Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909 by Michelle Markel (review)

The subject of this picture-book biography is Clara Lemlich, a woman familiar to older students of the fledgling American labor movement, but not exactly a well-known name to younger elementary children. Markel ably brings to life the plight of immigrant garment workers and Clara’s courageous advocacy by first focusing on the injustices likely to capture reader attention—the preference of employers to underpay a child rather than hire an adult, penalties for workers arriving late or soiling cloth with blood spots, workshop doors that remain locked until employees are checked for stolen goods each evening. Once the oppressive working conditions are made clear, Clara’s union activism makes perfect sense: “She lights up chilly union halls with her fiery pep talks. Her singing lifts the spirits of the picketers.” A substantive note about the early twentieth-century garment industry provides additional background, including brief mention of the devastating Triangle Shirtwaist fire that would further incite the industry the following year. Even without benefit of this information, though, children will enhance their understanding of workers’ and strikers’ conditions through Sweet’s watercolor illustrations, which strongly hint at the claustrophobic atmosphere of the immigrant steamship, the crowded tenements, the jammed workrooms, the confining jail cell, and the teeming union hall in which Clara made her stand.