Shaking Things Up: 14 Young Women Who Changed the World

Selina Alko, Sophie Blackall, and LeUyen Pham are among 13 woman illustrators whose artwork accompanies Hood’s biographical tributes to trailblazing women, several of whom are far from household names. Multistanza poems do a fine job of encapsulating each woman’s life, and they’re bolstered by quotations, supplementary paragraphs, a timeline, and back matter. “Buried Treasure,” about paleontologist Mary Anning, is a concrete poem that takes the shape of her discovery: an ichthyosaur (the phrase “fabulous flippers” forms one flipper). Swimmer Annette Kellerman, who modernized women’s swimwear, is joined by a mermaid in Emily Winfield Martin’s images (“Who can swim fifty laps/ wearing corsets and caps?” she protests after being arrested for swimming without pantaloons). These encouraging profiles of astronauts, artists, and activists both honor past accomplishments and point toward ways young readers themselves might change the world, too. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Brenda Bowen, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (Jan.)