ShareThisMarch is Women's History Month, and these days there are a number of good books for kids featuring strong female role models.
Here are two good new ones.
"What to Do About Alice?," by Barbara Kerley, is an excellent, entertaining picture look at what it's like to be a president's daughter -- or, more accurately, what it's like for a president to have a daughter who has a pet snake, rides down the White House stairs on trays or jumps clothed into a ship's swimming pool.
Subtitled "How Alice Roosevelt Broke the Rules, Charmed the World, and Drove her Father Teddy Crazy," Kerley's picture-book biography is marvelously illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham. Though Alice lost her mother as a baby and had to wear leg braces when she was a child, Kerley writes, she never wanted to hear anyone say, "Poor little thing." So she threw herself into life from the time she was a young child, creating adventure wherever she was.
Children will delight in her escapades. Fotheringham's pictures dance from page to page, showing her bouncing on the sofa or coasting her bike down a hill -- no hands, no feet.
After Theodore Roosevelt became president, when Alice was 17, she burst into the public spotlight. Sometimes her activities were to her father's benefit. She visited schools in Puerto Rico and plantations in Cuba. Other times, not so much -- like when she danced till the wee hours or bet on a horse race.
Roosevelt famously said, "I can be president of the United States, or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both."
But the public loved her. A song was written for her and baby girls named after her. A color that matched her eyes -- Alice Blue -- was even named for her. Fotheringham uses it liberally in his illustrations.
Even children who don't know much about Teddy Roosevelt will enjoy this book for its fun and humor.
The text often plays straight man to a funny picture. The page that shows Alice and her half-brothers and half-sister sliding down the White House stairs says simply: "Alice tried to be helpful. She watched her younger brothers and sister so her stepmother could get some rest."
"Wangari's Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa," by Jeanette Winter, is the inspiring story of Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. It's beautifully illustrated and simply written for young children.
Winter begins with a brief look at Maathai's childhood in a village "under an umbrella of green trees in the shadow of Mount Kenya in Africa." The girl excels in school and wins a scholarship to study in America. When she returns to Kenya six years later, she discovers the trees have been razed to make room for buildings. She plants seedlings in her back yard, then starts a farm for baby trees.
She convinces the village women to plant seedlings, drawing ridicule from men in the government. The women persist, and word gets out. The planting spreads. Maathai is jailed at one point for trying to protect older trees.
But eventually there are too many people planting seedlings. The momentum can't be stopped. Kenya is green once again.
Winter's signature bright pastels are lovely here and so is her message -- "planting the seeds of hope."
She includes an author's note with more information about Maathai.
(rebecca.young(at)thenewstribune.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit the News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash.
