Sunday, March 05, 2006

Her Story


Kathy Englehart recommends "stories of little-known women who made a difference" in today's Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Englehart suggests a wide variety of books (from picture to biography) about a number of important women. They are:

  • I Could Do That! Esther Morris Gets Women the Vote, by Linda Arms White (illustrations by Nancy Carpenter). Esther Morris was an, "abolitionist, a pioneer and a suffragist whose efforts led to Wyoming being the first state to give women the right to vote - in 1869 - 50 years before the United States did the same. She was also the first woman to hold public office in the United States."
  • Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight Became an Inventor, by Emily Arnold McCully. Margaret E. Knight was an inventor who came up with solutions to everyday problems and created the machine responsible for square-bottom paper bags.
  • My Name is Gabriela: The Life of Garbriela Mistral / Me llamo Gabriela: la vida de Gabriela Mistral, by Monica Brown (illustrated by John Parra). A bilingual text about Chile's beloved poet, who became the first Latina to win the Noble prize for Literature.
  • She's Wearing a Dead Bird on Her Head! by Kathryn Lasky (illustrated by David Catrow). She's Wearing a Dead Bird on Her Head! tells the tale of Harriet Hemenway and Minna Hall, who began the Audubon Society in response to, "the shocking style of wearing dead birds as hats."
  • Vherses: A Celebration of Outstanding Women, by J. Patrick Lewis (illustrated by Mark Summers). Lewis writes of the lives of famous (and not-so-famous) female poets.

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Elsewhere...

Tess Kalinowski covers the "banning" of Three Wishes (by Deborah Ellis) for the Toronto Star. While Three Wishes has not been banned (in the way we are accustomed to in the U.S.), "the Canadian Jewish Congress and York school officials" have recommended the book be, "guided to older students or read under the supervision of teachers and parents."

Nicolette Jones has selected Emily Gravett's Orange Pear Apple Bear as the Times "Children's Book of the Week."