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A review by moonpie
Bad Girls: Sirens, Jezebels, Murderesses, Thieves, & Other Female Villains by Jane Yolen, Rebecca Guay
3.0
Bad Girls skews younger than I expected; it was shelved in the YA section at my library but I think it's more suitable for late elementary to middle schoolers (tweens, early teens) than high schoolers. I tend to forget Yolen has written for a huge range of ages.
This is a collection of brief overviews of historical "bad girls" -- murderers, gangsters, poisoners -- that are written by Jane Yolen and her daughter Heidi Stemple. For each woman there's a gorgeous portrait by the book's illustrator, Rebecca Guay, then there are two or three pages of text, then a page full of a comics-style panels featuring Yolen and Stemple debating the guilt or innocence of the woman who was just discussed.
In theory the break between the women's stories is great for tweens, like the questions at the back of book-club-oriented paperbacks but meant to be funnier and less structured. At least that's my interpretation of the comics. In practice it's hit-or-miss. I could have skipped all those pages without missing out on anything. It was cute at first but by the end of the book I was wishing they'd used those pages to give a little more detail on the women who were featured.
I liked Yolen and Stemple's friendly, approachable tone throughout the collection. The mini-biographies themselves were interesting and I wish they'd been longer, although after thinking it through the abbreviated versions of these stories are probably just right for the intended (younger) audience.
Rabbit actually read this one before me and liked it enough to reread a few chapters when she saw it laying around, so A+ from the tween set.
This is a collection of brief overviews of historical "bad girls" -- murderers, gangsters, poisoners -- that are written by Jane Yolen and her daughter Heidi Stemple. For each woman there's a gorgeous portrait by the book's illustrator, Rebecca Guay, then there are two or three pages of text, then a page full of a comics-style panels featuring Yolen and Stemple debating the guilt or innocence of the woman who was just discussed.
In theory the break between the women's stories is great for tweens, like the questions at the back of book-club-oriented paperbacks but meant to be funnier and less structured. At least that's my interpretation of the comics. In practice it's hit-or-miss. I could have skipped all those pages without missing out on anything. It was cute at first but by the end of the book I was wishing they'd used those pages to give a little more detail on the women who were featured.
I liked Yolen and Stemple's friendly, approachable tone throughout the collection. The mini-biographies themselves were interesting and I wish they'd been longer, although after thinking it through the abbreviated versions of these stories are probably just right for the intended (younger) audience.
Rabbit actually read this one before me and liked it enough to reread a few chapters when she saw it laying around, so A+ from the tween set.