Nellie Bly, Susanna Wright and assorted belles and bank robbers top our Women's History Month recommendations, but don't miss Shelf's longer list.
In 1887, 23-year-old "Nellie Bly" (born Elizabeth Cochran) from Pennsylvania moved to New York City to become a journalist. The World hired her to pretend to be insane, so she could be committed to an asylum on Blackwell's Island and report on the horrific conditions from the inside. "How will you get me out?" Nellie asked her editor. "I don't know. Only get in," he said. In Ten Days a Madwoman (Viking)--a truly thrilling, appealingly designed, photo-laden biography by Deborah Noyes (Encyclopedia of the End)--readers will not only get a chilling look into the horrors of Blackwell's Island, but also a sense of women's challenges in 19th-century America. (Ages 10-up)
England-born Quaker Susanna Wright (1697-1794) was a frontierswoman in colonial America, a renowned poet and a political activist who worked for Native American rights and was influential at the highest levels of Pennsylvania government. In The Extraordinary Suzy Wright (Abrams)--a handsomely designed, finely crafted biography--Teri Kanefield (The Girl from the Tar Paper School) tells Wright's story--and that of early Pennsylvania--in crystal-clear prose enhanced by period illustrations, letters and contemporary photographs. (Ages 8-12)
A Tyranny of Petticoats: 15 Stories of Belles, Bank Robbers & Other Badass Girls (Candlewick) is Jessica Spotswood's (Cahill Witch Chronicles) anthology of new stories about "clever, interesting American girls throughout history." It's a terrific collection written by "an impressive sisterhood" of 15 YA authors, including Andrea Cremer, Marie Lu, Marissa Meyer and Elizabeth Wein. Readers will find themselves entrenched in 1848 Texas (Leslye Walton's "El Destinos") or 1967 California (Kekla Magoon's "Pulse of the Panthers"). As Spotswood writes in her introduction, "They debate marriage proposals, murder, and politics with equal aplomb." (Ages 14-up) --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness