Elizabeth Leads the Way: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Right to Vote

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" Copyright 2008 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Beginning with a direct addressWhat 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 610. "(May)" Copyright 2008 Publishers Weekly Used with permission.