Mary Wears What She Wants

Negley’s strong-minded heroine is loosely based on Mary Edwards Walker, a trailblazing female physician born in 1832 who was “arrested repeatedly” for wearing trousers. The pint-size Walker hates wearing the “heavy-and-hot-and-hard-to-breathe-in dresses” of her era and believes that “the way things have always been” didn’t have to stay that way. Negley’s distinctive graphic style features clownlike figures and dominating splashes of shocking pink, blue, and yellow. When Walker sports a pair of pants and is maligned by disapproving townsfolk, she expresses her frustrations to her father, a sympathetic figure with an inky black beard and long silhouette. Sometimes all it takes is one courageous person to challenge the rules: to the girl’s delight, other girls embrace wearing pants, too. Back matter provides a photo of Walker along with brief biographical content. Ages 4–8. (Jan.)