Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World, written and illustrated by Kate Pankhurst

I love this book so hard. It has literally everything. It’s beautifully crafted, lovingly illustrated, educational, inspiring and fun to read, even when you’re 28. I’d never heard of Gertrude Ederle or Agent Fifi! Now they’re up there with Harriett Tubman and Hermione Granger as my feminist heroes.

Firstly, the illustrations and text are amazing. The sheer quantity of calligraphy and typography involved in this publication is staggering- it seems so personal and handcrafted and just adds so much flavour and style to the pages- it's one thing to be informative, but being very stylish and gorgeously presented, while being informative is always going to be better. The illustrations are simply beautiful. Lushly colourful, doodly, full of detail, character and personality, each woman is surrounded by a relevant palette of colours. They are adorned with items and accessories of their pursuits, maps, bones, science equipment, cacti- whatever bits and bobs enhance and colour that particular person’s contribution to history. Pankhurst’s illustrations are joyously coloured, strikingly vibrant and infinitely appealing to any reader lucky enough to get a copy of this book in their hands.

The layout too is brilliant- each fantastic woman gets a double page spread and the reader’s eye is directed across the page, tracking the journey of the woman’s discovery, invention, life or achievement. Arrows help to guide the order in which we are supposed to read, as each page features a main story, then additional facts and snippets of biographical information or key terms. The arrows help to keep everything moving in the right direction and in the right order. I loved too how the layout alters to fit each person- going to use Mary Anning as an example because I am a huge dinosaur nerd and she was one of the first Palaeontologists of any gender or nationality- though she was largely uncredited due to her tiny woman brain and lack of scientific credentials.

Three major dinosaur types discovered by one woman! AND all before the term "Dinosaur" was even coined (1842)

So who do we learn about in Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World? Some are rightly famous, some are undeservedly obscure or scandalously forgotten. The full roster of remarkable ladies is; Novelist Jane Austen, Channel swimmer and Olympian Gertrude Ederle, Fashion designer and businesswoman Coco Chanel, Artist Frieda Kahlo, Nobel Prize winning chemist Marie Curie, Palaeontologist Mary Anning, Nurse Mary Secole, Aviator Amelia Earheart, Secret Agent Fifi, Translator, navigator and explorer Sacagawea, Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, Civil Rights campaigner Rosa Parks and diarist Anne Frank.

The full set of Fantastic Women, part 1

It must have been really hard to choose who to feature in this book- I really hope there’s a follow up featuring more great women (Elizabeth Fry, Maria Sibylla Merian, Harriett Tubman, Laura Trott, Malala Yousafzai, Irena Sendler, Annie Oakley, Bess of Hardwick, Ada Lovelace, Martha Graham) please please please do a MORE Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World!

I’m going to give copies of this book to everyone I know with small children for Christmas, boys and girls alike, because all kids need to know that it’s ok to explore their talents, be brave, ask questions and discover new things! Girls need to know from as young an age as possible that they *can* do whatever they want, and boys need to know, equally, that they can also do these things, but they’ve got competition.

Favourite page <3

Thanks so much to Lizz Skelly, (who I finally managed to meet at YALC- yay!) for sending me a review copy of this amazing book. I love it.

Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World, written and illustrated by Kate Pankhurst is out on September the 8th. The kids in your life deserve to read this book!!

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, by Alexie Sherman

Having finally given up on a vastly overdue copy of this in my school library, I admitted defeat and brought a new copy, and I'm so glad I did because this is required reading. This is such a vital, eye-opening novel that looks at poverty, privilege and the power of encouragement and self belief.

Part autobiographical, Part Time Indian follows an eventful year in the life of Junior, aka Arnold Spirit, as he makes the metaphorical leap from the reservation high school to the white high school on the reservation border. Odd looking, a bit brain damaged, poor, but with a quick mind and a talent for baseball offence, Junior is an anomaly. As a narrator, he is hilarious; sarcastic, wry, honest. His stories are told with accompanying cartoons that illustrate his points. His cartoons show, in a way that words can't really, how ingrained, how accepted and how ordinary racism is to Junior's community. It shows that racism doesn't have to be abuse, violence and prejudice. It can be neglect, a lack of opportunity and embedded, inherited apathy.

The plot follows Junior as he tries to fit in at his new school. We see him struggle to make the 22 miles to the school gates through poverty, we see him overcome bullying and grow as a basketball player. We see his family change and dwindle, as tragedy claims some of Junior's closest. We see his ups and downs with his best and only friend Rowdy, another rez Indian who's the toughest, angriest kid in Wellpinit and the sole reason Junior escapes multiple daily beatings. There are things Junior achieves, realisations that he comes to and resolutions that he makes. It's a pretty tough journey for Junior who is something of a trailblazer by doing something as apparently ordinary as transferring schools. He's a classic underdog, and who doesn't love an underdog?

I loved Junior as a character. His style of narration is so endearing and memorable. Alexie does a brilliant job of showing Junior's conflicted feelings about his actions. He's determined to divert his life away from the reservation path that's laid out for him, determined to achieve, to get away- but in doing so he feels that he's betraying his race, his tribe and his family. Most of the community feels that way too. To do well is to live a white life, and that's a traitorous thing to do. He's a very conflicted character. Junior describes the grim poverty of the reservation; the alcohol, the violence, the tumbledown houses. But when he climbs the 150ft Pine Tree by the lake, he's struck by the breathtaking beauty of the place. Home. Identity. Life in general. It's a complicated thing.

It's a funny, tragic story of a kid who dares to look for a life that society deems him undeserving of. It looks at implicit, everyday racism, the racism of lowered expectations and making do, the social and community differences between cultures and what it's like to be a teen boy growing up. And changing schools. And being disabled. And not white. Lets just say he's up against it. The surrounding cast of family and friends add a realistic feel to Junor's dilemmas and conflicting loyalties. His mum and dad love him, they try so hard, but they don't have much to work with.

This book is essential for all teen and adult readers. The novel really shines a light on hidden privilege. So the kids at Rearden are just normal, small-town Pacific Northwesterners, but we're acutely aware that just by virtue of not being Indian, they already have that vital head start in life. They're from a small boring town- but they have potential, expectations, ambitions. To Junior, these are alien concepts. They're things that Indians just don't have by default. Indians have casinos, drinking problems and unhappiness. Their lives are mapped out for them and usually end in violent alcohol related deaths.

I think the thing I'll take away from this book is that oppression doesn't look like slavery, like persecution or like imprisonment. It can, but it doesn't have to. Oppression can be inherited and/or accidental. Oppression can be the removal of self worth, either presently, to an individual, or collectively, historically even. Oppression lasts a lot longer than a genocide or a law or bill.

Shackleton's Journey, by William Grill

I'm going to start this off by demanding more non fiction narratives. Non fiction narratives that are beautifully and whimsically illustrated. Why is this not a thing? I was so pleased to see a non fiction book with such style and character, and I can only hope it's the start of a new trend in children's publishing. (See also My Uncle's Dunkirk and Charlie's War for excellent NF with lovely illustrations)

Firstly, the book itself is a beautiful thing. A sizeable hardback with a lovely cloth spine, illustrated with cracked ice. Everything is white and blue and immediately it's conjuring dramatic seascapes encrusted with ice and frost. That cover too- is it a compass? Is it a circle-of-life type thing? Is it a game? A roulette wheel of chance? It doesn't really matter of course, but look at it! It's pure joy.

The book tells the real-life story of Ernest Shackleton and his brigade of badasses and their successful failure to cross the Antarctic Continent for the first time. Successful because nobody died. A failure because they never actually completed the mission. But mission accomplished or not, the expedition's men carved themselves out a place in history for managing to survive for 8 months on nothing but salvaged rations and their own wits, out in the frozen wasteland of Antarctica 500 miles from civilisation in steadily worsening conditions and with rapidly deteriorating odds. It's a massive testament to the strength of the human spirit, the bonds of friendship and the fraternity of scientific and geographic discovery.

It lists the crew, the cargo, the supplies, the dogs they took, the anatomy of the ship, the skills and experience of everyone on board. The book goes into minute detail about the preparation and financing of the trip, its scientific and exploration objectives and its schedule. It reads like a story, with action and suspense and the overcoming of difficulties and obstacles, solutions and triumphs, but the truth of it is never lessened. The story takes on this extra gravitas because of this.

I absolutely loved the style of Grill's illustration- informal little doodles that convey as much character and individuality to each man and dog as it's possible to get. Just a additional few scribbles and it's easy to tell the cook from the photographer and the carpenters from the navigators. It's brilliant that the other men on the expedition get to have their own moments of recognition and their own characters and unique little props. The dogs too are individually named and depicted. There's a real sense of thoroughness to this book that is just wonderful.

Grill, W. (2014) Shackleton's Journey. London, Flying Eye Books

Just look at the intensity of that weather. It's incredible what can be done with just blue, white and black. The illustrations do such a brilliant, brilliant job of depicting the isolation of the crew during this expedition. The vastness of Antarctica seems so abstract, but the neverending ice floes, the sky and the sea and ice that go on and on forever really help the reader to understand the situation and the location that Shackleton and his crew survived.

Grill, W. (2014) Shackleton's Journey. London, Flying Eye Book

I genuinely feel like I learned something from this book- I definitely have a better understanding of why Shackleton is like the patron saint of triple-hard adventure sorts. His determination and his belief in what he was doing was very inspiring and motivating. The illustrations are just joyous. It makes me happy just looking at them and I've been flicking through the book since I received it, just to revisit some of the best bits. An absolute gem. Loved it.

Rules of Summer, by Shaun Tan

I think I've made it pretty clear that I'm a massive fan of The Tan. A Tan Fan, if you will. His newest publication is, as one would expect, brilliant. It's thought provoking and nostalgic for the adults, fun and joyous and full of colour and adventure for the young readers. It's about family and imagination the wonder of childhood.

Each double spread has only one line of text- a thing learned over the summer, a little piece of wisdom from child to reader. Never do this. Never do that, says the voice of childish experience. It's accompanied by a fantastic, sometimes terrifying and sometimes wondrous illustration as evidence of why you should act on this advice.

I love everything that goes into these images and how much there is to be understood and deciphered in them. The whole world of a child can be seen in these drawings if you look hard enough. There's the fearful thrill of the unfathomable adult world, the endlessness of summer days, the promise of adventure and creation, the boundless imagination of childhood and the longing for acceptance and understanding. Illustrations that seem confusing and fantastical, surreal even in places begin to sort themselves out into sense and understanding. The reader has to work it out for themselves and once they begin to unravel they are incredible.

I loved the style of the artwork in Rules of Summer, and each page is a little, weird work of art. The thick, expressionist brushstrokes where the paint has been slathered on look real enough to touch. Every page is a mystery until it's studied. The palette of the pages varies, changing the mood of the book frequently. There's a few pages of desolate black, white and grey when are heroes look doomed, bursts of colour when the imaginary reaches its peak. I loved the contrast too- the gloom and boredom of the everyday, the understood, compared with paradise, the spectrum of the mysterious unknown. The fear of being on the outside looking in must be familiar to every person, ever, at some point in a person's life. This is such an accurate depiction of that feeling. I don't even have words for it. You don't need words when you have pictures.

The best rendering of "Being on the outside looking in" that I have ever known.
Tan, S. (2013) Rules of Summer Sydney: Hachette 

At the heart of the story, because there is most definitely a story even if there aren't many words, is about two brothers and their summer of imagination. Just a glance at the art shows how much the younger brother looks up to and reveres his older, wiser brother. The older boy shows his little brother how to do things, he makes up unreasonable rules for him (because he can), he looks after him and keeps him safe. They learn things together, things they have worked out by themselves.

Never eat the last olive at a party
Tan, S. (2013) Rules of Summer Sydney: Hachette  

It's a book thats scope and depth and meaning is as limitless as the reader's imagination and experience. I loved it. As far as I'm concerned, this wins. This wins all day long. Shaun Tan wins everything ever.