Book review: Herstory: 50 Women and Girls Who Shook Up the World, by Katherine Halligan, illustrated by Sarah Walsh

Halligan, Katherine. Herstory: 50 Women and Girls Who Shook Up the World. Illus. by Sarah Walsh. Simon & Schuster, 2018. $19.99. 112p. ISBN 978-1-5344-3664-0. Ages 8-12. P7Q8

Each woman receives a two-page spread with the same format with vivid gouache, colored pencil, and Photoshop illustrations surrounded on the white background by a text that simulates hand printing. Each begins with the subject’s birth and childhood and ends with the portion, “Shaking Up the World.” The five chapters highlighting leading, creativity, helping, problem-solving, and believing in change feature artists, writers, political leaders, scientists, and activists. Later entries demonstrate more progressive hope for the world, whereas some of the early female leaders demonstrated brutality in their methods. The book is heavy on the past: only four of the subjects were born in the past half century, and only four of them are still alive.

Verdict: Text-heavy, the book may be difficult for younger readers because of the lack of context for biographies. Some of the entries indicate that the subjects died young but don’t give the age or date of death. A two-page chronological addition gives both birth and death dates, but the readers must go back and forth to find the death dates.

January 2019 review by Nel Ward.