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A review by panda_incognito
Fight of the Century: Alice Paul Battles Woodrow Wilson for the Vote by Barb Rosenstock
3.0
This book creatively retells the story of Alice Paul's fight for women's suffrage. It conveys historically accurate and detailed information while keeping a playful, engaging tone for children, and the illustrations capture Paul's and Wilson's real-life physical features and facial expressions very well. However, even though I am impressed with most elements of this book, and appreciate the detailed author's note and historical timelines in the back, I am only giving this book three stars because of two different issues.
Firstly, the playful narrative device of telling the story as a match-up between a champion and a challenger has a few complications. The author presents fellow suffrage supporters as being "in Alice's corner," and detractors as being "in Woodrow's corner." The unfortunate, incorrect implication of this is that the men who screamed at, spit on, and were physically violent against suffrage marchers were part of Wilson's team. The president did not endorse verbal harassment and physical brutality against Suffragettes, and as the book otherwise shows very clearly, the primary problem was that he was passive and tried to ignore the issue. This book makes it clear that women had to go to great lengths to get his attention and win him over, but the line about people being "in Woodrow's corner" could lead to the incorrect interpretation that the president supported brutal actions against women.
The second issue is that when the book addresses Alice Paul's time in prison, it refers to her no longer eating without providing any context for this. Similarly, the author's note refers to her being force-fed without explaining anything. Given our current culture and issues with girls' relationships to food, I think that it is unwise and confusing to refer to Alice Paul's refusal to eat without explaining the specific context, precedent, and political strategy of a hunger strike. Maybe I am making too big of a deal about this, but it wouldn't be that hard to briefly explain a hunger strike at a child-friendly level, so the choice not to explain, even in the author's note, seems unwise and a little bit negligent.
I would still recommend this book, because it is very appealing, detailed, accurate, and well-illustrated, but parents and educators should be informed of these two issues so that they are prepared to address them with children.
Firstly, the playful narrative device of telling the story as a match-up between a champion and a challenger has a few complications. The author presents fellow suffrage supporters as being "in Alice's corner," and detractors as being "in Woodrow's corner." The unfortunate, incorrect implication of this is that the men who screamed at, spit on, and were physically violent against suffrage marchers were part of Wilson's team. The president did not endorse verbal harassment and physical brutality against Suffragettes, and as the book otherwise shows very clearly, the primary problem was that he was passive and tried to ignore the issue. This book makes it clear that women had to go to great lengths to get his attention and win him over, but the line about people being "in Woodrow's corner" could lead to the incorrect interpretation that the president supported brutal actions against women.
The second issue is that when the book addresses Alice Paul's time in prison, it refers to her no longer eating without providing any context for this. Similarly, the author's note refers to her being force-fed without explaining anything. Given our current culture and issues with girls' relationships to food, I think that it is unwise and confusing to refer to Alice Paul's refusal to eat without explaining the specific context, precedent, and political strategy of a hunger strike. Maybe I am making too big of a deal about this, but it wouldn't be that hard to briefly explain a hunger strike at a child-friendly level, so the choice not to explain, even in the author's note, seems unwise and a little bit negligent.
I would still recommend this book, because it is very appealing, detailed, accurate, and well-illustrated, but parents and educators should be informed of these two issues so that they are prepared to address them with children.