6/26/2022 Picture Book Round Up: #Fempowerment

Sasha Wallace
Jun 26, 2022
8 min read

On Friday, the Supreme Court overturned half a century of protection for women’s rights. In solidarity with the millions of women this decision will impact, & with deference to one of my biggest role models, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose name is currently being dragged through the mud, this blog post is dedicated to strong ladies everywhere who nevertheless, will persist.

Already, social media is being flooded by the brave souls who are sharing their it-was-me stories. Despite the trauma it must create to unbury these incredibly painful memories, women everywhere are bringing their most vulnerable & terrifying health moments into the light of day to show the ubiquity, the commonality, & the necessity of the life-saving procedure that has now been banned or restricted in 26 states.

It will only get worse – & we will only get louder.

For every negative comment I see levelled towards my gender (including a portly old man telling me that if he can drive across seven states to purchase exotic snakes, I can do the same for an abortion), I see scores of women rush to defend, explain, or educate. I see men supporting their wives, mothers, sisters, & daughters. I see coworkers vouching to withhold judgment. I see companies offering to foot the bill for “camping expenses”. I see terror & anger at Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion. I see memes & photographs, protests & lawyers’ takes, rabbis & clerics, all decorating my feed like confetti. I see friends of mine, many with young children or still in the afterglow of first-time parenthood, lamenting how to explain to their kids. I see outrage rippling like the asteroid from Deep Impact has just hit the ocean.

In a country that stands for freedom & privacy, we took one small step for Congress, one giant leap back to the 1950s. One brazen Texas Senator even urged his followers to re-examine Brown v. Board of Education next. We are living in a dystopia, complete with formula shortages & the highest rent prices in over a decade. We have lost the practice of holding our politicians accountable – & they have lost the practice of benefitting their representatives.

More than ever, I hear the same counterargument, like a litany: But there are women who use it for nefarious purposes.

Correct. There are. Not a lot, as the statistics will tell you (not that it is your business. It isn’t anyone’s). Far more women use it to avoid certain & catastrophic maternal death.

There are also thousands of Americans who do the same with guns. With cars. With classified information. With cellphones. With money. They use these with nefarious intent. Some of them extinguish lives with these.

Do we limit any of it?

The MTV show Catfish is literally about two investigators who uncover dozens of people that lie about their identities to groom teenagers & young adults for romantic relationships &/or scam them out of their savings.

Is there a push to ban Instagram & Plenty of Fish?

*crickets*

Why is it only acceptable to restrict the one thing in that category that can save a life?

The creation of life is something that can only be undertaken by a man & a woman. Yet it is the woman who is punished for it, the woman who must bear the physical weight of it, the woman who endures the risks of it. There are laws in our “enlightened” country that will literally & gleefully send women to prison for suffering miscarriages. There are laws that encourage & reward neighbors to spy on each other & report on a woman’s health choices. There will be laws, mark my words, that punish women from seeking help in other states. There will be obstacles to prevent this, making a dangerous situation more imperiled.

There is no talk of men getting vasectomies, of imposing fines on men who abandon their children in-situ, of men being given jail time for misbehavior. Indeed, several states give men rights to fatherhood even if the decision to make the child wasn’t consensual.

It is easier to purchase a gun with the intention of ending someone’s life than it is to get an abortion with the intention of saving one. Right now, it is June 26, 2022, & guns have more autonomy than women.

More than ever, we need scrutiny & responsibility. We need equal rights codified into law. We need people who let the steeple lean on the capitol’s roof to hightail it to the nearest exit. SCOTUS requires impartiality. It requires integrity. It requires honesty. Two of the Justices, then nominees, looked Congress in the eye & boldly declared that Roe v. Wade would remain untouched. How is lying to the country’s foremost legislators allowable? A court with a secret agenda, a court that mixes politics & faith into their interpretation, is not a court that should have the final say-so. I can promise you that when our forefathers founded it on March 4, 1789, they thought the days of the Salem Witch Trials & religious persecution were behind them.

We have more advanced technology, weaponry, communications, & medicine than ever – yet our ideology continues to march against the grain of progress.

In the episode “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” from The Twilight Zone, society is dismantled not by invading aliens, but by the deep-rooted tensions & hot-headed actions of the townspeople. We have learned nothing from sci fi, from the countries we scoff at & fight wars against to enforce “equality”, from the cautionary tales of Orwell & Atwood that are now more prescient than ever.

Notorious RBG, I stand with you in full dissent, & I miss you dearly. We will not let the undoing of our grandmothers’ legacy be the hallmark of OURS.

Oh, & if you feel this is inappropriate for me to write about in a blog post, I have just two sentences for you.

Freedom of speech – unless you’re going to go after that, too?
I worry not one iota about upsetting you, gentle reader, because the likelihood of someone reading this & getting angry is negated by the fact that the majority of pro-life people tend to stop caring after birth anyways, meaning valuable tools like blogs designed to enhance early literacy would be both useless & undetectable on their radar.

I run a girl’s mentorship club at my school. Though this is not an issue I’m allowed to discuss with my middle schoolers (there is a strict no-politics policy that I steadfastly adhere to in the presence of children), I am proud of the tenets I have instilled in them – poise, etiquette, leadership, confidence, compassion & loyalty. My ladies know their self-worth. They glow like lightbulbs. They command a room. They get scholarships before entering high school. They are going places. I could not be more proud of them.

I would be doing each & every one of them a disservice if I didn’t fight this battle. If I stood by in silence, hoping to stay diplomatic, hoping I don’t offend anyone, while a medical procedure that some of them may need one day to continue to live was gutted.

We have replaced a separation of church & state with a separation of common sense & trust. We are sending a vociferous signal that we no longer trust women to make their own reproductive choices, that we no longer trust doctors to use termination to enhance or preserve life, that we no longer trust that the Constitution & not the Bible is the governing document of our land.

It IS the Constitution, by the way. Hard to tell, I know.

The books below are about girls who rescue themselves. Come this fall, that’s exactly what we’ll do, & I would like nothing more than for you to join us. We have at our fingertips the opportunity for revolution, the chance to show these cavemen how talented & educated & important we truly are. My life matters. My rights are human rights, because I am human. I will not rest until the laws of my society reflect my own humanity.

You shouldn’t rest, either.

Picture Book 1

Title: The Maggie B.

Author & Illustrator: Irene Haas

Recommended for: Grades K-3

Basic plot: Margaret Barnstable wishes upon the North Star for a ship of her own to sail on. The next morning, she wakes up aboard the Maggie B. with her little brother, James, as her crew. Adventure & whimsy ensues.

Why I love it: This is a book about independence. Often, little girls are depicted being caretakers of dolls & having tea parties in the parlor. Margaret still has the desire to nurture, but she also wants to call the shots & prove her mettle. She sails expertly in a storm. She cooks every meal with ease. She sings to soothe James’ cries. Her ship is charmingly decorated with ferns & roosters & fruit trees. She knows how to just enjoy herself without taking anything for granted. Published in 1975 & much sought after by collectors (some first editions go for upwards of $500), this is the feminine equivalent of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. Not to be missed.

Where can you find it? Amazon, eBay, AbeBooks, Thriftbooks (cheapest $5.93 & up, reissue, used).

Extension activity: Have your own kiddo draw & name their ship. You can even make a paper boat using Instructables & float it on a pond (just make sure it is biodegradable!)

Picture Book 2

Title: The Paper Bag Princess

Author: Robert Munsch

Illustrator: Michael Martchenko

Recommended for: Grades K-2

Basic plot: Princess Elizabeth doesn’t just watch helplessly when a dragon destroys her castle. Defying her fiancé, Prince Ronald, she sets off wearing just a paper bag (the dragon had burned all her belongings, including clothes) & uses her wiles to outsmart the fearsome creature.

Why I love it: This may be the only time in children’s literature where a girl haughtily calls a boy a “bum” & gets away with it. I love how her opinion of Ronald changes with his inaction & callous remarks. I love how she is unhindered by the loss of material things & more upset about the way she’s treated. I love how intelligent she is & how effortlessly she rescues herself. Feminism, thy birthplace is here.

Where can you find it? Amazon, eBay, AbeBooks, Thriftbooks, OverDrive (cheapest $2.70 & up, used).

Extension activity: Not quite an extension activity, but it may be fun to get some paper & make an outfit out of it (kind of like one does at doctor’s appointments, minus the anticipation of discomfort!)

Picture Book 3

Title: Miss Rumphius

Author & Illustrator: Barbara Cooney

Recommended for: Grades 3-5

Basic plot: A little girl is given the task to “do something to make the world more beautiful” by her grandfather. After travelling the world, enduring health issues, & settling down by the sea, she sets her sights on planting lupines. Her legacy only grows from there.

Why I love it: Not only are the illustrations picturesque & old-timey, but the message is pure as honey. Miss Rumphius is like a female Johnny Appleseed, but her trade is in flowers, which pepper the landscape & are a joy to behold forever. I love how she has a distinctive white streak in her auburn hair, how she cares little for her reputation or the whispers of the townspeople, how she treats different cultures with respect & is grateful for their hospitality, how she worked in a library for years. There’s even subtle representation of the archetype of strong single woman, who never marries or has children but is still content. The narrator’s great-aunt Alice is truly someone to admire.