Elizabeth Leads the Way: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Right to Vote
Grade 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, ORCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.