Nonfiction about Amazing Women

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.

Booktalks for Women’s History Month

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.

Cleopatra Confesses

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!