Women in Politics Do Great Things

 

Friday, August 14, 2020 was the 85th anniversary of the Social Security Act, and for this, and more, we have Frances Perkins to thank!

Praise for Thanks to Frances Perkins

 

“Engaging… An informative portrait of an activist and advocate whose accomplishments are still evident today.” —Kirkus Reviews

 

“Informative…guardians seeking a woman activist’s framework, with actionable steps that resonate today, will find this picture book attractive." —Publishers Weekly

“The lively text presents Perkins’ life and times, while emphasizing her significant contributions to society. Created using pleasant, subdued colors, the well-composed digital illustrations bring past eras into focus and show Perkins’ determined work on behalf of others. An informative picture-book biography of a notable American.” —Booklist

If you want to incorporate early economics education in your classroom, check out this blog post, and this free teachers' guide from Peachtree Books.

Want to hear from author Deborah Hopkinson? She wrote a post for the Nerdy Book Club.

Need a nonfiction text with a unique lead/hook to use as a mentor text? This book is for you!

So many reasons to love this book!! Thank you to to publisher for the review copy!

Poetry Friday -- A Tribute to the Women Who Made Me Who I Am

The women who made me who I am
     gave each other home perms
     led Cub Scout dens and Brownie Scout troops
     grew asparagus for the challenge of it
     ran the swimming pool and coached the swim team.

The women who made me who I am
     opened businesses
     drove tractors
     canned pickles
     read voraciously.

The women who made me who I am
     put meals on the table
     put kids to bed
     put petunias in the planter
     put family first.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2019


Happy International Women's Day! This poem's for you, Harriet, Verta, Rae, Phyllis, Rita, Vonnie, Evelyn, Adrienne, Joy, Bonnie, Rose Mae, Faye, and all the others whose names have left my memory, but whose mark remains.

Catherine has the Poetry Friday Roundup at Reading to the Core.

Next week, Heidi (my juicy little universe) is inviting us to join her in sharing Climate Change poems for the worldwide School Strike for Climate.

Strong Girls Rock the World

Franki recently shared her love for Shaking Things Up: 14 Young Women Who Changed the World by Susan Hood. (Olivia of @Livbits loves it, too. If you haven't watched her video, take a couple of minutes to do so. I'd add her to the list as the 15th young woman who's changing the world!)

I have two more Strong Girl books to add to your TBR stack and to your library.

Marley Dias Gets It DONE: And So Can You!
Scholastic Press, 2018

Marley Dias, founder of the #1000BlackGirlsBooks movement has written a book that is part memoir and autobiography and a whole lot Girl Power. This full-color book is jam packed with advice, inspiration, and action steps for young social activists. My favorite chapter is "Be The Change You Want to See in the World: Get Woke." She identifies three levels of Wokeness: Awareness, Consciousness, and Wokeness, then illustrates the levels using Disney Princesses. Cinderella is aware, Jasmine is conscious, but Mulan and Belle are full-on woke. It wouldn't be Marley Dias if she didn't have several sections on books and reading (her section on How To Read is fabulous!), plus an extensive booklist of books that feature black girls as the protagonist.

What Would She Do?: 25 True Stories of Trailblazing Rebel Women
by Kay Woodward
Scholastic Press, February 27, 2018

This book features the stories of 25 women from all times in history and from all over the globe. For each woman, there is a short blurb, full-color illustrations, a single-page highly readable biography,  a quote...and a question that a modern girl might ask with an answer based on that woman's life and legacy. Because of all of these features, this book will be accessible to a wide range of readers, and will likely be one they go back to over and over again to dig more deeply into the lives of  these inspirational women.

Poetry Friday -- New National Youth Poet Laureate!

Meet Amanda Gorman, the first National Youth Poet Laureate!

"The unprecedented title, to be awarded annually, honors a teen poet who demonstrates not only extraordinary literary talent but also a proven record of community engagement and youth leadership," writes Maggie Millner.

At the age of 14, Amanda was the Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. Now 19, Amanda a freshman at Harvard, an advocate for the creative arts and writing in the lives of young girls across the globe, a published poet, an inspiration.

“For me, being able to stand on a stage as a spoken word poet, as someone who overcame a speech impediment, as the descendent of slaves who would have been prosecuted for reading and writing, I think it really symbolizes how, by pursuing a passion and never giving up, you can go as far as your wildest dreams,” said Gorman at the ceremony on Wednesday evening. “This represents such a significant moment because never in my opinion have the arts been more important than now.”

Here's a bit from her poem, At the Age of 18--Ode to Girls of Color:

At the age of 18 

I know my color is not warning, but a welcome. 

A girl of color is a lighthouse, an ultraviolet ray of power, potential, and promise 

My color does not mean caution, it means courage 

my dark does not mean danger, it means daring, 

my brown does not mean broken, it means bold backbone from working 

twice as hard to get half as far. 

Being a girl of color means I am key, path, and wonder all in one body.

Be sure you read the whole poem!

Here she is, performing Mirror, Mirror:



Read more about Amanda here and here and here and here.



Margaret has this week's Poetry Friday roundup at Reflections on the Teche.

What is Feminism?

What is Feminism?

Some women
have the luxury of
joining a cause.
Fighting for equal rights
and equal pay.
Finding their voices,
expressing their true identities.

Other women
have the necessity of
work.
Finding the work
and doing the work.
Keeping their families fed,
running the businesses.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2017





"My mother came from a long line of women who worked outside the home. Her grandmother ran a deli while her husband read Torah. Her own mother and father ran a naval tailor shop. When I was in the fifth grade, my mother’s father died, and she and my father and grandmother ran the shop together."

http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/biographies/malvina-reynolds/

Poetry Friday -- Girl Power

photo via unsplash

They Can't Shut Us All Up

They can shut me up
but they can't change the truth--
I'm Rosa and Hillary, Malala and Ruth.

They can silence my voice
but I'll lead and you'll follow--
I'm Keller and Earhart, Cleopatra and Kahlo.

We rivet and code,
we teach and we heal,
orbit Earth, win Nobels,
go to prison for ideals.

They can't shut us all up
and they can't change what's true--
we're here to write history in PINK, not in blue.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2017




This is a poem for Laura Shovan's Annual February Writing Project. The words/phrases for this poem

they

can

shut

me

up

but

they

can't

change

the 

truth

originated here.

Katie has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at The Logonauts.

Founding Mothers

Founding Mothers: Remembering the Ladies
by Cokie Roberts
illustrated by Diane Goode
Harper, 2014
review copy provided by the publisher

In 2005, NPR political commentator Cokie Roberts wrote a 384 page adult book, Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation This picture book version of her work gives ten famous (and not so famous) women a double-page spread, and highlights Women Writers and Women Warriors with paragraph-length blurbs. The ten ladies are Eliza Lucas Pinckney, who at 19, while running three large plantations while her father fought for England against Spain, succeeded in raising indigo for the first time; Deborah Read Franklin, Ben's wife, who ran all his businesses in the States while he was in England; Mercy Otis Warren, an influential writer; Phillis Wheatley, a poet and a slave; Abigail Adams, letter-writing wife of John; Martha Washington, who spent every winter of the eight years of the Revolutionary War in military camps with husband George; Esther DeBerdt Reed, writer and fundraiser for the Revolutionary War effort; Sarah Livingston Jay, wife of John Jay; Catharine Littlefield Greene, wife of General Nathaniel Greene who, when running the plantation after his death, helped Eli Whitney with his cotton gin invention; and Dolley Madison, brave wife of James.

As the review in the New York Times points out, this book would be a whole lot more useful with a table of contents and a more discernible organization.

That criticism aside, this book provides some nice short texts about historic women. I can imagine students being charged with placing each woman on a continuum of influence, based on the information given by Roberts in the text, and arguing for their placements. I can imagine students choosing a woman to research in more detail, and then debating with another student about whose woman was the most influential. Even just the conversation about what makes a person influential would be fascinating, as would a discussion of the problem of how to know historic women deeply when they often did not leave a trail of primary source material for historians to study.

This book would also be fascinating to use in a study of the art of calligraphy. Diane Goode's pen and sepia ink illustrations in the style of the period, and her reproductions of each woman's signature made me want to get out my pen nibs and resurrect the skill I learned in high school art class.

The Tree Lady

The Tree Lady: The True Story of How One Tree-Loving Woman Changed a City Forever
by H. Joseph Hopkins
illustrated by Jill McElmurry
Beach Lane Books, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

Even if you don't live in San Diego, you need to meet Kate Sessions.

You need to know her because she was the kind of person whose childhood passions became her lifelong work...in spite of all kinds of barriers that made it difficult to be a woman scientist in the 1800's.

Kate's love of trees and science followed her to the Southern California desert town of San Diego, where she was first a teacher, then a gardener and tree hunter, searching for the kinds of trees that would grow and thrive in San Diego's climate.

Her vision for the city transformed Balboa Park when the Panama-California Exposition came in 1915.

Kate Sessions was a person who lived her dreams and changed her world.

The writing in this picture book biography is exceptional. The repeating phrase, "But Kate did" (and variations thereof), found at the end of every page, adds a solid certainty to the importance of Kate's dream, her passion, and her life's work.

Amelia Lost

Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

by Candace Fleming 

Schwartz & Wade, 2011

Last night I finished reading Amelia Lost. This morning I read this on The Writer's Almanac:

It was 75 years ago today, in 1937, that Amelia Earhart was last heard from, somewhere over the Pacific. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, had set off in May from Miami to fly around the world in a Lockheed Electra. She said, "I have a feeling that there is just about one more good flight left in my system, and I hope this trip is it." 

They had completed all but about 7,000 miles of the trip when they landed in New Guinea. Maps of this part of the Pacific were inaccurate, and U.S. Coast Guard ships were in place to help guide them to their next stop, the tiny Howland Island. The weather was cloudy and rainy when they left New Guinea. At 7:42 a.m., Earhart communicated to the Coast Guard Cutter Itasca: "We must be on you, but we cannot see you. Fuel is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet." Her last transmission, about an hour later, was "We are running north and south." 

Franklin Roosevelt sent nine ships and 66 aircraft to search for the downed plane, to no avail. 

This month, 75 years after Earhart's disappearance, a new search team will use robotic submarines to comb the area where they think the Electra went down.

Cosmic, eh?

This is the kind of longer nonfiction I can imagine reading aloud to fourth grade and up. Fleming does an excellent job maintaining tension, even though we pretty much know the story. She does this by alternating between chapters about Earhart's disappearance and the search that was conducted for her, and chapters that tell her life story.

My next #bookaday/#paredownthetbrpile book will be The Good, The Bad, and the Barbie. At first glance, it might seem to be a ironic choice. But I'm interested to see what kind of overlap there is between Amelia, the legendary/mythic/iconic role model for women/girls, and the much-maligned toy role model/monster/psychological destroyer know as Barbie.