REVIEWS+

How Women Won the Vote: Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and Their Big Idea

by Susan Campbell Bartoletti (text) & narrated by Sandy Rustin
Harper Audio. May 2022. 53p. $9.99. ISBN 9780063011632.
COPY ISBN
Gr 2-5–Prefaced by jaunty music, Rustin’s crisp, youthful narration invitingly captures the energy of U.S. suffragettes Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, whose fateful London police station meeting in 1909 led to the March 1913 parade of “over five hundred suffragists, nine bands, four mounted brigades, and twenty-six floats...down [DC’s] Pennsylvania Avenue.” The right to vote for (some) women passed on November 2, 1920; racist poll taxes, literary tests, and violence denied Black voters for decades longer. As Rustin solemnly reminds at the recording’s end, the Equal Rights Amendment remains unsigned: “the fight for human equality and true democracy isn’t over. There’s more work to be done.”
VERDICT At less than an hour, Bartoletti’s condensed history of the 19th Amendment is an excellent introduction for younger listeners, and even more so when paired with the print title enhanced with colorful art by Ziyue Chen, photographs, newspaper headlines, maps, letters, and extensive back matter.
Reviewed by Terry Hong , Jan 01, 2023

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