Heart on Fire

Susan B. Anthony Votes
for President

This post is part of Nonfiction Monday hosted today

by Supratentorial

and joins It's Monday!

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at Teacher Mentor Texts

Albert Whitman & Company

(pub.6.1.2012) 32 pages 

A True Tale with A Cherry On Top

A uthor: Ann Malaspina

     and Illustrator: Steve James

C haracter: Susan B. Anthony

O verview from the jacket flap: 

      "It was election time in Rochester, New York, and the newspapers and street posters encouraged everyone to vote. All men, that is, because it was against the law for a woman to vote in New York or any other state.
        On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony went to the polls in Rochester to cast her ballot for president. By voting, she broke the law - but Anthony thought the law was unjust. She believed that the new Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution gave all citizens the right to vote.
       Ann Malaspina's stirring free verse portrays Anthony's daring act and her subsequent arrest and trial. Steve James's vivid paintings convey the courage of a woman who helped to change the world."

T antalizing taste: 

       "The next day, the judge asked,
        'Do you have anything to say?'
         Miss Anthony rose to her feet.
        'Yes, Your Honor, I have many things to say ...
         You have trampled under foot
         every principle of our government.
         My natural rights,
         my civil rights,
         my political rights,
         my judicial rights,
         are all alike ignored.'

         The crowd inhaled.
         The prosecutor tightened his lips.
         The judge banged his gavel.
         'The court cannot allow the prisoner to go on!'

          Her heart was on fire.
          No one could stop her.

                       

and something more: I thought Heart on Fire is a perfect one to kick off Women's History Month. The note at the end of the book made an interesting comparison between Susan B. Anthony and Rosa Parks: "Anthony knew that her vote might be challenged... Like Rosa Parks in 1955, a black woman who refused to sit in the back of the bus as the segregationist laws of Alabama required, Anthony was practicing civil disobedience. She broke an unjust law in order to try to change it."
             She was arrested for voting and after losing the trial, the text of Heart on Fire explains that "the judge ordered her to pay one hundred dollars plus court costs. Outrageous. Unbelievable. True.  She had one more thing to say, as a person and a citizen. 'May it please Your Honor,' Miss Anthony said, 'I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.' And Susan B. Anthony never did."

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The Price of Freedom

How One Town Stood Up
To Slavery

This post is part of Nonfiction Monday

hosted today by Shelf-employed

and joins It's Monday!

What are you reading?

at Teacher Mentor Texts

Walker Books for Young Readers (Bloomsbury)

(pub. 1.8.2013) 48 pages 

A True Tale with A Cherry On Top

A uthor: Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin

     and Illustrator: Eric Velasquez

C haracter: People in Oberlin, Ohio, on the Underground Railroad

O verview from the jacket flap: 

      "John Price escaped from slavery on a wintry night in January 1856, willing to risk everything for a chance at freedom. He was lucky enough to find a new life in the town of Oberlin, Ohio, then home to many abolitionists and former slaves. But when slave hunters snatched him right off the road two years later, it seemed like that new life was over. Still, John risked everything one more time, yelling for help as a student from the local college passed the wagon.
        John thought his plea went unheard, but the college student sounded the alarm. The people of Oberlin - men and women, black and white - found the slave hunters in Wellington, Ohio, and demanded that Price be set free. When those demands were ignored, they - along with some Wellington residents - took matters into their own hands, risking their own lives and freedom in one of the most dramatic slave rescues in American history."

        

T antalizing taste: 

"Within minutes, hundreds of Oberlinians set out for Wellington. Farmers, shopkeepers, and ministers hurried off to rescue John Price. So did Oberlin College professors and students. Young and old, men and women, fathers and sons, black and white, armed and unarmed - people jammed the roads in carts and buggies, on foot, and on horseback."

                       

and something more:  The back matter of The Price of Freedom explains: "To this day Oberlinians are proud that their forebears followed the 'higher law' in slavery days. The Underground Railroad Sculpture stands on the college campus. Oberlin College student Cameron Armstrong created it in 1977 as part of an art-class project. The sculpture honors the role of the college and town in helping John Price and thousands of others escape slavery." The class of 1977 donated  funds to Oberlin College to preserve it as a permanent sculpture. A wonderful tribute to a courageous and commendable group of people!

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A Splash of Red

The Life and Art of Horace Pippin

This post is part of Nonfiction Monday

hosted today by Wrapped In Foil

and joins It's Monday!

What are you reading?

at Teacher Mentor Texts

Alfred A. Knopf/ Random House

(pub. 1.8.2013) 40 pages 

A True Tale with A Cherry On Top

A uthor: Jen Bryant

     and Illustrator: Melissa Sweet

C haracter: Horace Pippin

O verview from the publisher: 

     "As a child in the late 1800s, Horace Pippin loved to draw...He drew pictures for his sisters, his classmates, his co-workers. Even during W.W.I, Horace filled his notebooks with drawings from the trenches . . . until he was shot. Upon his return home, Horace couldn't lift his right arm, and couldn't make any art. Slowly, with lots of practice, he regained use of his arm, until once again, he was able to paint--and paint, and paint! Soon, people—including the famous painter N. C. Wyeth—started noticing Horace's art, and before long, his paintings were displayed in galleries and museums across the country..."

        

T antalizing taste: 

         "Then, if he could find a scrap of paper and a piece of charcoal, he drew pictures of what he'd seen that day.
        Horace loved to draw. He loved the feel of the charcoal as it slid across the floor. He loved looking at something in the room and making it come alive in front of him. He loved thinking about a friend or a pet, then drawing them from the picture in his mind."

                       

and something more: I was intrigued to read the collaborative efforts behind A Splash of Red. Melissa Sweet recounts the background in her Illustrator's Note: "Typically, authors and illustrators stay fairly separate when making a picture book, but after Jen [Bryant] wrote this text, we bucked the tide by researching Horace Pippin together. Driving through the back roads of eastern Pennsylvania, we shared what we both knew and loved about art and Pippin." 
          And, as Jen Bryant explains in her Author's Note: ".... once the story was written, Melissa and I retraced many of these paths [of her earlier research] and forged some new ones. We were inspired and amazed by the very real struggles in Horace Pippin's life and the incredible, simple elegance of his work. Through his art, he transcended personal loss, injury, poverty, violence, and racism, producing a body of work that remains wholly original and deeply American"... AND inspiring!

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