Writing in free verse, Woodson starts with her 1963 birth in Ohio during the civil rights movement, when America is “a country caught / / between Black and White.” But while evoking names such as Malcolm, Martin, James, Rosa and Ruby, her story is also one of family: her father’s people in Ohio and her mother’s people in South Carolina. It is a wonderful package, adding the women who made it work to the men we thought we all knew.Ī multiaward–winning author recalls her childhood and the joy of becoming a writer. Roberts’ “Letter of Introduction” sets the stage, and the acknowledgments from writer and illustrator tell a compelling story of research and support. Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison and Martha Washington are included of course, and there’s also Mercy Otis Warren, who wrote letters and poems championing the cause of freedom, and Eliza Lucas Pinckney, whose “little schemes” included raising silkworms and cultivating indigo as a cash crop. There are briefer vignettes on women writers and women warriors, as well as an illustrated timeline from 1765 to 1815. They bought linen for 2,000 shirts for the soldiers, and into each was sewn the name of the woman who made it.
Some women get two-page illustrated spreads, like Esther DeBerdt Reed, who wrote one of the endpaper pieces and who raised thousands of dollars for Washington’s troops. Roberts’ lively text is illuminated with flourishes and curlicues along with winsome or whimsical portraits in what looks like ink and watercolor.
On the endpapers, she has reproduced in sepia tones with antique pens some of the source documents that allow readers to know these women. Goode’s illustrations are often breathtaking. ABC and NPR correspondent Roberts and Caldecott Honoree Goode forge an attractive and compelling version for young people of Roberts’ adult book of the same title.
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