Heart on Fire: Susan B. Anthony Votes for President (review)

"Outrageous. Unbelievable. True." Readers have several opportunities to join the repeated, indignant chant in this lively picture book account of suffragist Susan B. Anthony's 1872 attempt to take the Fourteenth Amendment at its word and cast her vote in a national election. After wearing down her local registration inspectors, she musters a cohort of like-minded women to join her at the poll, drops her ballot in the box, and dashes off a note to her friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton: "Well I have been & gone & done it!!" Within two weeks, she's under arrest, released on bail, and scheduled for trial, which she loses. Malaspina brings Anthony's crusade to light via this tightly focused, fast-paced effort. She opens with a comparison of the text of the Fourteenth and Nineteenth Amendments which, with careful reading and perhaps a bit of helpful unpacking by an adult, clearly establishes the incongruity of an anti-female reading of the earlier amendment. She closes by giving the defeated Anthony the last word: "'I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.' And Susan B. Anthony never did." James employs in his illustrations the sedate browns, rusts, and deep blues that instinctively connote propriety of times past, but he also interjects a strong undertone of subversive whimsicality in his almost photorealistic faces, allowing other detail to blur slightly into the background while all attention is focused on the unflappable Anthony and her blustering antagonists. A brief historical note, selected bibliography, photograph, political cartoon, and reproduction of Anthony's letter to Stanton (magnifying glass recommended) are included.