Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Susan B. Anthony: Fighter for Women’s Rights
Illustrator: Amy June Bates
Nonfiction Picture Book Series
For ages 6 to 8
Simon and Schuster, 2005 ISBN: 978-0689869099
Susan came from a large family and from an early age she worked hard with the other girls and women in her family to feed, dress, and take care of everyone in the household. Clearly being female was hard work and yet women were not given the same rights as men. This puzzled Susan. She found this situation even harder to understand because her father lived by the rules even though he did not believe that women were inferior to men. Instead he believed that girls should be educated and that women should be treated with the same respect given to men. Clearly something was terribly wrong with the way things were done and something needed to change. Susan was the kind of person who was not willing to sit and wait for change - she was the kind of person to make the change happen herself, if she could.
And this is just what she did - she fought for change. Susan began to work towards having an America where slavery was no longer tolerated and where women had the same rights as men. Over the years Susan became first a member, and then a leader in several organizations that fought to abolish slavery and that tried to encourage Americans to see that women are not inferior to men. These were hard battles and year after year Susan and her friends and allies gave speeches, wrote papers, lobbied Congress, and made a nuisance of themselves. They did not give up despite the set-backs and disappointments and Susan worked on throughout her life living by the words "failure is not possible."
Deborah Hopkinson has managed to capture the courage, energy, and determination of this most extraordinary woman. The language is easy to read and yet at the same time it does credit to the ideals that Susan B. Anthony worked for. Girls will especially find Susan’s story interesting and inspiring.
This is one of the titles in the well written and easy to read "Stories of Famous Americans" series.
