Elizabeth Started All the Trouble

November 15, 2015
Rappaport examines the salient successes and raw setbacks along the 144-year-long road between the nation's birth and women's suffrage. This lively yet forthright narrative pivots on a reality that should startle modern kids: women's right to vote was only achieved in 1920, 72 years after Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Indeed, time's passage figures as a textual motif, connecting across decades such determined women as Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone. They spoke tirelessly, marched, organized, and got arrested. Rappaport includes events such as 1913's Women's Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C., but doesn't shy from divisive periods like the Civil War. Faulkner's meticulously researched gouache-and-ink illustrations often infuse scenes with humor by playing with size and perspective. As Stanton and Lucretia Mott sail into London in 1840 for the World Anti-Slavery Conference, Faulkner depicts the two women as giants on the ship's upper deck. On the opposite page, as they learn they'll be barred as delegates, they're painted in miniature, dwarfed yet unflappable beneath a gallery full of disapproving men. A final double-page spread mingles such modern stars as Shirley Chisholm and Sonia Sotomayor amid the historical leaders. Rappaport makes this long struggle palpable and relevant, while Faulkner adds a winning mix of gravitas and high spirits. (biographical thumbnails, chronology, sources, websites, further reading, author's note) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2016

Gr 1-4-This informational picture book offers up a brief account of how the women's suffrage movement in the United States began and developed momentum over the years. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was involved both in abolitionism and the women's rights movement, becoming an outspoken advocate in the two realms and leading the way for many other women to take up the banner of equality. Rappaport takes readers through the evolution of suffrage, from the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, NY, where Stanton shared the Declaration of Sentiments, to the many women who took a stand or dared to think outside the box. Organized chronologically, the book presents brief details about many of the events, protests, trials, and jail sentences, as well as how women eventually gained the right to vote, functioning almost as a time line. The accompanying artwork provides a look at individuals and adds context to the narrative. VERDICT A solid introduction to Stanton and the women's rights movement.-Jody Kopple, Shady Hill School, Cambridge, MA

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2016
Grades 3-6 Though Elizabeth Cady Stanton is the titular character, this book provides a comprehensive primer on the struggle for female suffrage and equal political representation in the U.S. from the colonial period through the Nineteenth Amendment. The story begins with Abigail Adams encouraging her husband to consider what independence meant for women, and it chronicles other landmark events, such as Stanton and Lucretia Mott being barred from the antislavery meetings, the Seneca Falls declaration, and Amelia Bloomer sporting pants in public places. Yet the most compelling stories are the everyday anecdotes, such as Susan B. Anthony minding Stanton's children while she penned speeches, Lucy Stone omitting the word obey from her wedding vows, and the first students at Mount Holyoke crowding around a table full of laboratory equipment. Faulkner's illustrations capture the spirit of each character and of the movement itself, and primary source quotes from the likes of Sojourner Truth and Alice Paul drive home the importance of the events described.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)