Elizabeth Leads the Way

May 12, 2008
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.