This book will be featured soon in a post all about empowering books, but for now I wanted to dedicate it’s very own blog post as it is absolutely beautiful and so very educational! Many thanks to Hachette Children’s for sending me a review copy!
I don’t read much non-fiction, but when I do I always want to take something away from it and build on what I know already. I always want to be able to learn something new, and this book taught me lots of things I didn’t know about the rise of votes for women around the world! Each page focuses on a particular country, detailing how the right for votes for women came about, and also tells the date that women started campaigning and when the vote was actually achieved. For example, I had no idea that New Zealand was the first country to allow women to vote all the way back in 1893!
The information is in nice chunks, and doesn’t overwhelm the reader with facts and figures – this is a children’s book, so shouldn’t dumb down the information nor make it hard to understand. There is a perfect amount of information written on each page, enough for readers to understand exactly what sort of thing women had to go through to get the vote. There’s even a really neat timeline at the back which is really handy to look at – and also very surprising to see the big year gaps between countries.
What makes this book stand out from the crowd is the illustration. There have been some excellent books with absolutely amazing illustrations, and this one is no different. Each one depicts the most important or striking event from the information given – from French suffragist Maguerite Durand leaving her home with a lioness, to Nigerian suffragist Funmilayo Ransom-Kuti’s defiant display in the market square. The images are as bold and as striking as the women featured, and it really does make for such a lovely book to cherish again and again.
Final thought: A striking and powerful book, perfect for educating. 5/5
Readable Life 