Fight of the Century: Alice Paul Battles Woodrow Wilson for the Vote by Barb Rosenstock (review)

On the anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, Rosenstock replays the epic battle of wills between activist Alice Paul and President Woodrow Wilson as a quasi-literal ring match. After the book introduces the contestants in ringside patter, readers watch Round One, in which Paul lands the first blow with a huge (for the time) protest march that distracts the public from Wilson’s inauguration. Wilson fights back in Round Two with a charm assault that ends badly, as women he intended to lecture school him instead. “And he hates it,” expounds the commentator, next to an illustration of the buttoned-down president with mussed hair. Round Three, fought now in wartime, sees Paul turn Wilson’s own wartime rhetoric about democracy against him, but after the bell “Woodrow gets tough! Police arrest the suffragists for . . . for . . . blocking the sidewalk!” Paul takes a pummeling with jail time and a hunger strike, but with the tide turning of national support, she and Wilson end the match on the same side, in mutual support of the Nineteenth Amendment. Yes, it’s a gimmick, but it’s an effective one, and readers who have little foreknowledge (and possibly little prior interest) in Paul and her crusade will glom onto this fact-rich retelling. Green’s buoyant digital artwork is well suited for turning the picture book into a lure for independent readers. Final notes comment on how Paul’s fraught relationship with Black suffragists has tainted her reputation; photos of Paul and Wilson, a women’s suffrage timeline, bibliography, and source notes are included.