Review: "Good Girls Don't Make History" by Elizabeth Kiehner and Kara Coyle

 

Good Girls Don't Make History by Elizabeth Kiehner and Kara Coyle
Illustrations by Micaela Dawn
Released August 2021 via Wide Eyed Editions
★★★★

Well-behaved women seldom make history, or so the saying goes: and indeed, Good Girls Don't Make History takes us through the work of some of the women who refused to settle for "good," because they had something more meaningful in mind—full citizens who had the right to vote.

The illustrations are wonderful here, something like (I say without any kind of art background) watercolor with sharply defined shapes. I particularly liked the full-page illustrations of some of the women highlighted in the book (and wished that every major player had been given a full-page illustration!)—see above for some of the book's illustrations of Alice Paul and Sojourner Truth. The present-day sections, scattered throughout, also made fantastic, subtle use of the diversity of the locales in which those sections take place. A girl in Marin County, California, waiting in a voting line with her mother will be surrounded by a different array of people than a girl waiting in Gwinnett County, Georgia—and that's reflected in the illustrations.

I had so many US history classes growing up, and of course some of these names and images are familiar to me, but many of them are also not—I had no idea, for example, that Native Americans didn't get the right to citizenship (and thus to vote) until 1924 (and that many states still found ways to keep them from voting), or just how long it took for many Black women to be able to vote. The latter in particular is not a surprise, but I'm left with the distinct impression that my history lessons glossed over some major facts. To that end, while I'm thrilled that the book makes a point to highlight the roles of Black women in particular during the fight for women's suffrage (and also makes a point to call out white suffragists who wanted suffrage only for white women), I wish it had taken an extra ten or twenty pages to cover Black women's suffrage after the 19th amendment.

Altogether, though, this is extremely timely and will make a valuable addition to school libraries. I hope this team of writers/illustrators/etc. continue with this sort of work on further topics.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a free review copy through NetGalley.