting awards (her own, not Elizabeth George Speare’s) ever since.

Today, Candace is the versatile and acclaimed author of more than twenty books for children, including the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award-winning biography, The Lincolns; the bestselling picture book, Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!; and the beloved Boxes for Katje."

Visit Candace Fleming's blog to find out more about Candace and her books.

I'll Pass for Your Comrade: Women Soldiers in the Civil War

2011-03-29T04:09:00.000-07:00

March 29 - Today's post provided by Anita Silvey

Before I ever attempted to write I’ll Pass for Your Comrade: Women Soldiers in the Civil War, I worked as a family historian, or genealogist, for about twenty years. In that time I discovered why I knew only the first name of so many of my female ancestors. I grew to understand why a matrilineal descent line – from mother to mother to mother – is the toughest assignment in genealogy. I also learned to value small details, such as the mention of several quilts in a family will. At least I knew that this great-grandmother created them and that the family valued her work highly.

When I took on the project of writing about the 1,000 women who defied convention, put on men’s clothing, and went to fight in the Civil War, I knew that in many cases I would be building my book on small pieces of evidence. Sometimes all that we have of one of these soldiers is literally their bones, later identified when burial grounds were moved. For other women only one record exists – a newspaper article, a letter from a male soldier, or a detail in a Civil War regimental history.

Often my fabulous editor Dinah Stevenson would ask about a woman that I had presented in a paragraph, “Tell me the rest of her story. What happened to her?” Almost always, the answer to Dinah would be, “we don’t know. That is all we know about her.”

I admire Laurie Halse Anderson’s Independent Dames because she found an ideal format to utilize scraps of history to present the accomplishments of women. But I was writing a photo-essay of 112 pages. Hence I decided to devote each chapter to one of the stages of being a soldier – motivation, enlistment, training, battle, hospitals, prison camps, and coming home. Then for each one I selected a woman who left many records of her life– books, autobiographies, or letters – and allowed her to carry much of the chapter. Then I added in small vignettes about other women, less well-known, less recorded. To create a composite picture of the life of a female Civil War soldier, I had to become a quilter of words and images.

In this book, I pay tribute to these independent, idealistic, and driven women, who went to any length to do what they wanted to do. Like my female ancestors, they deserve to have their accomplishments recorded -- even if that means that as writers we have to work harder, be extremely creative, and do extensive research to reconstruct their stories.

Editor's Note:

Anita Silvey's latest project is the Children's Book-A-Day Almanac. Find out more about Anita Silvey on her website.

Celebrating Basketball History, Too

2011-03-28T03:23:00.000-07:00

March 28 - Today's post provided by Sue Macy

Celebrating Basketball History, Too

by Sue Macy

In a rare quirk of circumstance, I have two new books out this month, both about women and sports. My YA book, Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way), published by National Geographic, has been mentioned on this site before, and while I’m exceedingly proud of it, I want to focus on the other one today, Basketball Belles: How Two Teams and One Scrappy Player Put Women’s Hoops on the Map, published by Holiday House. It’s especially timely because not only is this Women’s History Month; it’s also March Madness, the time of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)’s annual basketball championships, which will culminate in this weekend’s Final Four.

Long before the NCAA’s marketing geniuses branded March the month of Madness, two teams of eager young athletes met at the Page Street Armory in San Francisco to play the first intercollegiate women’s basketball game. It was April 4, 1896, and just four years before, physical education instructor Senda Berenson of Smith College had adapted the rules of James Naismith’s new sport to make it acceptable (read: less rough-and-tumble) for women. Though Berenson’s students at Smith embraced the game and classes played against each other, all competition was kept within the school. It was left to those upstarts on the West Coast to throw down the gauntlet for interscholastic competition.

I first learned about the game when I was researching Winning Ways, my social history of American women in sports, and I wrote an article about it for the New York Times on its 100th anniversary. But I’ve always wanted to write about it for kids. The coverage of the contest in San Francisco’s newspapers—all written by women, because men weren’t allowed in the arena—was so descriptive that it was easy to “see” the action and follow the progress of the game. The San Francisco Chronicle, Call, and Examiner even included pen-and-ink drawings of the major plays and players. Everything seemed to point to a picture book about the match-up; everything, except the fact that I’d never written a picture book before.

I researched Basketball Belles as I do every book I write, starting by gathering newspaper coverage of the event and seeking out academic and popular books and articles about it. I also flew out to the Bay area to look for information and photographs in the archives of the two schools involved in the game, Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley. While at Stanford, I got to watch a practice and a game of the current team and interview their coach, Tara VanDerveer, who’s taken the Cardinal to the Final Four the past three years. At Cal, I met the athletic director, Sandy Barbour, as well as basketball coach, Joanne Boyle. While those meetings weren’t really necessary for writing the book, they made the experience a lot more fun.

Relating the story of the game in 700 words seemed much harder than it would have been in 20,000 words. Fortunately, illustrator Matt Collins filled in lots of the details with his dynamic and very authentic drawings. (Matt went to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, to do his research.) But it was up to me to write the narrative and around the sixth or seventh draft, the final form of the book started to take shape. My editors and I decided we needed to look at the game through the eyes of one of the players and I chose Stanford guard Agnes Morley because she had gone on to become a writer. Though Morley never wrote about the game itself, I got a good sense of her voice and her character from her award-winning memoir, No Life for a Lady. A singular woman who grew up on an isolated ranch in New Mexico, she was the book’s missing link, someone for readers to get to know and root for. Coincidentally, author Darlis A. Miler published an adult biography of Morley soon after my book went to press. Open Range: The Life of Agnes Morley Cleaveland is a great read about a genuine western character.

Writing Basketball Belles was both liberating and humbling. How wonderful it was to see this game that I had known about for so long come to life through the stunning illustrations. But how challenging it was to let brevity reign, to waste no words in the telling of this tale. It was a learning experience, to be sure, one that I ultimately enjoyed. In fact, I’ve just started the research for my next picture book. Stay tuned.

Editor's Note:
Sue Macy blogs on her official website, Sue Macy.com, and also contributes monthly to I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids) We can't wait to see what her next picture book will be!

Nonfiction about Amazing Women

2011-03-27T05:00:00.000-07:00

March 27 - Today's post provided by Waking Brain Cells

Nonfiction about Amazing Women

Children’s nonfiction is a great place to take a look at women who should be part of our history books but so often are overlooked and forgotten. Here are four books that each child, girl or boy, should know about to have a more complete understanding of the role of women in history and today:

Almost Astronauts by Tanya Lee Stone

Published in 2009, Stone’s book about the Mercury 13 women won the 2010 Sibert Medal and was also nominated for a YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. It is the story of women who tried to be astronauts before females were allowed in the NASA program. It is the story of women denied their right to be astronauts despite exceeding the mastery of the men in the program. It is the story of women of strength and character who have been forgotten by history.

Amelia to Zora: Twenty-Six Women Who Changed the World by Cynthia Chin-Lee, illustrated by Megan Halsey and Sean Addy

This 2005 title celebrates 26 women who changed the world. Appropriate for younger children than the other books on this list, this picture book gives short pieces of information on these amazing women. Included in the title are Amelia Earhart, Frida Kahlo, Nawal El Sadaarvi, and Zora Neale Hurston. The women represent a wide range of ethnicities and each has a quote included as well. The illustrations add a beauty to the book, celebrating the women in a moving way.

Lives of Extraordinary Women: Rulers, Rebels (and What the Neighbors Thought) by Kathleen Krull, illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt.

Published in 2000, Krull’s book about 20 extraordinary women in history is part of her very entertaining series on historical figures. This book celebrates women like Cleopatra, Harriet Tubman and Eleanor Roosevelt. Nicely, it includes women around the world. If you like humor mixed with your nonfiction, Krull is the author for you!

With Courage and Cloth: Winning the Fight for a Woman’s Right to Vote by Ann Bausum

Published in 2004, this book is a visually powerful history of the fight for women’s right to vote in the United States. The book follows the evolution of the suffrage movement, telling the story of the courageous women who fought for the right to vote against all odds. It is a story of courage despite imprisonment, of the strength to protest despite derision, and of the passion for voting that so many of us have forgotten today. These are women who should be listed with other heroes in our country and whom are often forgotten.

Editor's Note:

Authors Tanya Lee Stone, Kathleen Krull and Ann Bausum have each graciously contributed posts here this month.

Waking Brain Cells is the new online home of longtime blogger, Tasha Saecker. If you have been wondering about her new location, wonder no more - you can find her at Waking Brain Cells.

Real History was not Meant for Publication

2011-03-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

March 26 - Today's post provided by Marthe Jocelyn

     Although I did not have a stellar (or even complete) high school career – and never went to university at all – I think of myself as a bit of a nerd. I was a curl-up-with-a–book kind of kid, always looking for outsiders in the pages I was reading, whether they had really lived or were part of someone’s made up world.

     I have shamelessly used chunks of family history as the jumping off points for most of my middle grade and young adult books. My contemporary teen novel, Would You, was inspired by a family tragedy. My previous work of non-fiction, called A Home for Foundlings, was written after I learned that my grandfather was raised in the Foundling Hospital in London, England. My historical novel, Folly, is a fictionalized version of what led my great-grandmother to abandon the son who would become my grandfather.

     While doing research for all my books, I kept bumping into women who had written diaries or letters or articles or stories that either bore witness to otherwise unknown moments in history, or had unexpected repercussions on the generations to follow.

Used with permission from
Tundra Books

     What compelled these women to write? What compels any of us to insist on our own presence, to make our mark, however small, by putting words on a page?

   Scribbling Women tells tales from the lives of ten women and one nine-year-old girl, focusing on what they themselves found interesting enough to record, whether because writing was a pastime, a source of income, an art form, a path to justice, or a desperate effort to communicate with someone else in the world. I wasn’t trying to present complete biographies, but rather to look at the words certain women chose to write down.

    Although it is now widely acknowledged that many of women’s impressive achievements throughout history have been ignored or belittled, I found that buried even further out of sight were the accounts of such achievements from a female point of view. And what of the women who did not perform publicly noteworthy feats? The ones who cooked and sewed, quietly listening and watching as life went on around them?

Sei Shonagon by Uemura Shoen,
courtesy of Kyoto Journal

    Sei Shonagon, for instance, was a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Sadako late in the 10th century. She would have surveyed the bustle and hum of the Japanese Imperial court from behind a screen, shielded from the offense of masculine contact. There is almost no information available about Sei (including her actual name), other than what she told us through her lovely descriptions, sharp anecdotes, clever poetry and spiteful observations, assembled eventually into The Pillow Book.

    “I really can’t understand people who get angry when they hear gossip about others,” she wrote. “How can you not discuss other people? Apart from your own concerns, what can be more beguiling to talk about and criticize than other people?”

    I find it most appealing that those words were written over one thousand years ago! However history has unfolded for countless generations, the love of gossip – of telling stories – has continued throughout.

Dang Thuy Tram,
courtesy of Kim Tram Dang

Among the other scribbling women, two kept diaries. The authors would be shocked to learn that their private thoughts have become public. Dang Thuy Tram was a North Vietnamese doctor whose diary was rescued, after her assassination, and smuggled home by an intrigued American soldier. Ada Blackjack was a nearly illiterate Innuit seamstress who accompanied a scientific expedition to the far north in the early 1920’s. Following the example of the scientists who took daily field notes, Ada wrote in a diary for the final few months of her harrowing experience, during which all the men died or disappeared. One of the grieving mothers received a letter from Mae Belle Anderson with this reminder: “Real history is made up from the documents that were not meant to be published.”

That I believe with all my heart.

Editor's Note:

Marthe Jocelyn is the award-winning author of more than 20 books for children, ranging all the way from board books to teen novels. She will be celebrating the release of Scribbling Women with a blog tour, scheduled for March 28 - April 1. Details can be found at the Tundra Books' blog, Talking with Tundra or Marthe's site, http://www.marthejocelyn.com/. Also, as part of her blog tour, Tundra is sponsoring a fabulous giveaway of a collection of Marthe's books! See their blog for details of how to enter.

Haunted by History

2011-03-25T05:00:00.000-07:00

March 25 - Today's post provided by Esther Friesner

There seems to be a big split among those who have an ongoing interest in history. (You could argue that we all have a vested interest in it, since history is where we keep all our stuff, but I’m talking about the people who take an independent, self-motivated interest, one that is not forced on them by school coursework.) I’d like to call this the Great Historical Novel Attitude Schism. It sounds impressive, doesn’t it? And it would sound even more impressive if I knew how to pronounce “Schism.”

The GHNAS manifests itself simply: On one side are those people who enjoy learning about history any way they can—textbooks, popular nonfiction, movies, television, even graphic novels (Larry Gonick’s peerless The Cartoon History of the Universe series is my personal favorite).

On the other side of the rift are those who want to keep history solidly in the camp of nonfiction. Television and movies are acceptable media when they’re offering documentaries. “Titanic: Tragedy at Sea,” YES. “Titanic: Leonardo DiCaprio Drowns Nobly,” NO.

These are often the people who point out that fictionalizing history can trivialize it. Specifically, they argue that it can trivialize tragedies.

I beg to differ. Loudly. And not just because I write historical novels. My personal involvement with two of the major tragedies of our time—the Holocaust and 9/11—is deep and undeniable. It’s a part of who I am, where I come from, and why I write. Although I accept that some historical novels are pure entertainment, those that I find most satisfying as both author and reader are the ones that don’t trivialize tragedy but memorialize it.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, described as the worst workplace disaster to hit the city until the events of September 11, 2001. There are many facts about the Triangle fire, facts which will be cited repeatedly as the tragedy is remembered. Numbers play a key role: How many of the workers died in the flames, in the collapse of the one fire escape available, by plunging into the shaft when the elevators finally broke down, by leaping to a quick death from the windows rather than by waiting for an agonizing one in the fire; how many minutes passed until the fire department arrived on the scene and how many until the blaze was put out; how many people attended the public funeral for the fire victims; how many of those who perished remained unidentified for nearly a century.

I’ve always had a problem with numbers. Perhaps it’s because too many of my relatives had their humanity reduced to tattooed numbers before Nazis murdered them. Can you murder numbers? Numbers don’t require compassion. Numbers are easy to erase. Numbers have no faces, lives, loves, or dreams. Numbers make it all so. . .tidy.

Tidy: Like sweeping things under a rug.

The day-to-day existence of the women and men who lost their lives in the Triangle fire was not neat and tidy. Many of them were immigrants and were sending money home to the families they’d left behind. Many of them were very young, in their teens and twenties, with the two youngest girls just 14 years old. Their wages were low to begin with, and their take-home pay shrank even more under a system that fined them for something as trivial as a broken sewing-machine needle. Their work was seasonal, and their income could be reduced to nothing if they were among those laid off during the “slow” season. They had to line up single file at quitting time at the only unlocked exit door and submit to being searched, to make sure they weren’t stealing. They had to ascend to the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of the Asch Building, where the Triangle factory was located, in the freight elevators. They weren’t permitted to use the passenger elevators.

When the fire broke out, many of them died, enough to make people pay attention to the forces behind such a tragedy. An oft-repeated phrase you’ll hear connected with the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire is, “Their deaths were not in vain.” The wording may vary, but the meaning stands: The aftermath of the fire brought reform to the abuses that had made the fire itself so devastating.

I don’t want to argue this; I can’t. What I would like to do is point out that keeping our eyes fixed on the deaths of these human beings keeps us from remembering their lives. It makes it seem as though the only means of influence they had was to die, that they were important only for being victims.

They were more than that.

I chose to write a novel about the Triangle fire from the point of view of a Jewish immigrant girl because that’s who so many of the real world casualties were. I’m sure that these girls were told repeatedly that they shouldn’t complain about their working conditions because they were lucky to have a job. I’ll raise that bet to include their being told that if they didn’t appreciate what they had, there were plenty of other girls out there looking for work who would be more than happy to take over.

No doubt they were told, one way or the other, to remember their “proper place”.

Clara Lemlich

And yet, these were the women who decided that enough was enough. In the autumn of 1909 saw the Uprising of the 20,000, a garment workers’ strike. It lasted until February, 1910. One of the voices that galvanized hesitant workers into crying out better pay, shorter hours, and fairer treatment was Clara Lemlich. A strong supporter of unions, she had been assaulted and severely beaten by hired thugs some months earlier for speaking out. This small nineteen-year-old girl suffered many serious injuries, including broken ribs, at the hands of the three grown men hired for the job. It wasn’t enough to crush her spirit. She called for a strike and was heard.

Other women refused to remember their “proper place,” or perhaps they decided that they were the only ones qualified to define it. 15,000 walked off the job the next day at many factories. The most fiercely anti-union factory owners saw nothing wrong in forming a union of their own, to show a solid front against the striking workers, and to use strike-breaking tactics that included more physical assaults by hired strongmen and prostitutes, and by using their political influence to turn the police and the judiciary system into their tools. Strikers were arrested, fined, imprisoned, and in one case a judge decreed, “You are on strike against God!”

The strike wasn’t just the province of the poor. Many rich women of New York’s upper crust supported them. These women were in the main suffragists, working to get all women the right to vote. They ran rallies and fund-raisers for the shirtwaist-makers’ cause and used their own ample funds paying fines for the strikers who were arrested.

Strikers from 1909 Uprising of the 20,000

The strike was settled in February of 1910 with some gains for the strikers, but not enough. Although the striking workers from Triangle were hired back, they were still denied the right to unionize, to have all workplace doors remain unlocked, and to have fire escapes that worked. (The sole fire escape available was located in an airshaft, which is pretty much like having your only means of escaping a fire on the floors beneath you be located in the chimney that’s drawing the flames upward.)

A little over a year later, Triangle burned.

Some of the last of the fire's victims to be identified (HBO)

I know many people who don’t like learning history in the classroom because it’s often presented as data without the human context. There is a significant difference between saying “1.7 million Cambodians were killed by the Khmer Rouge between 1974 and 1979” and hearing the story of just one of those deaths from the point of view of someone for whom the victim was not one in 1.7 million but someone precious, beloved, irreplaceable.

We can’t hear all the stories about that one precious life lost. We are either too far removed from them in space and in time. It would be so much easier if we could forget about them altogether, but these stories themselves make it impossible for us to do so, if only we can hear them. They give dry facts human faces, and we remember human faces.

As we should. In the years before the Civil War, people living comfortable lives in the northern states didn’t have to make an effort to remain unaware of the abuses of slavery. There were newspapers, but no modern media saturation forcing them to confront a subject that might trouble their thoughts. It was easy for any consideration they might give it to be one of benign neglect, along the lines of: “Yes, I know, isn’t slavery dreadful. Someone should do something it. I don’t own slaves and I donated a dollar to the impressive Mr. Frederick Douglass, so I’ve done my part. Now, what’s for supper?”

Then came Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and slavery had a face and a heart and a presence that called for justice.

It was a historical novel, even if the history behind it was contemporary, and it was written by a woman. No matter modern opinions concerning this book, it’s undeniable that it was a significant force in stimulating popular sentiment that eventually led to the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans. It carried both the message This must stop and—more important still—This must never happen again.

And we remember it even now.

I wouldn’t call that trivial.

END

Editor's Note:

Esther Friesner's most recent novel is Threads and Flames (Viking 2010).

Cornell University offers many resources related to the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.
See also: The Jewish Daily Forward: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire--A Century Later, a special section that includes translations of articles in the Yiddish daily newspaper Forverts in the days and weeks immediately after the fire.

Remembering the Ladies

2011-03-24T05:00:00.000-07:00

March 24 - Today's post provided by Tonya Bolden

“There is poetry and fiction. There is art and essay. . . . There is grace, courage, pain, outrage, drama (literally): not a little heat and so much light.”

This is from my introduction to 33 Things Every Girl Should Know About Women’s History, an anthology I assembled many years ago and one that contains Abigail Adams’s famous letter to her husband, John, “Remember the Ladies.”

I fondly remembered the contemporary ladies who contributed to the anthology in my introduction. “Vital voices” I called them. I noted, for example, that readers would hear from “a Coline and a Joline . . . a Judy . . . two Anns . . . an Anastasia and a Shana . . . a Betsy and an Elisabeth and Elizabeth.”

I wanted to salute the contributors up front because along with my soulful, editor, Nancy Hinkel, these women were such gems, from journalist Magee Hickey and co-founders of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Trust, Coline Jenkins and Marsha Weinstein, to authors Kathleen Krull, Betsy Kuhn, and Pat McKissack.

Putting an anthology together can quite nerve-wracking. Between the paperwork, the brainstorming on ideas and approaches, the setting of deadlines, and the scheduling of time for editing sessions, things can pretty get hectic and intense. Too, with so many moving parts, there’s the anxiety that something will go wrong - terribly wrong. Will someone back out? Will a contributor go off script?

I’m not going to say that the making of 33 Things Every Girl Should Know About Women’s History didn’t have its glitches, but when I reflect on the experience, I feel fortified all over again. Passionate about women’s history, passionate about educating, enlightening and inspiring the next generation, and ever grateful for the trails their collective foremothers blazed, the contributors brought to the project such enthusiasm, such generosity of spirit. They inspired me.

We never got together as a group. Many of us did not personally know one another prior to the project. We were of different ages, came from different places, and were of different racial/ethnic backgrounds. Yet, I felt a sisterhood was going on.

And I learned so much, whether it was “Don’t Agonize, Organize!” (about reformers) by visual artist, Ann Decker, or “The Facets of Feminism” by history professor Paula A. Treckel. Until I read Suheir Hammad’s poem “U.S. Women Are Diverse” I wasn't familiar with the Egyptian singer Um Kalthoum. Similarly, I had never heard of the first female astronaut candidate, Jerrie Cobb, until I received Sue Macy’s piece “Who Was First and Why It Matters.”

Piece after piece made me all the more hungry for women’s history. Piece after piece made me so grateful to the contributors. The women my editor and I reached out to had more than enough in their lives to keep them busy. On top of that, some were in pain. A sister’s child came down with a strange ailment. A husband was seriously ill. A mother died. Yet, like others in the book, these women were troopers. They gave their utmost. In the case of Safiya Henderson-Holmes, it was permission to reprint her poem, "rituals of spring," about the tragic fire on March 25, 1911, at New York City's Triangle Shirtwaist Company. And for the book, Safiya penned a brief note setting up her haunting poem, a note when she herself was, unbeknownst to me, in crisis. Safiya died before the book came out.

And one contributor did indeed go off script. She was editor, broadcast and print journalist, and perpetual poet Judy Dothard Simmons (d. 2007). As I recall, Judy was to write an essay on language vis-a-vis women and women’s history. One day she called me up to say, she had been moved to take a different route. She would send the piece and if I didn’t like it, she’d go back to the drawing board, she said.

Judy was one of the contributors I had known for many years. I had long held her intellect in high regard and had a holy envy of her way with words, so I didn’t panic (too much) as I waited to receive her piece.

When I did, I was overjoyed. While Judy had not followed the “letter of the law” she had most definitely followed the spirit. Her piece was organic. It was natural. It was a poem, titled “A Herstory of Language.”

One of its lines I carry with me still is the quiet, but profound: “Language is no simple thing.”

And the last line of Judy's poem makes a good tag line, I think, for Women’s History Month.

Learn herstory. Balance the world!

Editor's Note:

Tonya Bolden is the author/editor of more than twenty books. You can learn more about her work at tonyaboldenbooks.com

Women Writers - A Map for the Journey

2011-03-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

March 23: Today's post provided by Erica Silverman

Women Writers – A Map for the Journey

As a child, I didn’t know I would grow up to be a writer, but it seems there was always a longing inside that was pulling me in that direction. I was drawn to words, to reading, to writing, to poetry. And I was drawn to books about the lives of creative people. I consumed biographies of artists, musicians, especially writers. I identified with them. I imagined myself into their lives. I didn’t consciously notice that they were all men until I stumbled upon – finally – the biography of a woman writer. The Silver Answer – a Romantic Biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. How I loved this book that opened up new ways to see my life.

Later as a young feminist in high school and college, I learned about many of the women written out of history. My focus remained creative women. I wanted to know everything about them. What was their creative process? How did they learn their craft? Who helped them? Who hindered? How had they dealt with failure? With success? I was seeking a road map for my own writing path.

And so when I decided to write about Emma Lazarus, I came to the task with that same hunger, the hunger of my childhood, to find a map for the journey, to explore what it is means to be a girl who grows up to be a writer.

Emma Lazarus, whose famous words are engraved on the Statue of Liberty, was studious, serious, intense, and driven to write. By the time she was seventeen, she had written enough poetry to fill a thick volume that her father published for their family. Picked up a year later by a publishing house, it received good reviews. It was this volume that Emma had the courage to send to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Her desire to grow as a writer was such that when he responded to her book with praise, she pressed him for criticism and guidance.

Years later, her courage manifested in another way. She became a spokesperson for the Russian Jewish immigrants who, fleeing pogroms, were arriving at New York Harbor by the thousands. She chastised the Jewish community for failing to come to the aid of its immigrants. Although she traveled primarily in Gentile social circles in which "polite" whispered anti-Semitism was common, she wrote confrontational articles condemning the persistence of anti-Semitism in Christianity. While quick to explain that she was not religious, her Jewish heritage informed some of her most powerful poems. She became an energetic activist for immigrants. Lazarus turned out to be as passionate about politics as about poetry. Being a Jew and a woman informed her writing and her politics. She wrote, "Until we are all free, we are none of us free."

In Emma Lazarus, I discovered a passionate, powerful, courageous, creative role model. In writing about her, I was speaking to the little girl with a longing to write that I once was, and also to girls today who share that dream.

Another inspiring American woman poet I wish I had been able to read about as a child is Phillis Wheatley. There are two picture books that introduce young readers to her moving story:

Phillis Sings out Freedom by Ann Malaspina

Phillis’s Big Test by Catherine Clinton, illustrated by
John Qualls

The filmmaker/feminist/educator Martha Wheelock has been exploring the lives of creative women, bringing them to light in beautifully crafted educational films. How I wish there had been films like this available when I was little! You can find her films, about the lives of such women as Madeleine L’Engle and Berenice Abbott at: http://www.ishtarfilms.com/page1.htm

Martha is also the creator, along with Kay Weaver, of a wonderfully rousing feminist music-short, called One Fine Day. I just love this! It never fails to give me goose bumps and fill me with hope.

Go see it on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL8-7aKAxLg

(you can also purchase it at Ishtarfilms.com)

One Fine Day: A Film By Kay Weaver and Martha Wheelock

Happy Women’s History Month!

Editor's Note: Erica Silverman is a librarian and also the award-winning author of beginning readers (Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa series) and picture books. A curriculum guide for her newest book on Emma Lazarus is available at her website, ericasilverman.com.

Wanda Gág, Millions of Cats, and One Well-Drawn Life

2011-03-22T05:00:00.000-07:00

March 22 - Today's post provided by Janice Floyd Durante at Books of Wonder and Wisdom

Wanda Gág, Millions of Cats, and One Well-Drawn Life

Wanda Gág (1893-1946) chased the “ineffable joy of creation” throughout her life. Along the way, she established a reputation as both a premier printmaker and as the mother of the American picture book. Her ground-breaking classic, Millions of Cats (Coward-McCann, 1928) reflects her vibrant, indomitable approach to life and to art.

“I must put my whole being into the drawing of pictures,” she wrote in her diaries, published as Growing Pains (Coward-McCann, 1940). In Millions of Cats, her first and most influential picture book, Gág (rhymes with “fog”) drew on her childhood store of Old World folktales. She told a delightfully simple story of a very old woman who wishes she and her very old husband had a cat to keep them company. Her husband sets out and finds not one but … you know, of course, all about that furry multitude.

With Millions of Cats, Gág opened up new aesthetic possibilities in children’s literature. She was the first to employ the two-page spread, now an integral part of the picture book. The quirky little book won the 1929 John Newbery Honor (the Caldecott did not yet exist). Its effect, however, continues today. In Wanda Gág: A Life of Art and Stories, Karen Nelson Hoyle wrote, “Wanda Gág set in motion the American picture book movement with her Millions of Cats. Her significant contribution was integrating the cover, endpapers, illustrations, and story into a complete whole.”

Of the many striking things about Millions of Cats, it is the sense of energy and movement that most pleases this reader. The text roams parallel to the hills where the old man wanders. On one delightful two-page spread she depicts the man with his hands crammed with kittens, with one camped on his head, others popping up on the burgeoning hills, and more and more forming a long, curvy trail. Not only do the cats look lively, but also the clouds, the hills, the trees, even the fat puffs of smoke that come from the chimney or from the old man’s pipe. Everything seems to vibrate with life.

Gág often pondered the connection between art and life in her diaries. “I used drawing as an instrument to study life,” she wrote. She was both enthralled and mystified by her times of intense artistic focus, describing them as a “wild sort of ecstasy,” “a fierce joy,” and as a maelstrom. While she had many friends, she decided early on that neither peers nor poverty nor romantic love would distract her from her goal of becoming an artist.

The remarkable journey from Gág’s childhood home of New Ulm, MN, to New York City and beyond is beautifully rendered for children in the picture-book biography Wanda Gág : The Girl Who Lived to Draw by Deborah Kogan Ray. The author/illustrator uses evocative excerpts from Gág’s diary to great effect, as she weaves in highlights of the family history, with its roots in the German-speaking area of Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic). Ray’s lively paintings exude color and a full range of emotions. She shows the seven imaginative Gág children drawing and putting on their own plays, inspired by the folktales told by their imaginative parents. Ray also shows a quiet Wanda in the attic studio, observing her father, “happy in his soul” as he allowed himself the freedom to paint for pleasure on Sundays. Then there is the somber death-bed scene, with Wanda holding her father’s hands as he urges her to pursue art: “What Papa couldn’t do, Wanda will have to finish.”

His death from tuberculosis, when Wanda was just 15, might have precluded any chance that the eldest daughter would become an artist. Instead, her resolve strengthened. To reach her goal, she would have to battle poverty, pressure from her provincial neighbors to work as a store clerk, her friends’ conventional expectations for marriage, as well as sexism in the art world and in society at large. Not only did Wanda and all her siblings finish high school, Wanda won a scholarship to study art, first in St. Paul, Minnesota, then at the prestigious Art Students League in New York City.

In that exciting art-filled city, Gág’s expressive drawings, prints, and watercolors earned her coveted one-artist exhibits at the Weyhe Gallery. That’s where a children’s book editor, taken with her vivid images, asked Wanda if she had ever considered writing children’s books. In fact, Wanda had a box full of ideas for children’s stories.

Gág’s success with Millions of Cats led to ten other inventive children’s books, ranging from The ABC Bunny, the first alphabet book to tell a story; to her still-beloved picture books The Funny Thing, Gone is Gone, Nothing at All, and Snippy and Snappy, as well as Tales from Grimm, which she translated from her native German. As she lay dying of lung cancer (although Wanda did not smoke, her longtime partner, whom she married at age 50, did), she continued to work on More Tales from Grimm, published posthumously.

“My drawing moods are the only things I ever wish to be ruled by,” she wrote when she was a 21-year-old art student. Wanda Gág made her wish come true. And for that, millions and billions and trillions of readers can rejoice.

Suggested Discussion Questions

for Wanda Gág: The Girl Who Lived to Draw

Teachers and librarians can use Ray’s picture-book biography (for ages 8-10) to enhance children’s appreciation of creativity, community, and perseverance.

1. Hold up the two-page spread showing the children acting out a play. Ask, “How did the family encourage the children’s creativity?”

2. Wanda spoke only German until she went to school. How do you think it would feel to enter a school where you were expected to learn a new language?

3. What did Wanda mean when she said her father was “happy in his soul” while painting in the attic? What kinds of activities make you feel this way?

4. Why did Papa urge Wanda to look at the world in her own way?

5. At bedtime, Wanda’s mom read her Grimms’ fairy tales. What kinds of books do you like to hear read aloud?

6. Wanda wrote that many of her childhood memories centered on the “Grandma folks.” How did those experiences with older relatives contribute to her development as a person or as an artist?

7. Wanda described her “drawing fits.” Have you ever been so engaged in an activity that you lost track of time? What were you doing? How did you feel?

8. Why do you think Papa told Wanda she would have to finish what he could not do? What effect did this have on her goals?

9. Why did the neighbors urge Wanda to quit school and get a job? Do you think you would have resisted, as Wanda did? Why or why not?

10. How did Wanda manage to help her family survive while at the same time developing her artistic talent?

11. Wanda’s motto became “Draw to live, and live to draw.” What did she mean by that?

12. How did the art school and the culture of New York City assist Wanda in developing her own artistic style?

13. Wanda was able to take advantage of the opportunity to create children’s books partly because she had a “Notebook of Ideas.” Do you have some kind of notebook or journal where you keep some of your ideas? What do you enjoy about that?

14. How did Papa’s advice that Wanda see the world in her own way help her to succeed? What other qualities helped her?

Works Cited

Gág, Wanda. Growing Pains: Diaries and Drawings for the Years 1908-1917. New York: Coward-McCann, 1940. Reprint, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Hoyle, Karen Nelson. Wanda Gág : A Life of Art and Stories. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 2009.

Ray, Deborah Kogan. Wanda Gág : The Girl Who Lived to Draw. Viking, 2008. (for ages 7-10)

Children’s Books by Wanda Gág

The ABC Bunny. New York: Coward-McCann, 1933. Reprint, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

The Funny Thing. New York: Coward-McCann, 1929. Reprint, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

Gone is Gone, or The Story of a Man Who Wanted to Do Housework. New York: Coward-McCann, 1935. Reprint, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

Growing Pains: Diaries and Drawings for the Years 1908-1917. New York: Coward-McCann, 1940. Reprint, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. (for ages 12+)

Millions of Cats. New York: Coward-McCann, 1928.

More Tales from Grimm. New York: Coward-McCann, 1947.

Nothing at All. New York: Coward-McCann, 1941. Reprint, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

Snippy and Snappy. New York: Coward-McCann, 1931. Reprint, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs. New York: Coward-McCann, 1938. Reprint, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

Tales from Grimm. New York: Coward-McCann, 1936.

Three Gay Tales from Grimm. New York: Coward-McCann, 1943.

Further Reading for Children

Swain, Gwenyth. Wanda Gág: Storybook Artist. St. Paul, MN: Borealis, an imprint of the Minnesota Historical Society Press. (Ages 9-12)

O’Hara, Megan, ed. The Girlhood Diary of Wanda Gág, 1908-1909: Portrait of a Young Artist. Mankato, MN: Blue Earth/Capstone, 2001. (Ages 8-12)

Further Reading for Adults

“The Classic Tales of Wanda Gag.” http://www.upress.umn.edu/Gag/Gagindex.html The University of Minnesota Press provides summaries, images, and descriptions of the Wanda Gág books it reprints and sells.

“Minnesota Storytime: Reading Guides.” http://www.minnesotahumanities.org/resources/MNMillionsofCats.pdf Tips on using “Millions of Cats” in the classroom or library.

Winnan, Audur H. Wanda Gág: A Catalogue Raisonne of the Prints. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993. Reprint, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Fascinating details on Gág’s artistic development and legacy, complemented by a wide range of photographs of her work.

Women of Color Make Their Presence Known

2011-03-21T04:59:00.000-07:00

March 21 - Today's post provided by TheHappyNappyBookseller

I loved the movie A League of Their Own, directed by Penny Marshall. The story is inspired by the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. It's been years since I've seen it but I still remember a lot of it. Geena Davis was fearless behind the plate, and of course the now classic scene of Tom Hanks screaming, "there's no crying in baseball."

Another smaller scene I will never forget is when the players are practicing and a ball gets away from Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell's characters. On the other side of the fence three Black woman are walking past. When asked to return the ball, one of the woman just guns it back. All the women just stare at each other for a blink of a second. The Black woman is clearly good enough to play but can't because of her race.

The Voice that Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights, by Russell Freedman, the story of singer Marian Anderson, broke my heart. Anderson was rejected many times because of either race or gender.

It's not lost on me that both examples I've given feature Black women. It's second nature for people to focus on what they feel most connected to. The trick is to recognize this and make a conscious effort to think outside of yourself.

One book I discovered last March was Amelia to Zora: Twenty-six Women who Changed the World, by Chin- Lee Megan, illustrated by Halsey Sean Addy. A few of the women featured are Babe Didrikson Zaharias, an athlete that excelled at every sport she played; Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin, an astronomer and the first female professor at Harvard University; Nawal El Sadaawi a doctor and fighter for woman's rights; Grace Hopper inventor and computer pioneer; Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit -an Indian diplomat and the first woman president of the United Nations. I love that the woman included are as diverse as their accomplishments.

It's no secret Women of Color face more obstacles in life and I am always moved by their stories. Below are a few of the ones I've loved.

Shining Star: The Anna May Wong Story by Paula Yoo, illustrated by Lin Wang- The first Asian movie star in Hollywood. If you get a chance watch this great interview with the author.

The Little Piano Girl : The Story of Mary Lou Williams by Ann Ingalls and MaryAnn Macdonald, illustrated by Giselle Potter - Not only was Mary Lou Williams a jazz pianist she was also a composer and arranger. In the afterword there is a Duke Ellington quote - "Mary's music retains a standard of quality that is timeless. She is like soul on soul."

In Her Hands: The Story of Sculptor Augusta Savage by Alan Schroder, illustrated by JaeMe Bereal - Augusta Savage was one of the primary artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Thanks to this biography I know that Savage created a sculpture for the 1939 World's Fair in New York, "The Harp."

She Loved Baseball by Audrey Vernick, illustrated by Don Tate. The story of Effa Manley, co-owner of the Brooklyn Eagles, a Negro League Baseball team. Manley is the first woman to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Skit Scat Raggedy Cat : Ella Fitzgerald by Roxanne Orgill, illustrated by Sean Qualls. We get a whole lot of Ella. Perfect for anyone who loves Fitzgerald's music and for those who are not familiar with her work.

Sky High: The True Story of Maggie Gee by Marissa Moss, illustrated by Carl Angel - One of only two Chinese American women to serve in Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program during WWII. Moss includes some wonderful photographs in the back, including one of Maggie in her uniform and Maggie's mother building Liberty ships, hardhat and all.

Side by Side/Lado a Lado by Monica Brown, illustrated by Joe Cepeda- Dolores Huerta is an activist and co founder of National Farmers Workers Association with Cesar Chavez. There are a few children's biographies on Cesar Chavez, although as far as I know this is the first one that pertains to Dolores Huerta.

Seeds of Change: Wangari's Gift to the World by Jen Cullerton Johnson, illustrated by Sonia Lynn Sadler- This is my favorite children's biography on Wangari Maathai. My interview with the author can be found here.

Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx by Jonah Winter, illustrated by Edel Rodriquez - A timely biography on the first Latina judge to serve on the Supreme Court.

I did my best to place the biographies in a timeline order. This last one should be somewhere in the middle but I felt its gender and racial unity made it the perfect book to end with.

The Sweethearts of Rhythm: The Story of the Greatest All-girl Swing Band in the World by Marilyn Nelson, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney - The Sweethearts of Rhythm was the first integrated all women swing band in the world. When formed in 1937 the band included a Chinese saxophonist, a Hawaiian trumpeter and a Mexican clarinetist, along with Black musicians. In 1943, White musicians join the band for the first time.

All of these women refused to let anyone deny them their rightful place in history. Knowing what all they have accomplished in spite of everything fulls me with so much joy. All of these biographies make sure their contributions, successes and sacrifices are not forgotten.

Editor's Note:
TheHappyNappyBookseller is a bookseller and baseball fan in Atlanta Georgia.
Author Audrey Vernick, mentioned above, has shared her experience of writing She Loved Baseball in an earlier post.

Stand Straight, Ella Kate - a book review

2011-03-20T05:00:00.000-07:00

March 20 - Today's post provided by GreenBeanTeenQueen

About the Book: Ella Kate was a real giant-at her tallest she stood at over 8 feet! This is her story.

GreenBeanTeenQueen Says: I had to read this book because Kate Klise is from my state-I gotta support my local authors! What I found was a fantastic picture book biography that taught me about a woman I knew nothing about.

Stand Straight, Ella Kate is a picture book biography of Ella Kate Ewing, the tallest lady on Earth. When Ella starts growing at an alarming rate at age seven, she's embarrassed, teased and becomes shy. But as she grows up, she realizes that her height can also lead to great adventures. She travels with the circus, appears in museums, and makes money for her family.

I loved the illustrations! The illustrations bring the story to life. I also love that there's a great discussion that can happen with this book about overcoming your fears and shyness, but it never feels like the book is really slapping you in the face with that message.

Young readers will enjoy Ella Kate’s story and I’m sure they’ll be fascinated by her life. She was an amazing woman and I love learning all about her.

A great early biography-highly recommended!

Editor's Note:

Klise, Kate. Stand Straight, Ella Kate. 2010. Illustrated by M. Sarah Klise. New York: Dial
More about Ella Kate Ewing available here.
GreenBeanTeenQueen is running for YALSA's 2013 Michael L. Printz Award Committee

An interview with Linda Brewster, author of Rose O'Neill: The Girl Who Loved to Draw and Giveaway!

2011-03-19T05:00:00.000-07:00

March 19 - Today's post provided by Paula Morrow, Editor and Publisher, Boxing Day Books, and Linda Brewster, author of ROSE O'NEILL: THE GIRL WHO LOVED TO DRAW
The publisher has kindly donated a copy of this book to be sent to a lucky reader
(see below for how to enter)

What sparks artistic genius?

The childhood of Rose O’Neill (1874-1944) was impoverished in terms of wealth, yet it was rich to the point of overflowing in art, literature, music, and imagination. Armed with very little formal education, no formal art training, and her portfolio, O’Neill made her way to New York City at the age of 18. In a short time, she became the first female illustrator at PUCK magazine, the first woman cartoonist in America, and eventually the highest paid illustrator of her time. In 2008, Rose was honored by the National Women’s History Project.

Linda Brewster

Author Linda Brewster, herself an artist, was born the year Rose O’Neill died. Brewster grew up in the Missouri Ozarks near the O’Neill homestead, knew the O’Neill family, and has devoted her life to the study of Rose’s life and art. Here are Linda’s thoughtful responses to a conversation about Rose O’Neill:

PM: You have indicated that O’Neill’s vagabond childhood inspired you to write Rose O’Neill, The Girl Who Loved to Draw.

Brewster: If you look at the childhood of any great person, it will reveal their earliest thought and choices. The path they chose may not be a straight line and may take many twists and turns, but their greatness will point backward to where they began. Some people get a later start than others, but for the most part, their talents, interests and motivations show in their childhood. This was certainly true of Rose O’Neill.

PM: What elements of Rose’s early life played the greatest part in creating the focused and successful woman that she became?

Brewster: Rose O’Neill’s mother was a remarkable person. Alice O’Neill was raised as a “lady” in a house with servants. She was well-educated and studied piano and voice. During the Edwardian period, ladies didn’t have jobs or even think of careers. They sat at home doing needlework and hosting their husband’s parties. William Patrick O’Neill, Rose’s father, had a love of the literary arts. He spent his inheritance on a bookstore and art gallery. But he lacked knowledge of business management and within a few years he lost everything. When the family had to move from Pennsylvania to Nebraska to start over, Alice was the backbone. She learned to cook and care for a house without help. She home schooled her children while teaching piano to earn money for the family. Alice never told Rose she couldn’t be an artist or that she had to be a lady. Instead, Alice encouraged Rose to follow her dreams. This gave Rose the independence she needed to follow her heart.

Rose's first published cartoon

PM: How can youngsters of today relate to and learn from Rose O’Neill?

Brewster: Young readers today can relate to Rose O’Neill as a mentor. All children, at one time or another, feel they don’t have the power to change or improve their situations. Rose O’Neill came from a family with few resources. She wore hand-me-down clothes, hand-me-down shoes, and was bullied for her poor appearance by children who had much more. But in spite of that, she discovered in herself what really interested her most—drawing. She loved drawing people and spent most of her free time studying how to draw. There were no art teachers, but because she was self-motivated, she found resources in her father’s book collection and in the public library. Rose O’Neill shows children that they do have the power to change and improve themselves if they focus, study, and seek people who can help.

PM: Ultimately, it seems O’Neill’s accomplishments as artist, illustrator, poet, novelist and sculptor were overshadowed by her greatest financial success. Today, she is celebrated as the creator of Kewpie, the whimsical character that first appeared as a comic strip on the pages of Ladies Home Journal in 1909, and in 1914 became a doll. To this day, members of the International Rose O’Neill Club gather every year in Branson, Missouri, to celebrate “Kewpiesta.” O’Neill’s art is still displayed in several museums, but she is known primarily as “the Kewpie lady.”

Brewster: While Kewpie brought her a fortune, it also brought her tremendous pain and distraction from her work. Rose was generous to a fault. She didn’t know how to say no. People lived like parasites in her homes and at her expense for years. Her fame, as a result of the doll, brought her a great deal of concern about unpaid bills that weren’t all her own. Fortunately, the Kewpies didn’t come along until she had been working for two decades, so she left thousands of drawings and paintings that demonstrate her great talent.

Self-portrait with Kewpies

PM: As an artist, O’Neill had many clients, but as a woman, her constituency was other women, and she fought fiercely for their rights.

Brewster: Rose O’Neill was born and lived as a liberated woman. She didn’t have to work at it because it came instinctively, due to the confidence she had in her own abilities. She used her fame to draw crowds to rallies and parades in which she marched. She created posters, fliers, programs, and ads depicting babies saying, “Votes For Our Mothers!” Even after the 19th Amendment passed in 1920, she continued to work against unfair treatment of women and minorities. O’Neill, who fancied flowing, loose-fitting garments, even became symbolic of the effort to free women from that most restrictive affront—the corset!

One of Rose's many magazine covers

PM: O’Neill was successful in many fields, as illustrator, artist, poet, author, sculptor, and women’s suffrage activist long before “feminist” became a word. What would you consider O’Neill’s greatest contribution?

Brewster: Rose O’Neill’s greatest single contribution was to go fearlessly into her profession, approaching editors and art directors with her work. She had no introductions or help; she boldly stepped through those doors alone. By being one of the first women to open the doors of the all-male establishments, and by showing that she could do the work, she made it possible for other women to follow.

Rose O’Neill died of a stroke at age 69. She is buried next to a crystal-clear mountain stream at the homestead she named Bonniebrook, in the hills of Taney County, Missouri. A museum there pays tribute to a lifetime of imagination, generosity, and creativity . . . lots and lot of creativity!

To win a copy of this book for your home, school, or public library:

Illustrator, poet, fine artist, children's author, sculptor, novelist, suffragist, and more...Rose made admirable contributions in many fields. What other woman do you admire for her accomplishments in several different fields? Leave a comment below with your answer and your e-mail; a winner will be chosen by a random number generator on March 31.

Discovering her passion and calling: The dedicated life of Eleanor Roosevelt

2011-03-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

March 18 - Today's post provided by Great Kid Books

As our daughters encounter struggles and defeats throughout their life, one of the traits we most want them to develop is a sense of resiliency: a sense that they can pick themselves up and try again. But key to this resiliency is a sense of purpose – why you are trying so hard, bruised and battered,to pick yourself up and try again. We do learn from history, and a remarkable woman to share with our daughters is Eleanor Roosevelt. She epitomizes resiliency in many ways. Throughout her life she encountered difficulties and tragedies, but she discovered a true passion and purpose and through this was able to develop a much stronger belief in herself. Below are two excellent books to share with your
children.

“I have never felt that anything really mattered but knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could do.”

Eleanor, Quiet No More, by Doreen Rappaport, introduces Eleanor Roosevelt as a woman who blossomed as she discovered her own abilities, her calling to help others, and her voice in the life of the nation. As in Martin’s Big Words, Rappaport uses Roosevelt’s own words to anchor each page, showing Roosevelt’s growth from an insecure, unhappy child to an influential voice in the politics of the nation and the world. Eleanor’s early life, while one of great privilege, was also one filled with tragedy. Both of her parents died before she was ten, and she was raised by her grandmother with little affection. Although her new husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was charming and caring, Eleanor’s mother-in-
law was controlling and domineering. As Franklin entered politics, life began to change for Eleanor.

“What one has to do usually can be done.”

Rappaport’s introduction to Eleanor Roosevelt is especially powerful in the way she shows how Eleanor grew into her own voice. She used her position as the wife of a senator, and then as the first lady to pressure officials to provide the best care for wounded soldiers, to help the millions of people out of work in the Great Depression. Gary Kelley’s artwork conveys Eleanor’s growing confidence and sense of purpose. His muted colors convey the gravity of the times, but may not pull children into the book. The book’s cover, dominated by subdued grays and blues, does not immediately attract children the way some of Rappaport’s other books do, but its message certainly does.

“You must do the things you cannot do.”

Our Eleanor: A Scrapbook Look at Eleanor Roosevelt’s Life, by Candace Fleming, provides a longer, fuller look at Eleanor’s life for children who want to learn more about her remarkable life. Written for children ages 12 to 14, Fleming assembles an amazing amount of primary sources, from letters Eleanor wrote to her beloved father, to archival photographs and diary entries, to reproductions of newspaper accounts. Fashioned as a scrapbook, this book is perfect for either browsing through or reading cover to cover. Fleming provides a detailed look at Eleanor’s life, and she is adept at looking at the complexities in Eleanor’s life – her strengths and weaknesses, her successes and controversies, her friends and enemies. Fleming has organized her biography into seven chapters which roughly follow the timeline of Eleanor’s life, but individual chapters focus on topics such as her marriage, “self-discovery” and her focus as a “friend of the people”. Some young readers may find it confusing as Fleming jumps around to different times a bit, but I found Fleming’s writing compelling and fascinating as she draws connections between different events in Eleanor’s long life. Fleming is sincere, respectful and perceptive throughoutthe book, guided by her passion for her subject. As she writes in a personal introductory note,

Eleanor “faced life’s slings and arrows, creating an ardent, exhilarating life devoted to passion and experience, to thinking and doing and growing. This passionate life touched men, women and children everywhere. Why? Because in Eleanor’s vision of a more generous world she included people of every race and religion, of every social and economic class. Her profound sincerity caused them to believe – with her – in the innate goodness of humanity.”

Enjoy sharing these compelling, riveting, moving books with your children as you celebrate

Women’s History Month.

Eleanor, Quiet No More by Doreen Rappaport
illustrated by Gary Kelley
NY: Disney-Hyperion Books, 2009
ages 6 – 10
available on Amazon or at your local library

Our Eleanor: A Scrapbook Look at Eleanor Roosevelt's Life
by Candace Fleming
NY: Atheneum Books, 2005
ages 12 – 14
available on Amazon or at your local library

All quotes in bold above are from Eleanor Roosevelt, as shared in Eleanor, Quiet No More, by Doreen
Rappaport. For archival, public use photographs of Eleanor Roosevelt, see Wikimedia Commons.

Editor's Note:
Mary Ann Scheuer of Great Kid Books is a librarian at a public elementary school. In addition to her blog, Great Kid Books, you may find her on Facebook, Goodreads and Twitter.

A Great Omission: Knowledge of Women in the Arts

2011-03-17T05:00:00.000-07:00

March 17 - Today's post provided by Diane Browning

A Great Omission: Knowledge of Women in the Arts

Catharina van Hemessen,
Renaissance painter from the Southern Netherlands

When I was growing up I never heard anything about famous women artists, and very few examples of famous women in other fields of endeavor. My mother was a painter and a fashion illustrator and she took me to art museums to see masterpieces that had been created throughout history. Where were paintings by women? I remember a little boy telling me that girls had never done anything in the way of inventions, great art or science. Erroneous of course, but a common belief -- there was very little about women in our textbooks. It was many years later that I saw a groundbreaking museum exhibition in Los Angeles exclusively made up of women artists, from medieval to modern times. I was astonished. Why were these painting – these women’s names – not widely known? The accompanying catalog of the exhibit was a thick book of wonderful paintings by women artists who, in spite of historical and societal difficulties throughout history, had persevered to create paintings as exceptional as the works of male artists.

Around the time of the museum exhibition I saw a PBS documentary titled Anonymous was a Woman, by film-maker Mirra Bank. The film expressed the belief of art historians that many unsigned 18th and 19th century American folk paintings were created by women. The memory of that film stayed with me, and I wanted to honor those women folk artists – there are very few who signed their names, and little is known about them. I chose to write a fictional story which would represent issues that might have made it difficult for a young girl in 1830s America to be a professional painter. My book, Signed, Abiah Rose was released in June. It is about a young folk painter who is determined to succeed in her chosen profession and to sign her name to her paintings.

Unlike when I was growing up, there are now many enlightening biographies and fiction books relating to women’s talent and contributions to the world. There are books that encourage girls to pursue their dreams, showing girls are capable of the same achievements as their male counterparts. I believe there is always a need for books to encourage self-esteem in children -- books about dreams and success, and about girls who succeeded despite being told “no” too many times concerning their education, their careers, their very lives.

Below are some of my favorite picture books about women artists. The artists and the paintings they created were very different from one another. What did they have in common? They all lived to paint and they wouldn’t have taken “no” for an answer.

• Summer Birds -- by Margarita Engle, illustrated by Julie Paschkis – about German scientist and illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian

• Art from Her Heart -- by Kathy Whitehead, illustrated by Shane Evans -- about American folk artist Clementine Hunter

• Frida -- by Jonah Winter, illustrated by Ana Juan -- about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo

I was happy to discover Summer Birds by Margarita Engle in my local bookstore. (Our books had been reviewed together by a North Carolina newspaper – favorably! – as new books about girl artists.) Maria Sibylla Merian was a 13 year old German girl, who had shown artistic talent from an early age. It was the mid-17th century and Maria loved to study butterflies and other insects – in secret to avoid being accused of witchcraft! From her observations she would be able to prove that butterflies did not spring from mud as “beasts of the devil” which was the common belief at the time. When she was older, continuing her studies of insects, plants and natural phenomena, she would travel across the world making her beautiful meticulous paintings of plants and of insect life cycles. Today her work can be found in the collections of art museums around the world. I was fortunate to see a large exhibit of her amazing work at the Getty museum last year. Julie Paschkis’ bright and joyful illustrations beautifully express Maria’s excitement in her world of discovery. The book’s title is taken from an expression referring to butterflies and moths which appear in the summer.

I love folk art. While I was researching for my book I came across Art from Her Heart (by Kathy Whitehead, illustrated by Shane W. Evans) about folk artist Clementine Hunter. Without training and after a life dealing with prejudice and poverty, Clementine Hunter first began to paint in 1938, at age 50. She painted on whatever surface she could find—boards, bottles, window shades. She painted her memories of a long life working as a manual laborer on a Louisiana plantation. She would go on to sell her paintings and eventually this descendant of slaves would see her work exhibited in the New Orleans Museum of Art (although because of segregation she herself would not be able to enter the museum during business hours). She would paint for almost 40 years, and was an example of how “art can keep the spirit alive.” She was a remarkable woman whose work is appreciated to this day. Shane W. Evans’ colorful illustrations, paired with Clementine’s delightful folk paintings, work well to tell Clementine’s inspiring story.

Jonah Winter’s book, Frida, is simply told, poetic and inspiring, with beautiful and whimsical illustrations by the very talented Ana Juan. The colorful, magical, folk-art-influenced paintings of Frida Kahlo have long been favorites of mine. Her art was like no one else’s, and it was strongly influenced by the difficulties in her life (encompassing the first 50 years of the 20th century). An early bout with polio and a terrible bus accident resulted in a life of pain. But nothing could keep her from painting. She channeled her pain into her work. She painted fantastical dreamlike paintings, imaginary friends and many surreal self-portraits. She was bold, brave, fierce and irreverent and was loved and known all over the world. This book is a wonderful tribute to her.

Editor's Note:

Diane Browning is the author/illustrator of Signed, Abiah Rose (Tricycle/Random House 2010). Her first picture book, it received a starred review from Booklist and was named to their Top 10 Historical Titles for Youth and Top 10 Art Titles for Youth - 2010. It was also chosen for the ALA Amelia Bloomer Recommended Titles List – 2011. Visit her blog at http://www.dianebrowningillustrations.com/.

Women's History Month Book Review: Tillie the Terrible Swede: How One Woman, a Sewing Needle, and a Bicycle Changed History (Alfred A. Knopf, 2011)

2011-03-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

MARCH 16 Today's post is provided by The Fourth Musketeer

Recommended for ages 5-10.

In the 1890's, bicycles were intimately associated with women's rights and the suffragist movements. Two new books for young people on this subject are out this year: Sue Stauffacher's picture book biography of bicycle racer Tillie Anderson (aka "The Terrible Swede") and Sue Macy's Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (with a Few Flat Tires Along the Way). [Sue Macy will be contributing a guest post later this month on Kidlit Celebrates Women's History Month.]

Tillie Anderson appeared to be a typical hard-working immigrant girl, laboring in a tailor shop. But when a man on a bicycle rides by the shop, she begins saving up her money to buy one of the new-fangled contraptions, despite warnings from her mother that bicycles aren't for ladies.

Tillie wasn't interested in riding gracefully around a maypole, like other girls; she started training to get strong enough to ride fast, really fast. But there was a problem--her 19th century dresses. Soon Tillie designed herself a more aerodynamic bicycle outfit, one that scandalized the whole neighborhood. But Tillie didn't care if her friends and family thought she was "wicked"; she soon was entering her first cycling races, breaking women's records left and right and becoming the women's bicycle-racing champion of the world. She became famous, with poets writing her odes, bicycle companies looking for endorsements, and reporters wanting to interview her. Some male cyclists thought Tillie was "unwomanly," and doctors even examined her to see what the effects of all that hard exercise would be on a woman's body. They found her, not surprisingly, to be a "mass of muscle," and put a picture of her leg in the newspaper! Imagine how shocking in those days, when a mere glimpse of a woman's ankle was viewed as something sexy and forbidden.

The reader can't help but be inspired by the story of this remarkable woman, a celebrity in the era before female athletes were accepted. Sarah McMenemy's bright and colorful gouache and collage illustrations are simply charming, and add immeasurably to the appeal of this tale. The opening end papers show the accessories of a proper Victorian lady, depicted in a soft, feminine lavender, while the end papers at the conclusion of the book feature a year-by-year breakdown of Tillie's records and her cycling victories, seen on a background of a vibrant lime green, decorated with trophies, Tillie on her bicycle, and swirls of speed. This is a great story to share with girls of all ages.

For more on the real-life Tillie, visit tillieanderson.com. For more on the history of bicycling, the book's author recommends thewheelmen.org.

Author Sue Stauffacher is currently training for an exciting project related to this book: her Tillie Ride (see www.tillieride.com for the full story). In short, for a week in May 2011, Sue and her husband, along with groups of schoolchildren joining them along the way, will ride from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Chicago, Illinois, to deliver copies of her book about Tillie to the Chicago Public Library, visiting schools along the way that have not had a children's book author visit within the last five years. Her goal is not only to celebrate Tillie's legacy but to get kids excited about biking, demonstrate what can be achieved through relationships and networking, and celebrate her 50th birthday and 25th anniversary!

The real Tillie on her bicycle

Booktalks for Women’s History Month

2011-03-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

MARCH 15 Today's post is provided by Abby the Librarian

I am always on the lookout for great titles to booktalk for Women's History Month, so I wanted to share a few of my favorites here with you today!

Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart by Candace Fleming (Schwartz & Wade, 2011)

You know the story of Amelia Earhart, right? She was a famous female pilot, flying across the country and even across the Atlantic Ocean back when airplanes were not nearly as common as they are today. But Amelia Lost tells Amelia's story like no other book has. The book switches between biographical information about Amelia and the story of the days of her disappearance. In a gripping narrative, Candace Fleming relates what happened on the day that Amelia Earhart disappeared. There were several reports of civilians (even children) picking up what might have been snatches of Amelia's radio broadcasts as her plane crash-landed on a remote island in the Pacific! Can you imagine turning on your radio and hearing Amelia Earhart's voice calling for help?

This book brings Amelia's story to life as no other book has done. Even if you think you know the story of Amelia Earhart, it's worth picking up Amelia Lost to give it another look!

Girls Think of Everything by Catherine Thimmesh, illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Houghton Mifflin, 2002).

What do chocolate chip cookies, windshield wipers, and flat-bottomed paper bags have in common? They were all invented by women! Girls Think of Everything gives a glimpse at some of the many, many products invented by women. In some cases, women weren't allowed to patent their own inventions. In some cases, they had to fight to keep their ideas from being patented by men. In some cases, they weren't even allowed in the factories to oversee their own products being produced. But thank goodness women kept inventing things! Short entries are accompanied by collage illustrations and a list of additional inventions by women is included in the back matter. Bring along some of the items mentioned in the book and see if kids can guess what they have in common.

Skit Scat Raggedy Cat: Ella Fitzgerald by Roxanne Orgill, illustrated by Sean Qualls (Candlewick Press, 2010).

Ever since Ella Fitzgerald was a little girl, she had an unstoppable love for music. When she was 14, her mother died, leaving Ella all alone and with no place to live. But Ella didn't give up on her dream of performing. She kept going to auditions, even though she looked like a "raggedy cat" since she didn't have money for fancy clothes. It was hard at first, but people could see she had something special: her music made people want to get up and DANCE! And soon, she wasn't a "raggedy cat" anymore, she was a "rowdy-dowdy high-hat baby" climbing the charts. Ella went on to win 14 Grammy awards, including one for lifetime achievement. Play some of Ella's music for the kids (I'm fond of the following clip if you have access to YouTube:)

Lives of Extraordinary Women: Rulers, Rebels (And What the Neighbors Thought) by Kathleen Krull (Harcourt Children's Books, 2000).

Which woman was not only one of her country's most successful rulers but also threw parties that lasted for 18 days? Which woman forbid her subjects to call her queen, taking the title of king instead and leading her country in a war for its independence? Which woman, when hit in the face with a rock during the middle of a speech, used her sari to cover the blood and kept speaking? (Elizabeth I of England, Nzingha of West Africa [Angola], Indira Gandhi of India, respectively.) In Lives of Extraordinary Women, Kathleen Krull gives us brief biographies, complete with juicy details, of 20 outrageous women from all over the world.

A Strong Right Arm: The Story of Mamie "Peanut" Johnson by Michelle Y. Green (Dial, 2002).

Ever since she could remember, Mamie Johnson loved playing baseball. And I'm not talking softball here, I'm talking hardball. She was a fabulous pitcher, striking out the boys in her neighborhood. The problem? Mamie was born in 1935, a time when women were not allowed to play professional sports. When the All-American Girls' Baseball League was developed after many male baseball players went overseas to serve in the army, Mamie was hopeful that she could follow her dreams at last... but the League would not accept her because she was black.

Mamie still didn't give up. She went on to play with the Negro Leagues - yep, a men's baseball league - and Mamie held her own. Her strong right arm took her far!

Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream by Tanya Lee Stone (Candlewick, 2009).

In 1960, the Space Race was all the rage and astronauts were American heroes.

They were also men.

Enter Jerrie Cobb and the rest of the "Mercury 13". In the early '60s, 13 women took and passed the same physical and psychological tests that men took to qualify for NASA's astronaut training program. But the "Mercury 13" women were not allowed to become astronauts, despite the fact that they were expert pilots. In fact, no woman went into space until Sally Ride did in 1983 and even then she didn't pilot the ship.

Almost Astronauts tells the story of the extraordinary women who fought for their right to make history, to go into space as qualified, talented astronauts.

Women Who Followed Their Musical Dreams

2011-03-14T04:11:00.000-07:00

March 14 - Today's post provided by Holly George-Warren

I originally interviewed Loretta Lynn for
Rolling Stone Magazine in 1994.

I bought Loretta Lynn’s cookbook
at her recent concert.

I just participated in the celebration of Loretta Lynn’s golden anniversary as a country music performer: She and her band the Coal Miners performed in a beautiful old theater in upstate New York, as part of her 50th Anniversary Tour. At age 77, Loretta can still sing with power, and onstage she’s quite a pistol. Five decades ago, when she started her career with “Honky Tonk Girl,” a song she wrote and recorded for a small label, women performers were scarce in country music. In those days, record companies had the misconception that women, the primary record buyers at the time, only wanted to purchase discs by handsome male singers. Were they ever wrong! Loretta, then a young mother with four children (and later two more), proved that songs written from a woman’s point of view could be big-sellers. In 1961, she was inspired by the few female country artists, especially Kitty Wells and Patsy Cline, who became stars by singing tunes penned by others. Not only could Loretta relate her experiences as a wife and mother by writing her own material, but she could make more money that way as well. She knew what it was like to be poor, growing up in a large family in Kentucky, with her father eking out a living as a coal miner. One of Loretta’s best songs, “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” tells the story of her life. Without Loretta paving the way, there would be no Carrie Underwood or Taylor Swift.

I interviewed Dale Evans, the Queen of the West, in 1999.

I’ve been lucky to interview Loretta, as well as Kitty Wells, and another fantastic country singer, Tammy Wynette. All of them are featured in my book, Honky-Tonk Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country & Western Music. These women were also inspired by some of America’s first women entertainers: cowgirls. Singing cowgirls Patsy Montana and Dale Evans both had successful careers onstage, making records, and in the movies. When they started performing in the 1930s, it was frowned upon for women to travel alone, much less have a career in show business. Patsy, who was born Ruby Blevins in Arkansas, and Dale, born Lucille Smith in Texas, changed their names to become stars, first by performing on the radio. By taking on the image of the cowgirl, they portrayed independent gals who were headstrong and courageous. Their forebears were mothers and daughters who actually traveled west in the late 1800s and became experienced equestriennes. Some of these women joined Wild West shows and early rodeos to entertain audiences with their skills on horseback. I met both Dale Evans and Patsy Montana before they passed away, and they inspired me to tell their stories – and the history of women of the West – in my book, The Cowgirl Way. Another Western trailblazer who started her career dressed as a cowgirl is Wanda Jackson, the Queen of Rockabilly. She grew up in Oklahoma and had her own radio show when she was only thirteen. While still in high school, she made her first record and had a country hit. But in 1954, on tour with Elvis Presley, Wanda fell in love with rock & roll and started singing rockin’ numbers like “Let’s Have a Party,” “Fujiyama Mama,” and “Hard-Headed Woman.” I have seen Wanda, who’s now 73, perform all over the United States and she always thrills audiences – because she loves what she’s doing and is such a dynamo onstage.

Wanda Jackson joined me at my book signing at Yard Dog in Austin, Texas for
Shake, Rattle & Roll in 2002 .

Wanda is featured in my book, Shake, Rattle & Roll: The Founders of Rock & Roll. Her new album, The Party Ain’t Over, recorded with Jack White (known for his band the White Stripes), has been getting rave reviews in such publications as the New York Times and Rolling Stone. Let’s hope a whole new generation of music fans will discover her high-octane sound! I once asked Wanda about her influence as an artist, and she said, “Through the years many girl artists have told me some really wonderful stories about how they got into music, and many times I played a major role in at least giving them the courage to do the music they felt in their soul – just the way I did. And it’s always gratifying when you feel like you’ve influenced someone to follow her own dreams.”

Editor's Note:

Holly George-Warren is an award-winning writer, editor, book packager, producer, and music consultant. Her music, writing, consulting and appearance credits are almost too numerous to mention! Visit her site at http://www.hollygeorgewarren.com/

Something That is Meaningful: Telling Effa Manley's Story

2011-03-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

March 13 - Today's post provided by Audrey Vernick

Something That Is Meaningful: Telling Effa Manley’s Story

I have a college-aged nephew and a teenaged niece, siblings, who are notorious for being terrible storytellers. They famously backtrack in the midst of every story they tell to fill in details, some of which matter: “Wait, did I mention we were at a zoo?”

That same issue—context—is always my greatest concern when writing nonfiction for children. It requires a precise touch; you can’t condescend, but you have to be mindful of the fact that young readers often lack the historical understanding required to fully appreciate a given narrative.

     When I discovered Effa Manley’s story in 2006 and shared it, with great excitement, with the baseball- and book-loving people I know, adults, they understood its appeal immediately. A woman in baseball? In the 1930s and ‘40s? An African-American woman?

     As much as kids know that ours was a largely segregated country at that time, it’s really hard to adequately drive that point home in a way that effectively conveys the humiliation, the daily indignities so many people endured. It has become a fact memorized: separate entrances, separate water fountains, back of the bus. Likewise, I don’t think most kids really understand how limited employment opportunities were for women in Effa Manley’s day.

     If I had a chance to sit down with my readers, I’d end up telling Effa Manley’s story just like my niece and nephew tell their stories, circling back repeatedly to fill in spots that might be blanks.

     With any book, but especially with a picture book, you have to use your words wisely. Representing a life in a mere 32 pages (with big illustrations on each page) requires you to make difficult choices. You can’t afford to spare any words to drop out of your story to say, Now listen up and pay attention, here, reader. Women just didn’t do that kind of thing in those days!

     As with any piece of writing, you do the best you can. You use words to provide a framework for understanding, and you hope for the best.

     Sometimes you count on a co-reader—parent, teacher, librarian—to play the role of my niece and nephew. A reader can step outside a story in a way a writer can’t. They can spiral back around and fill in the blanks.

     When I think of what ended up on the SHE LOVED BASEBALL cutting room floor -- the anecdotes, the contextual clues, the telling moments -- I try to remind myself, to make myself sincerely believe, that it’s not necessary for a child to understand every aspect of the story in all the exact ways I intended. What’s important is that readers take away something that is meaningful.

     There’s also the delicious knowledge that readers can return to a book with a year or two of life under their belt, with a greater understanding of the world, and comprehend the book in a newer, deeper way. I loved that sense of getting it more, getting it better, each time I read a book as a child. I still do.

     Taking the long view, we really shouldn’t lose sight of this: a young reader’s possible inability to understand how rare it was for a woman to be so influential and powerful at that time in our history is really, at its core, a fantastic indicator of all the progress we’ve made.

     Effa Manley inspired me in the way she always stood up for what was right and did what needed to be done, without any regard for what others might think. That is the meaningful something I hope all readers will get. No circling back around required.

Editors Note: Find out more about Audrey Vernick at her website or visit her blog, She Loved Baseball: An Author's Thoughts from Left Field.

A discussion guide for teachers for She Loved Baseball is also available at her website.

Women Making America

2011-03-12T05:00:00.000-08:00

March 12 - Today's post provided by Heidi Hemming

Author Pearl S. Buck once said that writing her books was like being “ a juggler trying to keep a handful of balls aloft at once. . . . Were I a man, my books would have been written in leisure, protected by a wife and a secretary and various household officials. As it is, being a woman, my work has had to be done between bouts of homemaking.” All I can say to that is “amen sister.” When my sister and I started writing Women Making America in 2003, we had busy lives and five children, ages two to ten, between us. Our project was carried out in the midst of homework assignments, hastily prepared meals, and Girl Scout cookie sales. But our commitment arose from a passionate love of women’s history and our realization that as educators we could not find one chronological history of American women written at a level accessible to readers of all ages. How would students discover that women have been full participants in the American story if there weren’t the resources to teach?

Our efforts resulted in a book entitled, Women Making America: a colorful whirlwind tour of what it would have been like to be a woman living in any given era of American history. How would it have felt to get up every day and put on a corset, layers and layers of clothes, and top it off with a huge hat? What could have motivated a group of young crew team members to march into the Yale athletic director’s office, take off their shirts to reveal “TITLE IX” scrawled across their chests? And what was Ellen Church doing wearing that silly cape and little cap, pushing a plane into its hanger? Throughout the book we included reoccurring themes such as health, home, amusements, paid work, and beauty to provide a lens for both change and continuity over time.

Race, geography, culture and class have all shaped the experience of womanhood in significant ways. In this version of history, slaves, Japanese picture brides, and poor seamstresses appear side by side with more well-known icons of women’s history. Central to the story is the idea that we are all history-makers, and that the choices we make matter. To parenthesize this, each chapter begins with a choice, from slave Satira Turner walking away from her master with Christmas dinner still on the stove, to Louise Rosine refusing to roll up her stockings on a hot 1920s Chicago beach. As much as possible, we used anecdotes and women’s own voices to describe what they did and how they felt about it. The result is a narrative in which we see ourselves, our mothers, and our grandmothers.

Not long after Women Making America was published, our editor’s eight-year-old daughter had a friend over to play. In the course of the game, he insisted that girls were not as capable as boys. “Wanna make a bet?” she responded, and ran to show him the book.

We know women’s history matters, but so should everyone else.

Editor's Note:
Visit Heidi Hemming and sister Julie Hemming Savage's website at Women Making America. There you may download Chapter 2 and Chapter 7.

Beautiful Minds: Teaching about Women in the Sciences through Picture Books

2011-03-11T05:00:00.000-08:00

March 11 - Today's post provided by Teach with Picture Books

Nothing speaks more loudly than a good role model. As a teacher and a father to two daughters, I absolutely believe that. I therefore love picture books which chronicle the lives of women who, from their very childhoods, proved themselves to be innovative, independent, and incredibly resolute.

Additionally, I believe that picture book biographies serve a universal role in helping students realize that childhood dreams and interests may determine the paths they follow as adults.

Take, for example, Julia Morgan, who as a child loved to build. In her mind, buildings were huge puzzles, and she spent hours seeking to discover how all the pieces fit. Greatly influenced by her engineer father and her cousin Pierre LeBrun, an architect who designed many of Manhattan's stone churches and its first skyscrapers, Julia dreamed of becoming an architect.

The book Julia Morgan Built a Castle, written by Celeste Davidson Mannis and illustrated by Miles Hyman, describes Julia's dogged determination to first enter the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and to then gain acceptance as a competent professional (unlikely for a woman in the early 1900's). Her success in both endeavors is inspiring to read, yet the story doesn't end there.

Morgan was a tireless architect who completed hundreds of projects while simultaneously working on William Randolph Hearst's incredible San Simeon estate (the "castle" of the book's title), which required twenty eight years to complete. In her design, Morgan ingeniously suspended the estate's massive 345,000 gallon Neptune Pool from steel reinforced concrete beams so that it would sway, rather than buckle, during California's frequent earthquakes. A simple narrative and Miles Hyman's glowing, sculpturesque illustrations combine to make this book a satisfying journey through the life of one remarkable woman.

Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight Became an Inventor, written and illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully, describes how a curious girl became one of America's most prolific inventors. McCully helps readers see that Mattie's childhood fascination with how common things work (a sled, a kite, a foot warmer) fueled her adolescent desire to improve the way machinery operated. While working in a textile mill at age twelve, for example, Mattie witnesses a serious injury when a rogue shuttle ejects from a loom and strikes a friend in the head. Young Mattie mulls the problem over; her solution, a metal guard, is adopted by all of the factories in Manchester. Injuries from flying shuttles cease immediately.

Mattie's later invention of a machine designed to create flat-bottomed paper bags (yes, those same bags we still use today) revolutionized the industry. Earlier flat bags needed to be held with one hand when packing, and ripped easily when overfilled. When she tries to file her patent for the machine, however, Mattie finds herself in a patent war with a man who most certainly stole her idea just days earlier. Fortunately, Mattie's detailed diagrams and meticulous notes prove her "priority of invention," and from that point forward she pursues a life as a professional inventor. Her obituary refers to her as "the Lady Edison."

Stone Girl, Bone Girl: The Story of Mary Anning, written by Laurence Anholt and illustrated by Sheila Moxley, provides readers with a more personal look at a scientist's childhood. This makes perfect sense in the case of Mary Anning, since she was only twelve when she discovered the fossil of a great sea monster on the coast of England. This ichthyosaur would be just the first of hundreds of rare fossilized animals Anning would uncover over her lifetime.

But the road to her success is not an easy one. At the age of fifteen months, Mary survived a bolt of lightning which killed her nurse and two other girls. Her father, who encouraged her interest in fossils, died when Mary was just a girl. The children who should be her friends teased her, calling out, "Stone Girl, Bone Girl, Out-on-your-own Girl!" Despite these obstacles, Mary Anning pursued her passion for the past, paving the way for other scientists in the field of evolution.

If you dig (pardon the pun) that story, you might also be interested in two other versions of Mary Anning's story. Catherine Brighton's The Fossil Girl: Mary Anning's Dinosaur Discovery tells the story of Mary's discovery through graphic novel format, complete with frames and speech bubbles. Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon, written by Jeannine Atkins with pictures by Michael Dooling, presents a much more mysterious, shrouded England, offering the reader just the slightest glimpse of the actual ichthyosaur. The emphasis is more on Mary's determination to see the job through. Teachers might consider sharing all three versions with students to generate discussion about choices made by writers and illustrators alike.

If you're seeking a book aimed at more independent readers, look no further than Jane Goodall: Researcher Who Champions Chimps, written and illustrated by Mike Venezia. (This book is from Getting to Know the World's Greatest Inventors and Scientists, just one of the excellent biography series created by Venezia).

From her earliest childhood, Jane dreamed of traveling to Africa to study the animals of that continent. Jane's father was a race car driver, often absent from the home scene, so Jane and her mother would spend hours in the garden observing plants, insects, and small mammals. Later, when evacuated from London during the bombings of World War II, Jane spent time exploring the rocky cliffs and pine forests of Bournemouth. She and her friends even formed a nature club, where a favorite pursuit was racing snails. During this time she continued to feed her imagination with tales of Tarzan and Dr. Doolittle.

Eventually Jane traveled to Africa where she met the legendary Dr. Louis Leakey and his wife, Mary. Leakey assigned her the task of observing chimps in a remote area, previously unexplored by human beings. Goodall's discoveries about those creatures amazed even Leakey himself. Jane was one of the first scientists to observe, for example, that chimps created and used tools. Scientists had believed that only humans did this!

Jane Goodall: Researcher Who Champions Chimps differs from the other books listed here in one special way: it introduces students to many standard conventions of nonfiction text: bold words, captions, a glossary, and an index. For that reason, this book would serve as a terrific transitional text to more formal textbooks which students will be seeing as they progress through school.

An equally intrepid yet much less celebrated explorer of Africa is brought to life in Uncommon Traveler: Mary Kingsley in Africa, one of many fascinating biographies written and illustrated by Don Brown. Unlike Jane Goodall, Mary Kingsley experienced a childhood which was by all measures bleak and uninspiring: her mother was constantly bed-ridden, her father was habitually traveling, and her brother was simply absent (sent off to school, although he was younger than Mary). Mary's only companionship were the many books in her father's library, and she devoured them (though how she even learned to read was a mystery).

With the passing of her mother, Mary was finally free of all obligations. Her dream? To explore West Africa. At the time such an enterprise was unthinkable, for West Africa was a land hostile even to its own people. How could a woman, a single woman for that matter, survive? But survive she did. Mary battled crocs, swam with hippos (not intentionally!), tumbled from a ledge through a thatched roof, stumbled into a spike-filled animal trap, was thrown from a canoe, and survived all manner of insects and other discomforts. She not only lived to tell her tale, but to write it as well, in two books which became best sellers. Her collected specimens not only filled her own home, but the showcases of the British Museum of Natural History as well. Mary was thirty when her mother died, and passed away herself at age thirty-eight, yet she lived more in those eight years than most people do in a lifetime!

Discussing the Books

The following questions might prove useful in discussing any of these books with children:

What are your interests? How might those interests affect what you choose to do for a living?
What is success? How does a person become successful?
What kinds of things might create obstacles, or problems, for someone who is trying to pursue their dreams?
Did women always have the same opportunities as men? What were some jobs that women were expected to do? What were some jobs reserved for men alone?
This book begins by telling us about _____'s childhood. Why do you think the author started there?
Was following her dream difficult? What made it so hard? Who or what may have encouraged her, and convinced her to continue?
What is determination? How was it exemplified through _______'s actions?
If this woman were alive today, what advice might she give us?
Let's look again at the illustrations. How do they help us understand the story better? What information do the illustrations supply that the text doesn't? How did the book's illustrator know what these events looked like?
What other information does the author provide?
What questions do we still have about ___________?
If ___________ were alive today, what would surprise her most about how the world has changed since her time?
If we had to give __________ a nickname, what would we choose?

As a follow up activity, students could create a new book jacket for any of these books. You might even consider covering the book's actual cover while reading it aloud, and only uncovering it later once all students have completed their designs. At ReadWriteThink you'll find a nice interactive which explains the elements of a traditional picture book cover, and you can additionally have students create the entire book cover online (or just a cover or back) using the cool interactive Book Cover Creator. (Personally, I might have some parent helpers cut down some brown paper shopping bags, and use the reverse blank sides for the project; this would be a neat homage to Margaret E. Knight).

Online Explorations of Women in Science

Women's Adventures in Science features a cool look at real, live scientists practicing in their fields. Students can choose from Ten Scientists, and each is linked to a kid-friendly site featuring a biography, videos, games, and related links. These biographies are rich, and definitely made for the third grade and above crowd. As a class project, students could be paired and assigned a scientist to research using this site.

You'll also find an Interactive Timeline (1900 to present), which, while not well populated, definitely points out that the number of women in the fields of science has increased dramatically during the last century. The Ask It section allows students to pose their questions about science to real scientists. They can also browse answers to dozens of questions already asked. And, of course, a Games section!

Another terrific site to explore is PBS's very hip SciGirls, which is filled with projects, profiles, and videos featuring women in science. This site is awesome in that it helps students (okay, mostly the girls) realize that they, too, can be scientists, right now! (Note that site features a section which allows girls to interact socially, so standard precautions should be taken to address Internet safety issues). The Teacher's Overview provides a number of different approaches as well as additional resources for using the site.

I personally think a SciGirls Club sounds like a pretty awesome idea for a school or homeschool group, and this site would be a great place to start! Don't forget, though, to inspire your girls with some real-life role models, and those provided in the books I've shared are highly recommended.

Need one more? Cool interactive games to learn about inventions and inventors (including lots of women inventors!) can be found at Inventive Kids. No registration or annoying pop-ups, just easy-to-play games that teach as kids play
Looking for more on- and off-line explorations in science? Check out Exploring Invention with Picture Books at Teach with Picture Books. In addition to the dozen plus sites listed there, be sure to check out some terrific science bios written by author Kathleen Krull, a recent contributor to the Kidlit Celebrates Women's History Blog.

Editor's Note: Keith Schoch is a sixth grade Reading/Language Arts teacher in Bedminster, NJ. In addition to presenting workshops and writing teaching guides, Keith shares practical teaching tips through three blogs: Teach with Picture Books, How to Teach a Novel, and Teaching that Sticks.

Aviator, Nurse, Soldier, Spy--Reflections on Women's History Month from author Marissa Moss

2011-03-10T05:00:00.000-08:00

March 10 - Today's post provided by Marissa Moss

I love stumbling on little-known stories that grab my imagination and sense of history. Those are the stories I turn into books, the tales of courage and achievement against the odds that deserve to be widely known. Is it a coincidence that many of these undiscovered gems are about women?

Women have mostly been absent from the grand epic of history. The ones that are recognized are an elite few, Queen Elizabeth I, Cleopatra, Marie Curie. Much more fascinating to me are the ordinary women doing extraordinary things.

Maggie Gee is one such woman. I found her in a local newspaper story about WWII veterans, published naturally on veteran’s day. I didn’t know that women had flown warplanes in WWII and it seemed like an important story for kids (and adults) to know about.

President Obama signing the order to give the WASP
the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I looked Maggie up in the phone book, called her and asked for an interview. That interview and the many conversations that followed became SKY HIGH: THE TRUE STORY OF MAGGIE GEE. What impressed me about Maggie was her drive, her optimism, her courage. She didn’t see barriers, but opportunities. Sure, there was discrimination against her, both as a woman, and as a Chinese-American, but she barely mentioned such problems when she talked about her life. Although her mother had lost her U.S. citizenship when she married Maggie’s father, a Chinese immigrant, that didn’t deter her from working as a welder on Liberty ships during the war, nor from encouraging her daughter to join the Women’s Army Service Pilots. After the WASP were disbanded, Maggie went on to charge through more doors, becoming a physicist and working on weapon systems at the Lawrence Livermore labs, another job that was rare for a woman, let alone an Asian-American woman.

I thought of Maggie’s grit, her enthusiasm for taking risks and following her dreams, when I started looking for a Civil War story. I wanted to find a woman who had made similar daring choices, but I wasn’t sure where to look. So I read widely, about both the North and the South. I learned that more than 400 women had disguised themselves as men and fought as soldiers for one side or the other. Could one of those women be the story I wanted?

I plowed through books about nurses, soldiers, spies, but they all lacked some essential characteristic. Some were there to be with a husband, brother, father, or fiancé. Some were adventurous, but not particularly patriotic or admirable. Very few cared about the issue of slavery.

Sorting through all these women, I found one that seemed promising. The first book I read about her didn’t tell me much, but it gave me enough of a sense that I wanted to learn more. When I saw she’d written her own memoir of her soldiering life, that I could hear in her own voice her motives and intentions, it was like finding a treasure trove.

That woman was Sara Emma Edmonds, aka Frank Thompson. She was everything I’d hoped for – she had integrity, bravery, loyalty to the Union. As a bonus, she wrote movingly about the horrors and wrongs of slavery. But there was more. Edmonds was the only woman to successfully petition the government after the war for status as a veteran. She wanted her charge of desertion changed to an honorable discharge, and she wanted a pension for her years of service. Suffering from malaria she’d caught in the Virgina peninsula campaign early in the war, she needed medical care she couldn’t afford without it.

It took several years and two separate acts of Congress, but Edmonds received the legal recognition she so richly deserved. Men she’d served with testified on her behalf, praising her steadiness under fire, her work as a battlefield nurse, a general’s adjutant, a postmaster, and even a spy.

Hers was a great story, a vast canvas that covered many of the pivotal battles of the war. Now that I’d found my subject, I had to shape this big life into a book. And a short book at that. I first wrote about Sara Emma Edmonds for a picture book, choosing to showcase her first spy mission, one emblematic event to stand for such a complicated life. That text became NURSE, SOLDIER, SPY, beautifully illustrated by John Hendrix, and published this April by Abrams.

As pleased as I was with the picture book, there was so much more to say about Sara than could fit in that constrained format. I went on to write a middle-grade novel, with the luxury of chapter upon chapter to unfold the many facets of Sara. I could show her tenderness as a nurse, her bravery as a postmaster on lonely roads known for ambushes, her fierce loyalty to her fellow-soldiers in battle, her quick-thinking as a spy. And I could show the loneliness and stress that her disguise cost her, the burden of living a lie on a deeply ethical and honest person.

Sara had to dress as a man to serve the country she loved. Maggie could enlist, but had her opportunities curbed because she was a woman. Women in the military today aren’t officially allowed “in combat,” but since they’re in active combat zones, they face the same risks as the men without the same possibilities for promotion and recognition. One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, woman are still living little known stories that we’ll only learn about later. Someday we’ll read about how courageous and capable they’ve been in Afghanistan and Iraq. As they’ve always been, whenever they’ve been given the chance or secretly taken it.

I dedicated NURSE, SOLDIER, SPY to Maggie. It seemed fitting. But I could have dedicated it to the women everywhere, throughout the years, who have defied stereotypes and proven themselves to be as brave and bold as the men around them.

Editor's Note:

Want to know more about California author and illustrator, Marissa Moss? Check out her website, www.marissamoss.com

Marissa Moss is also the author of Mighty Jackie: The Strikeout Queen, a true story of a young girl who pitched against Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, and Brave Harriet, the story of Harriet Quimby, the first woman to fly solo across the English Channel.

any particular claim to being a feminist

2011-03-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

March 9 - Today's post is provided by Tami Lewis Brown

ANY PARTICULAR CLAIM TO BEING A FEMINIST

     In a 1930 profile titled “New Woman”, the New Yorker magazine said “Miss Elinor Smith… has never made any particular claim to being a feminist. On the other hand, feminism would do rather well to claim Miss Smith.” When I read this line, up to my elbows in research for my picture book biography SOAR, ELINOR! I was stopped cold. The sentence shocked me—in two ways.

     First I was amazed by the use of the term “feminist” in 1930.Writers are word people and words count, particularly when read in their historic context. And even more particularly when a word – Feminist- remains politically charged to this day, eighty years after the article was published. Were there “feminists” in 1930?

     Clearly there were feminists in 1930 and long before. Although women had fought for the right to vote in our country since the 1700’s, suffrage hadn’t been granted in the United States until 1920, a mere ten years before this article was published. Elinor Smith was already nine years old, starting flying lessons, when her mother and grandmother voted for the first time.

     But I was more shocked by the statement that Elinor had “never made any particular claim” to being a feminist. In 1926, Elinor had become the youngest American, boy or girl, to hold a pilot’s license. Orville Wright had disputed women’s right to shoot for aviation records but teenaged Elinor wouldn’t take no for an answer. Probably the lightest pilot in America—in 2007 when I met her, Elinor, physically fit and mentally sharp, barely reached my shoulder and weighed, as she always had, well under one hundred pounds. Sputtering biplanes reached unheard of heights with a girl smaller than a jockey at the controls. She did what no man or boy could do-- Elinor Smith was a teenaged test pilot, pushing the latest, most dangerous machines to their limits.

     No particular claim to being a feminist? What did a girl have to say or do to qualify?

     In late summer 1928 a cocky failed barnstormer insulted Elinor, first contending she and all other females should stay out of the sky, then betting she couldn’t fly under one of the East River bridges. Real betting. Pools were set up at Roosevelt Field, with cold hard cash at stake. Would that freckle-faced girl make it under all four landmark New York bridges or would she die trying?

     As I tell the story in SOAR, Elinor did make it, even zipping beneath the Brooklyn Bridge sideways.

     Elinor Smith’s accomplishments- flying highest, flying longest, hosting her own radio show, first pilot to fly a multiple parachute jump, and first woman to refuel a plane mid-air may not bear the gravity of Emmeline Pankhurst’s achievements winning women the vote. An airplane flight is not the same as a hunger strike. But Elinor Smith was a feminist, and an important one. She dreamed of what she could become and she didn’t let anyone else limit or define her. She succeeded in “a man’s world,” making a good living as a professional pilot but she was also a wife and eventually mother of four children. Her actions speak louder than any words declaring herself a “feminist” ever could.

     I don’t know about the feminists of 1930, but Elinor Smith is one feminist I claim, both for what she did in her time and the legacy she passed on to women and girls of today.

Tami Lewis Brown is the author of SOAR, ELINOR! and the forthcoming THE MAP OF ME, both published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Visit her Facebook page, Author Tami Lewis Brown, for activities, profiles, and contests celebrating women’s history through the entire month of March.

Cleopatra Confesses

2011-03-08T05:00:00.000-08:00

March 8 - Today's post provided by Carolyn Meyer

For the past 20 years I have been writing novels about women—some famous (Mary, Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn--all those Tudor queens!), some not so famous (Mozart’s sister, Shakespeare’s wife)—and their place in history. What has fascinated me in every case is not who they became, which is why we recognize their names and want to read about them, but who they were when they were young. I am familiar with the myths. Consider Marie-Antoinette, for example—a terrible, selfish queen who regularly sent innocent people off to the guillotine while cruelly dismissing the starving French people with that famous line, “Let them eat cake!” Right?

Wrong.

She never said it. Furthermore, Marie-Antoinette was not responsible for anyone’s execution. Although it’s true that she was naïve and insensitive to the harsh conditions under which the common people lived, and that she spent way too much money on gorgeous clothes and fabulous gardens and pleasure houses, she was not a monster. Far from it.

Marie-Antoinette was once a frightened child who could not please her stern mother, at fourteen sent far from home to marry a boy she’d never met, then criticized and manipulated by older women who resented her and were determined to bring about her downfall.

This young and vulnerable princess was the Marie-Antoinette in whom I was willing and eager to invest over a year of intense research (OK, there was a trip to Paris, so the research wasn’t all grueling), and of writing and rewriting THE BAD QUEEN.

Consider, too, Catherine de’ Medici, who has still not lived down her reputation for mercilessness, but when you examine her family, including a dastardly cousin and her uncle the pope who sent her off, another 14-year-old, to marry a man who could not bring himself to sleep with her, it’s easier to understand her complex personality. DUCHESSINA is my attempt to show another Catherine behind the one we love to hate. (Besides, Italy is a lovely place to visit.)

Although many of my books have been about queens, I have sometimes become caught up in the lives of less exalted creatures. Anne Hathaway was eight years older than that young scamp, Will Shakespeare, but she succumbed to his charms, poetic and otherwise, and long before Will the glove-maker became SHAKESPEARE, the rich and famous playwright, they were married. I regret to say that it was not the happiest of marriages. Anne narrates their story in LOVING WILL SHAKESPEARE, and through her we get to know quite a lot about him. (Stratford-upon-Avon, the English village where they grew up, is a charming place to explore.)

Many readers are surprised to learn that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the musical genius, had a talented older sister, Nannerl. But Nannerl had everything going against her: women of her era were not permitted careers as pianists, no matter how accomplished; her domineering father poured all the Mozart family resources into promoting his bratty, brilliant son—and to make matters worse, forced Nannerl into marriage to a man she didn’t love. I wrote IN MOZART’S SHADOW to allow her to tell her own story and to give her the attention she deserves.

I have explored the early lives of a dozen other women in history who have been loved or hated, misunderstood or ignored, and always I have focused on them as very young women. My latest novel, CLEOPATRA CONFESSES, is finally finished (and I confess that a trip to Egypt with a Nile cruise was part of the research). Unlike Marie-Antoinette and Nannerl Mozart, about whom much material is easily available to even the laziest researcher, Cleopatra remains a mystery. Images of Elizabeth Taylor in a movie version of the Egyptian queen’s story still float around in my head. Many have heard the tale of Cleopatra being delivered to Julius Caesar wrapped in a rug (it’s true), and much has been written about her affair with Mark Anthony. (Shakespeare wrote a play about the lovers.) But what must it have been like for her as a little princess, growing up in a palace in Alexandria, desperately trying to avoid her jealous older sisters while her father journeyed far from home? How did she manage to survive in a culture where family members plotted against each other as they strove for power and wealth?

Cleopatra tells her own story in the novel to be published in June.

Editors Note:
Find out more about Carolyn Meyer at her website. the site features information on her many best-selling books, school visit information, tips for writers, biographical information, and much more!

So Many Women, So Little Time

2011-03-07T03:19:00.000-08:00

March 7 - Today's post provided by Tanya Lee Stone

So Many Women, So Little Time

As I thought about which woman to cover in my blog post for Women’s History Month, too many flooded my consciousness. The bookshelves of my house are laden with their names: Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Naomi Wolf, Amelia Earhart, Jane Addams, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Rosalind Franklin, Judy Blume, Golda Meir, Lillian Hellman, Marge Piercy, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, and well, the list truly does go on for days. So how to pick just one? I decided not to, for it is their collective effect that has made me who I am today. Instead I would like to share my thanks for the essence of these women and many more, for the impact they created by living the truths of their lives, for the tides they turned, the boundaries they pushed, the fences they toppled.

Golda Meir

Let me begin with the woman who influenced my earliest girlhood—Golda Meir. She was the Prime Minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974. All my 9-year-old self knew about Golda Meir was how impressive it was that a woman was both leading a nation and trying to shape a vision of peace in the Middle East. That was enough to make me empty my stainless steel piggy bank and ask my parents to send her all my money.

Fast forward to college. I went to Oberlin, the first co-educational college in the United States. There I read Ayn Rand, Lillian Hellman, Marge Piercy, Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, Virginia Woolf, Alice Walker, Lorraine Hansberry, and Toni Morrison. Outside the classroom, I learned almost by osmosis from students who threw their passions into causes and dedicated themselves to informing their fellow women (and men). Every day brought a new revelation—rallies and petitions and flyers handed to me en route to the mailroom on issues of health care rights, lesbian rights, rights for women in third world nations, oppressed women, women who needed a voice—and women who used their voices in the name of others.

I emerged from this experience with deep-held ideas about women and women’s history, and yet I still balked at the word feminist. A few years later, a dear male friend from Oberlin was visiting who, upon discovering I did not label myself a feminist, became rather annoyed with me. How is that possible with all you believe in, and why do so many women disconnect themselves from that term, he wanted to know—quite rightly. It was a valid question. It is a loaded word. And in fact, it was his supreme irritation that sparked my acute realization that I WAS, and likely had always been, a feminist. I didn’t know then that I would spend a good deal of my writing career telling stories that celebrate women’s history, but looking back, my roots are clearly visible.

Now those roots nurture the directions my own branches stretch. Sometimes it’s deep into our past with women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Jane Addams in the picture books I write. And sometimes it’s the not-so-distant-past with women like the “Mercury 13” who helped break down the gender boundaries in our space program and pave the way for women astronauts. Spending time with many of these women, whose story I told in Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream, illustrated the fact that women shape our world in a broad variety of ways. There is no one “type” of feminist and all who strive for change are to be celebrated.

That idea was further cemented as I sat in a room last year filled with hundreds of women, all in attendance to hear Gloria Steinem speak. At the end of her moving lecture—delivered with the ease of a confident soul—she invited anyone to come to the microphone and state her own ideas for change. As the line began to grow and weave around the back of the room, and the ideas began to flow, the realization that women make history in every community, every day, moved me to tears.

Gloria Steinem

The icing on the cake? I met Ms. Steinem afterwards and handed her a copy of Almost Astronauts. She looked at it and said, “Oh! I am so excited that you wrote this story!” I then showed her my source note citing the 1973 article about these women in her Ms. magazine. She smiled and handed me a signed copy of her book, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. It wasn’t the torch being handed from one woman to another—it was the acknowledgement that we are all in this feminism and women’s history work together.

I know I am not alone in the fact that many, many women helped shape my own ideals—just as many, many women helped shape theirs. It is this far-reaching, intimate, and intricate sisterhood of the world that I am both fascinated by and grateful for—and so I say to all of you, Happy Women’s History Month!

Editor's Note:

Tanya Lee Stone studied English at Oberlin College and was an editor of children's nonfiction for many years. She also has a Masters Degree.
After many years as an editor, Tanya moved to Vermont and returned to writing. This award-winning author has written titles that include the young adult novel, A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl (Wendy Lamb/Random House), Up Close: Ella Fitzgerald (Viking), picture books Elizabeth Leads the Way (Holt, April 08), Sandy's Circus (Viking, Sept 08), Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream (Candlewick 09), and The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie (Viking 2010). Forthcoming titles include Who Says Women Can't Be Doctors?! (Holt) and Courage Has No Color (Candlewick).

Tanya Lee Stone blogs at http://tanyaleestone.livejournal.com/

Toddler In Peril Becomes A Leader Of Her Tribe and Book Giveaway!

2011-03-06T05:00:00.000-08:00

MARCH 6 Today's post provided by Jan Godown Annino

Toddler In Peril Becomes A Leader Of Her Tribe

To college sports fans, Seminoles are the strong kids using muscle for Florida State University. They wear garnet and gold colors. And sometimes, they put on a dramatic black.

To me the Seminoles are today’s members of the Seminole Tribe of Florida & more important, they are the fabled ancestors of today’s Seminole Tribe of Florida members.

One unique tribal member of modern times who I wrote about for young readers is Betty Mae Tiger Jumper.

In writing about her through SHE SANG PROMISE, I came to the story from outside the culture. A School Library Journal post that covers this outsider status.

http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/bowllansblog/2010/05/25/writers-against-racism-jan-godown-annino-2/

This life story of a girl who survived death threats in the 1920s & faced discrimination throughout her life is recognized by the 2011 American Library Association Social Responsibilities Round Table’s Feminist Taskforce.

http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/news/ala/2011-amelia-bloomer-list-announced

Another title from the ALA Taskforce in its annual Amelia Bloomer Project List, includes a 10 year-old author who was also a 10-year old divorced child. Her book helps us understand that this situation isn’t unique & that volunteer attorneys make a difference in children’s lives every day. Nujood Ali is already a leader of her people by her divorce action. I hope that if she wants to, she can grow up to be a leader of her people in an official capacity, as did Betty Mae Tiger Jumper.

When I open up a black drawstring Seminole patchwork bag & invite children to pull out a shed snakeskin, they connect with the idea that Betty Mae was born into the important Snake Clan. She grew up to hear repeatedly, the oral history of two girl ancestors who escaped brutal treatment on the Florida portion of the Trail of Tears in a dramatic run across the peninsula. This ensured survival of Betty Mae’s Snake Clan. Children I present to also hear about the traditional matriarchic society of Seminole people.

The patchwork bag also holds a piece of wood carved into a model flat-boat, by tribal elder Bobby Henry. These boats were one key to the Seminoles’ superior shallow Everglades travel, compared to Yankee canoeists of the 1800s who paddled in deep-V boats that mired in muck. The Seminoles stood & poled their floating log barge.

A photographic postcard in my collection, of Betty Mae’s royal Seminole grandfather, further connects children to the Seminoles’ unconquered past.

Children take to their hearts the letter written directly to them by her son, poet Moses Jumper, Jr. who gifts them with two special words.

Excitement about alligator wrestling & puzzled reaction to unfamiliar tonal sounds, such as a chant to accompany a traditional dance, are also keen parts of the uncommon visit with Seminole culture.

As an outsider to the Seminoles, I’m forever grateful that Mrs. Jumper made an overture to me across a table of crafts at an Indian Festival in the early 1980s.

I attended to write a newspaper story. I stood at her table reading a newspaper that I plucked from a stack of them, folded near the crafts. It intrigued me to find my familiar medium among the soft piles of folded patchwork clothing in rainbow colors that grabbed attention. Seminoles are known for this original wearable art, worldwide.

Photo from the Florida
Women's Hall of Fame, a
project of the Florida
Commission on the
Status of Women
www.fcsw.net

But, the Seminole people also wrote a newspaper? My first ignorance. Other blank spots in my education, missing pieces of the Seminole story, which is a key to the modern development of the state I moved to from New Jersey at age 13, were to begin to recede with my slow-forming link to Mrs. Jumper. I cherish that our connection came through printed words that she brought that table, teaching me first with her newspaper that she edited.

As a barefoot child she survived death threats at her remote family camp. Later Betty Mae begged her grandmother to be able to become literate at age 14. She received a formal education at boarding school in North Carolina, additional training in nursing in Oklahoma, & chose to return home to help her then-impoverished people, whom she loved.

When she became the first woman elected a leader of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, in 1967, there was less than $40 in the bank account, she told me.

This was about 18 years before the equally legendary Wilma Mankiller earned the job of principal chief of the Cherokee people. Betty Mae Tiger Jumper served a U.S. President on an advisory committee & was an invited presenter at the American Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C. in 1969. Her voice is heard on two Smithsonian folk music/storytelling CD recordings. She was inducted into halls of fame, held an

honorary doctorate from Florida State University & earned many other honors.

In a long amazing life, some aspects most intrigue readers:

Why & how Betty Mae Jumper wrestled alligators

Why she received death threats as a toddler & how she survived them

How a child who wasn’t literate at age 13, came to publish 3 books & edit two newspapers

Adults with an aesthetic interest marvel at the sewing of intricate geometric designs in cloth that mimic nature & carry names such as fire, lightning, & birds.

I am most lifted up by how a girl who didn’t read as a young child, valued the printed word after not enjoying the secrets of it during her first 14 years in South Florida. Please seek out her own writing in her collection of important stories that teach traditional ways & beliefs, LEGENDS of the SEMINOLES. http://www.semtribe.com/Culture/Legends.aspx

I also recommend her memoir for adults, A SEMINOLE LEGEND, written with my pal, ethno historian Patsy West, and published with the University Presses of Florida. http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=JUMPEF01

Betty Mae Tiger Jumper set ambitious goals for a barefoot girl without a formal education until age 14. And she met them: “ I had three goals in my life. To finish school, to take nurse’s training & come back and work among my people, & to write books.”

From Jan Godown Annino at http://www.bookseedstudio.wordpress.com/

SHE SANG PROMISE: The Story of Betty Mae Jumper, Seminole Tribal Leader,

by Jan Godown Annino, with oil paintings by Lisa Desimini. Afterword letter from Moses Jumper, Jr. National Geographic Children’s Books

www.ngchildrensbooks.org (subject- biography- title in alphabetic order)

Giveaway offer - a free copy of SHE SANG PROMISE: The Story of Betty Mae Jumper, Seminole Tribal Leader. In a comment to this post, please share a well- regarded non-fiction title (providing the author name, illustrator, if applicable, publisher, & year of pub.) This title will be for the elementary ages, about a First Peoples/American Indian/Native American topic. Jan will select one recipient, but there will be two books given, one for you & one which you are asked to present to a library of your choice. Many thanks!

Mary on Horseback: Three Mountain Stories by Rosemary Wells

2011-03-05T05:00:00.000-08:00

MARCH 5 Today's post is provided by Pragmatic Mom.

Photo from the Frontier Nursing Service

Mary on Horseback: Three Mountain Stories by Rosemary Wells

If you hear Rosemary Wells and think Max and Ruby , Yoko and Friends or McDuff, you have the right author. She is an author, like Cynthia Rylant, who has incredible range and also has ties to the Appalachians. I had read biographies in 5th grade about Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale but I was not familiar with Mary Breckenridge until I happened upon this book and it turns out that she deserves the same recognition, if not more so.

Photo from
Frontier Nursing Service .org

Mary on Horseback: Three Mountain Stories is a biography of Mary Breckenridge, a woman who in 1939, after the deaths of both her children and two husbands, founded the Frontier Nursing Service to bring midwifery and health services to the poor of Appalachia. A descendant of a distinguished family that included a U.S. vice president and a Congressman and diplomat, she funded the Frontier Nursing Service out of her own pocket for the first few years as a way to commemorate her children.

Photo from
Frontier Nursing Service. org

The Frontier Nursing Service continues to this day, and now is an accredited graduate school granting a Master of Science degree for nurse-midwives or nurse practitioners. Mary Breckenridge was a pioneer in creating midwifery and family nursing in America and students from her program now represent every state in the United States and seven foreign countries.

At just 53 pages and comprised of 5 very short chapters, Mary on Horseback is a series of spare but powerful stories that graphically depict the hardships of the Appalachians. Lesser known than Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale, Mary Breckenridge's autobiography moved Rosemary Wells so much that she visited Wendover and talked to nurses at the Frontier Nursing Service. Wells felt that her story should be shared with young people and wrote this book as a result.
I asked my 4th grader what she thought of the book; I had forgotten that she had read it in 2nd grade. She agreed that while the reading level of the book is for Newly Independent Readers, the content is more suitable for 4th grade. I think it's important to provide strong role models for girls too, so I highly recommend this book.

Winner of the Christopher Award, A Booklist Editors' Choice Book, and A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year.

If your child likes this book, try The Year of Miss Agnes by Kirkpatrick Hill. It's about another woman who courageously goes to the wilds of Alaska to teach in a one-room school house and ends up changing the children's lives. This is also historical fiction. When I Was Young in the Mountains is a picture book by Cynthia Rylant depicting a day in a family in the West Virginia Appalachians.

To examine any book more closely at Amazon, please click on image of book.

On March 4, Remember the "Grand Picket" for Voting Rights

2011-03-04T05:00:00.001-08:00

March 4 - Today's post provided by Ann Bausum

On March 4, Remember the Grand Picket for Voting Rights

Suffrage pickets marching around the White House-- March 4, 1917

The finale to the 72-year-long fight for women’s voting rights occurred during the two-term Presidency of Woodrow Wilson. Women mounted a fierce campaign against his reelection in 1916 after he had neglected their calls for support of woman suffrage during his first administration. Wilson’s victory pushed the most radical of the suffragists—a group that became known as the National Woman’s Party—to mount a campaign of civil disobedience in protest.

The woman began their efforts on January 10, 1917, by mounting daily pickets in front of the White House. Volunteers stood for hours in all weather holding protest signs with messages such as “Mr. President, what will you do for woman suffrage?” and “How long must women wait for liberty?”

Picketing the White House at Wilson's second
inauguration, March 4, 1917

To mark the occasion of the President’s second inauguration (which in those days took place in early March), the National Woman’s Party organized what it called the “grand picket.” A thousand women gathered from all over the country to march on the White House carrying a resolution that urged President Wilson to act on the cause of woman suffrage during his second term of office.

In spite of horrible weather, the event proceeded as planned on inauguration day, March 4, 1917. Women lined up in single file, fighting a stiff wind to hold aloft their protest banners as an icy rain drenched their clothes. Two bands accompanied the procession and played hymns, marches, and protest songs. Thousands of spectators lined their route around the perimeter of the presidential mansion, as did a double row of police officers. Federal workers unsympathetic to the cause watched in amusement as the women passed their office windows.

The procession stopped at all of the residency’s three main entry gates only to find each in turn had been locked with orders to deny all access by the protesters. Guards, obeying instructions, refused to accept the petition and carry it inside. One more sympathetic guard offered to receive the document at a service entrance, but the women elected not to leave their official plea at “the gate where Mrs. Wilson’s clothes and other packages are left.”

The marchers, who ranged in age from 20 to 84, persisted in their parade around the White House, hoping to attract the President’s attention. They lapped the fenced grounds four times over the course of two hours in spite of battering rain and wind. Late in the afternoon participants watched in dismay as President and Mrs. Wilson departed the White House in a chauffeured car, proving that Wilson had deliberately ignored their attempts to contact him.

“This one single incident probably did more than any other to make women sacrifice themselves” later on, wrote suffragist Doris Stevens in her memoir of the voting rights fight, Jailed for Freedom. “Even something as thin as diplomacy on the part of President Wilson might have saved him many restless hours to follow, but he did not take the trouble to exercise even that,” Stevens observed.

Miss Alice Paul, New Jersey,
National Chairman,
Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage;
Member, Ex-Officio,
National Executive Committee, Woman's Party

Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk, Conn.
Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner, "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Members of the National Woman’s Party, under the leadership of Alice Paul, would go on to picket in front of the White House throughout much of President Wilson’s second term. Such efforts became controversial after the United States joined the First World War in April, 1917. Wartime pickets attracted hecklers who physically attacked them as unpatriotic. Capitol police arrested the women, and hundreds went to jail instead of paying fines they viewed as unjust. Many began hunger strikes to protest their confinement. Prison officials retaliated with forced feedings during an escalating battle of wills.

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt,
Speaker at Continental Hall

Wilson eventually caved under pressure from these activists and members of the more moderate National American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Carrie Chapman Catt. In early 1919 he began to urge Congress to pass an amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote. Following years of failed attempts, the 19th Amendment finally passed the House of Representatives and the Senate that spring.

A fierce ratification fight followed in state legislatures, leading to the amendment’s enactment into law on August 26, 1920—just in time for women to vote nationwide in that fall’s presidential election.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Bausum, Ann. With Courage and Cloth: Winning the Fight for a Woman’s Right to Vote. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2004.

Flexner, Eleanor. Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996 edition, 2000 printing.

Ford, Linda G. Iron-Jawed Angels: The Suffrage Militancy of the National Woman’s Party, 1912-1920. Lanham, Maryland: University of America Press, 1991. See pages 133-34 for specific details regarding the “grand picket.”

Stevens, Doris. Jailed for Freedom. New York, New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1920. See pages 75-79 for specific details regarding the “grand picket.”

ON-LINE RESOURCES:

For more information about blog post author Ann Bausum’s book for young readers: With Courage and Cloth, visit http://www.annbausum.com/courage.html

To learn about her other books of social justice history for young people, visit: http://www.annbausum.com/index.html

For more information about the National Woman’s Party, visit: http://www.sewallbelmont.org/

Watch “Iron Jawed Angels” ( 2004) the HBO dramatization of the closing fight for woman’s suffrage, starring Hilary Swank as National Woman’s Party leader Alice Paul. See this link for details: http://iron-jawed-angels.com/

For the transcript of an extensive interview recorded with Alice Paul during 1972-73 click this link: http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt6f59n89c/

See additional images about the 20th-century woman suffrage fight at the on-line American Memory exhibit at the Library of Congress of photos from its National Woman’s Party collection. Use this link: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/

Photo credits for all images:

Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman's Party, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

See this link for more information on rights:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/rights.html

Editor's Note:
Ann Bausum writes books about U.S. history for readers young and old, ages 10 and up. Her books help upper elementary, middle school, and high school students discover the drama and significance behind stories from history that may barely be presented in their textbooks. Her goal as an author is to make history relevant, engaging, and alive. Visit her website to find out more about her, her award-winning books, and the process of writing nonfiction.

Elizabeth "Dolly" Shepherd

2011-03-03T05:00:00.001-08:00

MARCH 3 - Today's post provided by Chasing Ray

When I was majoring in Aviation Management and learning to fly back in the late 1980s we used to joke about the pitiful number of female students there were in each course. In a class of twenty I was lucky to have two or three other girls enrolled with me. We all knew each other (how could we not) and we all knew we were completely outnumbered. We learned a lot about aviation history in many different classes but with the exception of Amelia Earhart (who honestly was most remembered for disappearing) we learned nothing about women in aviation history. If you asked that class of new college grads in 1990 to name the female pioneers of the air they all would have stared back blankly. We knew logically that from the earliest years women had flown airplanes and turned wrenches on them and probably even designed some of them but we didn't know any of their names and we certainly didn't know their stories.

I can't begin to tell you how much I'm still frustrated by how easy it was to be that ignorant.

Dolly, circa 1910

Since then I have read about many women involved in aviation; one of the most obscure (and interesting) was early 20th century parachutist Elizabeth Shepherd. "Dolly" was a waitress at the Alexandra Palace in London when she met balloonist Auguste Gaudron who was looking for a girl parachutist for his act. In 1904 being a parachutist meant rising in the balloon basket to at least 2,000 feet then dropping down over the side and hanging from a trapeze bar to which she was attached with a safety strap. When she was ready to let go (and Dolly liked to go quite high) she would let go of the bar, releasing the strap. At that point all of her weight would be placed on the ropes attaching her to the parachute which hung limp from the balloon. If all was right, the parachute would open and Dolly would fall slowly back down to the ground.

Dolly hanging from her trapeze, July 1911

Dolly was a very popular entertainer in a period when balloonists drew huge crowds at places like the Alexandra Palace. She learned to launch with only the trapeze, giving up the security of the basket and had more than a few close calls nearly landing on rooftops or being hit by a train or car. On one flight her release cord jammed and she was trapped hanging below the balloon as it rose to more than 12,000 feet. It was three and a half hours before the balloon landed, her hands numb and nearly frozen on the bar.

Her bravest moment came in 1908 when a friend joined her on a dual jump. Her friend's cord jammed however and as the other girl could not get free, Dolly stayed with her beyond 11,000 feet. At that point, as it became clear her friend was going to pass out and thus fall to her death, Dolly pulled her close and they dropped together on the single parachute - the first tandem jump. Dolly landed on the bottom and was paralyzed at the age of twenty-one. A doctor decided to try a radical procedure and jolted her with electricity - it worked and eight weeks later she was back in the air.

Dolly's last jump was in 1912 when she decided she has pushed her luck enough. She wrote an autobiography of her exploits, WHEN THE 'CHUTE WENT UP, and her daughter followed a bit in her footsteps, jumping with the British Red Devils parachute team in 2004 to celebrate her mother's memory. Molly was eighty-four years old at the time. Like mother, like daughter for sure!

I love how gutsy Dolly was; how she reached out for a career that gave her some money and fame but also required a lot from her. Few people - male or female - could do what she did and she did it all the time. Dolly was as brave as it gets in a time when there were few women willing to even drive a car. She hung from a balloon on a trapeze. I still can't believe it.

You can read about Dolly (and lots of other balloonists) in SKY SAILORS (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux 2010) by David Bristow - a recent title for young teens that includes many "true stories of the balloon era". I hope that someone writes an entire book about her someday and the other women who jumped along with her.

Me and Hillary

2011-03-02T05:00:00.000-08:00

MARCH 2 Today's post is provided by Kathleen Krull

ME and HILLARY

By Kathleen Krull

Night after night, as I sleep in San Diego, the women on my bookshelves consort. Goddesses and warrior women, Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, 1970's feminist manifestos and classic novels by women, books on issues from periods to becoming a nun, biographies of women good, bad, ugly, and stunning…. books I just had to own, whether the money was there or not. One could assume that my main interest in life is women’s history-- an assumption supported by Lives of Extraordinary Women, A Woman for President, Marie Curie, Wilma Unlimited, and others -- but it’s part of my broader focus on lives of the dead.

One night, November 16, 2007, wide-awake and out to dinner with an editor in New York, I hatched what is possibly my oddest book, a picture book biography about someone alive, kicking, and in that day’s headlines. After watching the presidential debate in Las Vegas the night before, I was so jazzed by how sure of herself she was: Hillary Clinton, surrounded on stage by men, articulating her positions with precision, plus poise to spare: "People are not attacking me because I'm a woman; they're attacking me because I'm ahead."

To me she looked like a sure-fire winner, and that night I was thrilled to propose the first children’s book out there-- a book that would actually make money!-- about our possible first woman President. Plenty of other countries have been helmed by women -- what is our problem?

The next day, on the train to Baltimore, I remembered reading somewhere that she had originally dreamed of being an astronaut and that NASA had rebuffed her (no girls allowed, back in 1961). Now I had a visual to work with, plus an opening line -- "Once there was a girl who wanted to fly" -- with a metaphor to convey the barriers she's overcome in her distinguished career. Eureka-- Hillary Rodham Clinton: Dreams Taking Flight.

The question I am most often asked about this book is whether I’ve met Hillary. I’d love to say we go way back - she did grow up in Park Ridge, Illinois, not far from where I grew up in Wilmette. No, I haven’t met her, but in my research I blitzed through every book that’s been published about her (including Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary-- as if there were only 30). I found more and more that girls AND boys could appreciate about her story, and the surge of excitement fueled me during the crash schedule to get the book out by 2008.

By that time, of course, history had intervened with my dream of a woman president and a bestseller, not that I was complaining about President Obama, especially after he appointed her Secretary of State. I got a letter from her praising the book and saying vaguely that she’d like to meet someday.

This is how close we were

Then, in 2009, by a fluke, I was literally a few feet away from her at a State Department function. Perhaps we could have our special moment of connection at last. She hosted the event-- witty and radiant--but her schedule that day was way harsher than mine, the weight of the world almost literally on her shoulders. As she dashed out of the room for some world crisis and left the hosting to an underling, I nearly interrupted the formalities by blurting, “Goodbye, Hillary,” with a wave and a meaningful smile….

But revising the book? I’m in. So how about it in 2012, HRC???

Giving thanks

2011-03-01T03:20:00.000-08:00

MARCH 1 - Today's post provided by Shelf-employed

Were it not for the diligent and talented authors of books for children (many who will be represented here this month), the historic contributions of women who toiled in relative obscurity might be otherwise overlooked. The same may be said for influential women who were cultural icons in their own era but largely forgotten with the passage of time. It is through the efforts of today’s writers that the stories of these women are preserved and reintroduced to subsequent generations. Today's writers also offer us fresh perspectives on women we thought we knew well.

Throughout the course of this month, we hope to highlight the achievements of women in history, and call attention to quality children’s books about significant women, and their authors.

Laurie Halse Anderson is not able to join us this month (you will be pleased to hear that she is hard at work on a new YA novel), but I would like to highlight one of her older books that I feel is representative of quality nonfiction picture books for younger readers, Thank You Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving (illustrated by Matt Faulkner, Simon & Schuster 2002). I share this book each year during Women's History Month and again in November.

Until I came across this book, I had never heard of Sarah Hale (1788-1879), but she was, among other things, a writer, poet (she penned the now-famous ditty, "Mary Had a Little Lamb"), and an influential editor. While Anderson mentions these facts in the book's back matter, Thank You, Sarah's focus is Hale's campaign to have Thanksgiving recognized as a federal holiday. Petitioning politicians and presidents from Zachary Taylor to Abraham Lincoln, Sarah Hale staged a letter-writing campaign of thirty-eight years in pursuit of a national day of thanksgiving. Abraham Lincoln finally designated the holiday in 1863.

Anderson writes in friendly, easily understood language and gives modern context to the story by equating Sarah Hale with a superhero - her superpower? a pen! Illustrated with humorous caricatures, Sarah Hale's story encourages children to persevere, espouses the power of the pen (be it quill or blog!), and proves that one person can make a difference.

There is more to a great children’s biography than the number of its pages. Great biographies for kids should, of course, be factual and well-researched, but they should also be inspirational, engaging, compelling, relevant. Today’s readers may be the subjects of tomorrow’s biographies; they deserve nothing less.

Please join us for the rest of the month as we celebrate Women’s History Month through the lens of children’s literature. We’ve got some great things coming up!
Thanks.

Welcome!

2011-01-05T20:24:00.000-08:00

This blog was founded in order to commemorate Women's History Month across the kidlitosphere, the community of bloggers specializing in children's and young adult literature. This inaugural 2011 celebration is organized by bloggers The Fourth Musketeer, a library science student, and Shelf-Employed, a children's librarian.

Why celebrate women's history and children's literature? Not so long ago, women's history was virtually ignored in the K-12 curriculum. In 2011, we are fortunate to have many resources for our children to learn about women's history, from fabulous biographical picture books about remarkable women to historical novels to compelling history books written to especially appeal to young people. We hope this blog will help you identify some of these resources, learn about new books on women's history, and enjoy reflections by some distinguished authors in the field. We will be featuring a post each day in March by a different author in children's literature or by a blogger who specializes in writing about children's or young adult literature. Each post will tie into Women's History Month.

Interested in participating? Check out further information on our JOIN page. If we are unable to accommodate all those who would like to contribute, we encourage you to write a post on your blog about Women's History Month and we will provide links to all appropriate posts.

Thanks for visiting!