The Suffragists in Literature for Youth: The Fight for the Vote (review)

This resource title about American women’s fight for the vote spends its first half on individual suffragists, offering brief sketches of fifty key figures and then providing an annotated bibliography of works by and about them suitable for young readers. Subsequent chapters treat more general nonfiction works on the subject, fictional works that involve the struggle for suffrage, and a few plays; other sections offer relevant works in other static media and on the internet. There are also suggested resources to identify important locations for field trips or research and several pages of possible activities for young people investigating the topic; a brief list of materials treating women’s suffrage in other countries rounds up the resources, and title, author, and subject indices are provided. Entries include publication information, page count, ISBN, and sometimes price, plus an audience grade level, while annotations vary from a compact sentence or two to longer descriptions (mostly for the fiction). The non-bibliographic material is fairly cursory, but the resources listed have a useful breadth, offering the opportunity to look at suffrage from myriad vantage points, to compare views, and to look at writing from the time of the battle alongside contemporary material.