Richie's Picks: HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: DREAMS TAKING FLIGHT by Kathleen
Krull, illustrated by Amy June Bates, September 2008, 40p., ISBN:
978-1-4169-7129-0
"In her thirty-five years of public service, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
has never given up on her fight for the American people...and no matter how
this primary ends, Senator Clinton has shattered myths and broken barriers and
changed the America in which my daughters and your daughters will come of
age and for that we are grateful to her."
-- Senator Barack Obama speaking in Iowa, 20 May, 2008
I have a lovely, seventeen-year-old daughter who, in her younger years, we
nicknamed Tenacious. I can tell you from experience that, on a day-to-day
basis, it can sometimes be a bit challenging to live with such an offspring.
But there is no doubt in my mind that, as a general principle, the more
tenacity that exists in the world's women, the more safe and sane a planet we all
end up with.
"Once there was a girl who wanted to fly. She dreamed of zooming in a
spaceship up through the clouds into outer space, learning new things about Earth.
"She wrote to the national space agency to volunteer. But it was 1961, and
some paths were still closed to women, such as the job of astronaut."
I'd flown down to Los Angeles on Thursday morning for this year's Book Expo
America. While the DNC's Rules Committee was in the midst of meeting in
Denver Saturday, hoping to come to an agreement on seating the Florida and
Michigan delegations at the upcoming Democratic national convention, I was amidst
publisher friends, bookseller friends, librarian friends, a breathtaking
assemblage of top authors and illustrators, and millions of new books on display.
"She liked to lead. In high school she was elected vice president of her
junior class. But when she ran for president, she lost. One of the boys she
ran against said she was 'really stupid if she thought a girl could be elected
president.'"
My ongoing obsession with the US presidential campaign which, for me, began
three years ago this month -- when I experienced Senator Obama delivering an
electrifying keynote address at the American Library Association's annual
convention in Chicago -- came roaring back into my consciousness Saturday
morning. Amidst those miles of books and friends at Book Expo, I encountered a
loose-paged copy of the upcoming picture book, HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: DREAMS
TAKING FLIGHT by Kathleen Krull and Amy June Bates.
And by some double-whammy quirk of fate, Kathleen Krull stopped by the Simon
& Schuster booth and said hi to me as I was sitting on the booth's carpeted
floor, totally immersed in her wonderfully moving book about Hillary.
"She decided to apply to law school. A lawyer really could change the world
-- or at least the lives of the neediest people, by making laws work for
them.
"A professor at one law school told her, 'We don't need any more women.'
She chose another school."
Kathleen sounded a mite bit wistful as she noted that she'd been expecting
Hillary to have been doing better at this point in the primary season.
But there is quite a silver lining to be found in this situation.
"She gave birth to her own daughter and began whispering encouragement."
There is no doubt that as the presidential campaign moves on from the
primary campaign into the general election campaign, there will be a grand
assortment of hastily published books on Hillary Rodham Clinton -- both those for
children and those for adults -- that will be consigned to bookstore bargain
bins and the cheapo tables at the big-box retailers. Had Senator Clinton
prevailed in the primaries, these are the books amidst which HILLARY RODHAM
CLINTON: DREAMS TAKING FLIGHT would have been unfairly lost.
"Bit by bit she sailed up through the clouds. Not afraid to fly, daring to
compete, she decided to run for the highest office in the land. Was the land
ready? No matter -- she was propelling her way into history. Making a
difference.
"Sooner or later, we will have a woman president and it will be because of
every girl who has wanted to fly."
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: DREAMS TAKING FLIGHT is the book on the subject of
Hillary Rodham Clinton that you want to read now, after the conclusion of the
primaries, the book which does not in any sense depend on Hillary's winning
to be of tremendous value. It is a story that has me thinking back to my
beginning reader days of the mid-1960s, when I would read through the employment
offers in Newsday and note the separate job listings (at lower levels of
compensation) for women doing the same job as men. It is a story that has me
recalling so many of the similarly outrageous examples of sexual discrimination
that I learned of through reading Karen Blumental's exceptional book about
Title IX, LET ME PLAY.
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: DREAMS TAKING FLIGHT is an exciting and inspiring
book that I hope to see popping up in libraries and classrooms everywhere so
that all of our young people come to know and understand the tenacity of this
brilliant, barrier-breaking, American hero.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com
Moderator, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks
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