Leaders All.

A literary showcase to celebrate Women's History Month 

STONE GIRL, BONE GIRL: The Story of Mary Anning 

By Laurence Anholt, illustrated by Sheila Moxley; 28 pages; Orchard, 1999; $15.95. Grades 1-5. If you're looking for fascinating biographies of independent, trailblazing women, read aloud, compare, and contrast the four new and outstanding picture-book accounts of Mary Anning. In 1811, at the age of 12, she dug up the first-ever-found fossil of an ichthyosaur, a 165-millionyear-old dinosaur from the cliffs of her seaside town, Lyme Regis, England. Since not all that much is known about Mary's childhood, each of the books takes some liberties in fictionalizing dialogue and writing her life as a glorious story, and each one chooses slightly different anecdotes to relate. Anholt's version is the most visually appealing for younger readers, with folk art-style paintings and a determined heroine who strikes out on her own to dig fossils despite the taunts of local children. Mary eventually uncovered a wealth of other important fossils--Plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, and ichthyosaurs included--that can still be seen in m useums today. Though unschooled, Mary was an expert in her field.

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* The Fossil Girl: Mary Anning's Dinosaur Discovery, by Catherine Brighton; 28 pages; Millbrook Press, 1999; $21.40. Grades 2-4. Brighton's striking illustrations are laid out cartoon style and give a sketchier though no less dramatic account of Mary's finds.

* Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon, by Jeannine Atkins, illustrated by Michael Dooling; 32 pages; Farrar, 1999; $16. Grades 2-5. Atkins's book has the most elegant and atmospheric painting, and is related as a story with fictionalized dialogue.

* Rare Treasure: Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries, by Don Brown; 32 pages; Houghton Mifflin, 1999; $15. Grades 2-5. Brown's is the most chronological and fact based of the four books and is illustrated with watercolors.

YOU FORGOT YOUR SKIRT, AMELIA BLOOMER!

By Shana Corey, illustrated by Chelsey McLaren; 32 pages; Scholastic, 2000; $16.95. Grades 2-4.

"Amelia Bloomer was NOT a proper lady." So begins this delightful, breezy picture book about the suffragist who in 1851 started a newspaper for women, The Lily, n Seneca Falls, New York. She declared then current women's fashions, with their voluminous skirts and tight corsets, silly. One day her friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton came to visit, bringing along her cousin Libby, who was wearing a remarkable new outfit she'd made.

Amelia declared the outfit "brilliant" and sewed herself one. Townspeople were aghast, but readers of her newspaper clamored for the pattern so they could make their own "bloomers," as they came to be called. Cheerful watercolors accompany the high-spirited text, which will encourage listeners to think about how clothing influences and is influenced by the toms of each era.

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* Bloomers! By Rhoda Blumberg, illustrated by Mary Morgan; 32 pages; Atheneum, 1993; $14.95. Grades 2-5. Here's a more thorough account of Amelia Bloomers revolutionary new style as well as background on the early days of the women s movement, featuring pioneers Stanton, Bloomer, and Susan B. Anthony.

* Ballot Box Baffle, by Emily Arnold McCully; 32 pages; Knopf, 1996; $17. Grades 1-4. In a fictionalized story based on her memoirs, meet the elderly suffragist, and still feisty Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in 1880 as she attempts to cast her vote on Election Day. Children are always shocked to find that, despite the active nineteenth-century women's rights movement, women were not permitted to vote in the U.S. until the Nineteenth Amendment was passed, in 1920.

OUR ONLY MAY AMELIA

By Jennifer L. Holm; 253 pages; HarperCollins, 1999; $15.95. Grades 4-7.

The only girl among seven older brothers, 12-year-old May Amelia is hoping her pregnant mother's next baby will be a girl. Narrated by May Amelia in a distinct and chatty style, this original and high-spirited novel was inspired by the diary of the author's grand-aunt. Living along Washington State's Nasel River, in 1899, she chafes at her strict Pappa's fierce scoldings and wishes she didn't always have to "mind the farm." Told she is a "no-good girl," May Amelia willingly participates in every romp with her brothers and causes no end of trouble for them: shooting off a gun, stepping in an animal trap, then heatedly arguing with her disapproving Grandmother Patience, who comes to stay. "It's heaps more fun not being a Proper Young Lady," she reasons.

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* Preacher's Boy, by Katherine Paterson; 168 pages; Clarion, 1999; $15. Grades 5-8. Compare May Amelia's circumstances with those of Robbie, a preacher's mischievous son living in Vermont, also in 1899.

STREETS OF GOLD

By Rosemary Wells, illustrated by Dan Andreasen; 40 pages; Dial, 1999; $15.99. Grades 2-5.

In 1894 12-year-old Mary Antin and her family arrived in Boston from Russia. Using excerpts from Mary's autobiography, The Promised Land, author Rosemary Wells retells the girl's heartfelt account of her life in a shtetl, or small Jewish village. There, Jewish girls were not permitted to attend school. When the grocery store owned by her father is closed by the czar's police, he escapes to America, promising to send for the rest of the family when he can. After a difficult journey, Mary spends her first year in America in a Boston tenement on a street paved "not with bricks of gold. Instead it was piled high with garbage." With her Russian name Masha changed to the American "Mary," she quickly learns English and is promoted from first to fifth grade within six months. This beautifully told and illustrated picture book elucidates the immigrant experience, sensitizes children to the hardships newcomers face, and affirms the life-changing advantages of a good education.

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The Memory Coat, by Elvira Woodruff, illustrated by Michael Dooling; 32 pages; Scholastic, 1999; $15.95. Grades 2-5. After a two-week voyage to Ellis Island, loyal Rachel saves her cousin and best friend, Grisha, from deportation to Russia.

When Jessie Came Across the Sea, by Amy Hest, illustrated by P.J. Lynch; 40 pages; Candlewick, 1997; $16.99. Grades 2-5. Here is another sumptuously illustrated, sweeping tale of a 13-year-old Jewish girl who leaves her beloved grandmother behind in Russia to make a new life in late-19th-century New York City.

TEA WITH MILK

By Allen Say; 32 pages; Houghton Mifflin, 1999; $17. Grades 1-8. Allen Say continues his family history with another elegant and poignant picture book that delves into his mother's life. Raised near San Francisco, his mother, May, chafes at being taken to Japan by her parents, homesick for their native country. In Japan she is called Masako and has to wear a kimono and attend high school all over again to learn to speak, read, and write the Japanese language. Masako decides to live on her own, like an American daughter, and runs off to Osaka. Her skills in English lead to a job as a department store's guide for foreign businessmen. Soon she meets kind, young Joseph, an orphan raised by English parents. He understands Masako and drinks tea with milk and sugar, as she does. Have children ask their parents and grandparents to tell the story of how they met and married.

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Grandfather's Journey, by Allen Say; 32 pages; Houghton Mifflin, 1993; $15.95. Grades 1-8.

Tree of Cranes, by Allen Say; 32 pages; Houghton Mifflin, 1991, $15.95. Grades Pre-K-6. Like Tea With Milk, these two books present Say's own family sagas, breathtakingly illustrated with solemn watercolors that look like hand-tinted family photographs. In Grandfather's Journey, a Caldecott Medal book, Say describes his grandfather's cyclical voyage from Japan to the New World as a young man, and back to Japan years later with his wife and daughter. In Tree of Cranes, his mother, Masako, wistfully recalls to her son her childhood in California and demonstrates the Christmas custom of decorating a live tree.

How My Parents Learned to Eat, by Ina R. Friedman, illustrated by Allen Say; 32 pages; Houghton Mifflin, 1984; $15. Grades 1-4. In this charming picture book, a young girl relates the story of the courtship of her parents, a Japanese schoolgirl and an American sailor, to explain why she eats with both chopsticks and flatware.

AMELIA AND ELEANOR GO FOR A RIDE

By Pam Munoz Ryan, illustrated by Bryan Selznick; 40 pages; Scholastic, 1999; $16.95. Grades 2-5. On April 20, 1933, the outspoken Eleanor Roosevelt invites her friend Amelia Earhart, the celebrated aviator, to the White House for dinner and an overnight stay. Based on a little known true account, the story will inspire children to read more about these two remarkable role models. At dinner Amelia describes the mystery of flying at night and invites Eleanor to fly to Baltimore with her. Eleanor then returns Amelia's gift by taking her friend on a fast drive in her new motorcar. The parallels between the two women are detailed in glorious oversized picture-book format, illustrated in silvery colored pencils.

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* Eleanor, by Barbara Cooney, illustrated by the author. 40 pages; Viking, 1996; $15.99; Grades 1-4. A visually lovely but somber picture-book biography about the difficult childhood of shy, plain Eleanor Roosevelt, orphaned at age nine. What's so compelling about this "poor little rich girl" story is the way Eleanor prevailed, attending a school where an inspirational head-mistress imbued her with a sense of worth and challenged her to think for herself.

* A Picture Book of Amelia Earhart, by David A. Adler, illustrated by Jeff Fisher; 32 pages; Holiday House, 1998; $16.95; Grades 2-4. Adler's valuable Picture Book biography series is always entertaining, enlightening, well researched, and easy for children to understand. Also share his A Picture Book of Eleanor Roosevelt (Holiday House, 1991).

A children's literature consultant and lecturer, Judy Freeman is the author of Hi Ho Librario: Songs, Chants and Stories to Keep Kids Humming (Rock Hill Press, 1997; 1-888-ROCKHILL).