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Summary
Summary
An acclaimed biographer for children, Tanya Lee Stone has received many accolades for her over 80 published books. This Junior Library Guild Premier Selection introduces young listeners to women's rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In the 19th century, American women weren't allowed to own property, go to college, or even vote. Unwilling to suffer this injustice, Stanton gathered like-minded people to change these rules.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-4-Stone looks at the life of Stanton from childhood to her emergence as a pioneering leader of women's rights. The "strong-spirited, rule-breaking" girl asserted her independence by embracing physical and academic challenges and by questioning traditional viewpoints. This comes through in energetic, lucid prose that focuses on Elizabeth's ideas and feelings rather than on specific events. By consistently sticking to the subject's own experiences, without detours into historical details or even any dates, the author introduces a historical figure whom readers can relate to as a person. Excellent gouache and colored pencil illustrations, rendered in a lighthearted folk-art style, provide rich background for the brief text. They establish the time period through visual details and capture Stanton's spirit and the attitudes of those she encounters without overstatement. The book culminates with the event that propelled the woman into the national spotlight: her presentation at a convention in Seneca Falls, NY, in 1848, of the Declaration of Right and Sentiments, which included a call for women's voting rights. "Elizabeth had tossed a stone in the water and the ripples grew wider and wider and wider." An author's note briefly covers Stanton's subsequent accomplishments. Through words and pictures that work together and an emphasis on ideas and personality rather than factoids, this well-conceived introduction is just right for a young audience.-Steven Engelfried, Multnomah County Library, OR (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Beginning with a direct address--"What would you do if someone told you.../ your voice doesn't matter/ because you are a girl?"--Stone (Amelia Earhart) fires up readers with a portrait of the 19th-century feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Four-year-old Elizabeth takes umbrage when a visitor sees her baby sister and clucks, "What a pity it is she's a girl!" Later Elizabeth reads Greek and jumps horses, like contemporary boys, and continues to bristle at injustice. Readers will follow this strong-minded heroine into her adult years, her work as an abolitionist, and her historic role as an activist and visionary. While not a detailed biography or an overview of the women's suffrage movement, this inviting story nevertheless offers a good jumping-off point. The sometimes informational tone is animated and energized by Gibbon's (Players in Pigtails) plentiful vignettes and paintings, rendered in a vibrant folk-art style. Ages 6-10. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
From the opening sentences, Stone engages modern readers and sets the nineteenth-century stage for them: "What would you do if someone told you you can't be what you want to be because you are a girl? What would you do if someone told you your vote doesn't count, your voice doesn't matter because you are a girl? Would you ask why? Would you talk back? Would you fight...for your rights? Elizabeth did." An easy-to-read text outlines the life of pioneering feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, beginning with her rebellion as a young girl who studies Greek, protests property laws unfavorable to women, and engages in strenuous physical activities. The now-famous meeting with Lucretia Mott and other like-minded ladies that propels Elizabeth to pursue women's suffrage is blithely upbeat here, but the scene retains the spirit of the text and highlights Elizabeth's energy. The folksy illustrations emphasize both the homeliness of a woman's existence and the groundswell of plain folk that demanded change. An author's note adds detail to Elizabeth's life and outlines the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 (eighteen years after her death); a brief bibliography of adult sources completes the book. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
In lively prose well-matched by Gibbon's irrepressible images, Stone tells the story of suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The breezy narrative visits Elizabeth at key moments in her youth: when she wondered why a visitor expressed regret that her baby sister was a girl; when she learned a widow would lose the farm she had worked on her whole life because her husband died and women couldn't own property; when she begged to continue her education. She married the abolitionist Henry Stanton, but kept her name along with his. A meeting with Lucretia Mott and other strong, like-minded women led to a much larger gathering at Seneca Falls, N.Y. There began the long battle--the end of which Elizabeth did not live to see--to win the right to vote. Gibbon uses pattern and line on white backgrounds to set off her figures and exaggerated gestures and expressions to give them energy. A fine introduction for very young readers to the woman and her key role in American history. (author's note, sources) (Picture book/biography. 5-9) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Most young people will be unfamiliar with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and what she accomplished. Stone goes a long way toward correcting that, wisely beginning with a pithy introduction that links the life of women in the early nineteenth century with that of readers today: What would you do if someone told you you can't be what you want to be because you are a girl? . . . your voice doesn't matter? Would you fight for your rights? Elizabeth did. What follows is a short, incisive biography covering some of the high points of Stanton's life, beginning with her shocking realization about how unfairly the law treated women, which translated into Stanton's lifelong work for women's suffrage. In shorts text bites, Stone explains how Stanton met her abolitionist husband (and refused to give up her name), the origins of the women's rights movement, and the effect of the Women's Rights Conference in Seneca Falls, New York. This focus works well for the audience, though the brevity leaves some holes. Susan B. Anthony, for instance, is pictured, though unnamed. The child-pleasing artwork features characters a bit reminiscent of clothespin dolls, but the cameos of action, matched by full-page pictures, make the history accessible. A must for library shelves.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2008 Booklist
