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Sufragette: The Battle for Equality    by David Roberts Amazon.com order for
Sufragette
by David Roberts
Order:  USA  Can
Walker, 2019 (2019)
Hardcover, e-Book
* * *   Reviewed by Hilary Williamson

Here's an impressive volume on the history of the women's suffrage movement in the U.K. and the U.S., David Roberts' Sufragette: The Battle for Equality (aimed at ages 7-10, but of interest to a much broader age range). The Foreword by Yale's Dr. Crystal Feimster addresses the commonalities and differences between British and American seventy-five year long suffrage struggles.

Readers, young and older, will already know the names of many of the key activists (Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Emmeline Pankhurst, Ida B. Wells, Susan B. Anthony). Their stories - as well as those new to readers - are fascinating. We learn that it all began in America in 1848 (when abolitionists organized a women's rights convention) and in an 1866 petition to parliament in Britain. Peaceful organization moved to more radical tactics in the early 1900s.

Chapter titles range from A Man's World and Deeds Not Words to The Magnificent Muriel Matters in Her Flying Machine, Suffrajitsu and Amazons at the Battle of Glasgow. I enjoyed learning more about figures already known to me like Emmeline Pankhurst. I also appreciated stories like that of The Rebel Princess, granddaughter of the Lion of the Punjab and goddaughter to Queen Victoria).

At the back are two pages on A World of Suffrage, showing campaigners in New Zealand, India, Japan, China and other countries. There's even sheet music for the song, March of the Women. What a magnificent book, the perfect holiday gift for a young activist, about so many 'brave women who changed the world.'

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