A review by misspentdays
Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers' Strike of 1909 by Michelle Markel
5.0
Immigrant Clara Limlich works in the garment district by day and attends school by night. Disgusted by working conditions, Clara leads the largest strike of female garment workers the United States had seen to that point. This strike led to improved working conditions and the ability to unionize for many, but not all, garment workers.
Michelle Markel, who began her writing career as a freelance journalist, grounds her story in fact. By including a "More About the Garment Industry" afterword and a selected bibliography of sources for readers to investigate, she improves an already interesting biography for elementary school students. Using short sentences and energetic phrasing, Markel moves the story along at a good pace.
Melissa Sweet, recipient of a string of awards including a Caldecott Honor, often illustrates non-fiction material like personal favorite Balloons Over Broadway. Here she uses a mixed media background on some pages, combining it with watercolors to create high interest illustrations. A favorite two page spread uses time sheets, checks, and ledgers to form New York's tall buildings, while the workers are non-descript dark ink marks- with the exception of Clara, in a vibrant pink hat, heading the march. These rich backgrounds really help fill out the story visually.
Brave Clara does an excellent job conveying the tribulations and trials faced by workers in the early twentieth century without feeling like a lecture. This book, a 2015-16 Louisiana Young Reader's Choice nominee, is a great introduction to inequality, worker's rights, and social unrest without being "scary" to the target audience. Aside from the obvious lessons, Clara's story is excellent for teaching "stick-to-itiveness" and introducing historical context for refugees and immigrants (many of the workers were fleeing religious persecution in Russia and Eastern Europe) without knocking the reader over the head with these concepts.
As a LYRC nominee, it is an essential purchase for elementary school libraries and public libraries. However, it is an excellent supplemental purchase for middle or high schools that teach the worker's movement in their curriculum.
Michelle Markel, who began her writing career as a freelance journalist, grounds her story in fact. By including a "More About the Garment Industry" afterword and a selected bibliography of sources for readers to investigate, she improves an already interesting biography for elementary school students. Using short sentences and energetic phrasing, Markel moves the story along at a good pace.
Melissa Sweet, recipient of a string of awards including a Caldecott Honor, often illustrates non-fiction material like personal favorite Balloons Over Broadway. Here she uses a mixed media background on some pages, combining it with watercolors to create high interest illustrations. A favorite two page spread uses time sheets, checks, and ledgers to form New York's tall buildings, while the workers are non-descript dark ink marks- with the exception of Clara, in a vibrant pink hat, heading the march. These rich backgrounds really help fill out the story visually.
Brave Clara does an excellent job conveying the tribulations and trials faced by workers in the early twentieth century without feeling like a lecture. This book, a 2015-16 Louisiana Young Reader's Choice nominee, is a great introduction to inequality, worker's rights, and social unrest without being "scary" to the target audience. Aside from the obvious lessons, Clara's story is excellent for teaching "stick-to-itiveness" and introducing historical context for refugees and immigrants (many of the workers were fleeing religious persecution in Russia and Eastern Europe) without knocking the reader over the head with these concepts.
As a LYRC nominee, it is an essential purchase for elementary school libraries and public libraries. However, it is an excellent supplemental purchase for middle or high schools that teach the worker's movement in their curriculum.