You Want Women to Vote, Lizzie Stanton?

Fritz maintains her reputation for fresh and lively historical writing with this biography of the 19th-century American feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), imparting to her readers not just a sense of Stanton's accomplishments but a picture of the greater society Stanton strove to change. Stanton is first introduced in girlhood, mastering task after task in a futile effort to prove to her father that she was ``just as good as any boy.'' Brightly told anecdotes tell of the adult Stanton's excitement in rousing audiences to concern for women's rights; Fritz sets the background by outlining the prevailing social sanctions against women speaking in public. She explores Stanton's responsibilities in raising seven children; her unconventional marriage; her long collaboration with Susan B. Anthony; her attempts to cope with dissension within the women's rights movement. Throughout, the author stresses Stanton's pluck and verve, quoting Stanton's sharp comebacks to ``apple-headed'' men or showing Stanton during the statewide celebration of her 80th birthday, using the attention to excoriate the church for its backwardness (``Susan must have groaned,'' Fritz conjectures). Highly entertaining and enlightening. Ages 10-14. (Aug.)