Heart on Fire

Susan B. Anthony Votes
for President

This post is part of Nonfiction Monday hosted today

by Supratentorial

and joins It's Monday!

What are you reading?

at Teacher Mentor Texts

Albert Whitman & Company

(pub.6.1.2012) 32 pages 

A True Tale with A Cherry On Top

A uthor: Ann Malaspina

     and Illustrator: Steve James

C haracter: Susan B. Anthony

O verview from the jacket flap: 

      "It was election time in Rochester, New York, and the newspapers and street posters encouraged everyone to vote. All men, that is, because it was against the law for a woman to vote in New York or any other state.
        On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony went to the polls in Rochester to cast her ballot for president. By voting, she broke the law - but Anthony thought the law was unjust. She believed that the new Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution gave all citizens the right to vote.
       Ann Malaspina's stirring free verse portrays Anthony's daring act and her subsequent arrest and trial. Steve James's vivid paintings convey the courage of a woman who helped to change the world."

T antalizing taste: 

       "The next day, the judge asked,
        'Do you have anything to say?'
         Miss Anthony rose to her feet.
        'Yes, Your Honor, I have many things to say ...
         You have trampled under foot
         every principle of our government.
         My natural rights,
         my civil rights,
         my political rights,
         my judicial rights,
         are all alike ignored.'

         The crowd inhaled.
         The prosecutor tightened his lips.
         The judge banged his gavel.
         'The court cannot allow the prisoner to go on!'

          Her heart was on fire.
          No one could stop her.

                       

and something more: I thought Heart on Fire is a perfect one to kick off Women's History Month. The note at the end of the book made an interesting comparison between Susan B. Anthony and Rosa Parks: "Anthony knew that her vote might be challenged... Like Rosa Parks in 1955, a black woman who refused to sit in the back of the bus as the segregationist laws of Alabama required, Anthony was practicing civil disobedience. She broke an unjust law in order to try to change it."
             She was arrested for voting and after losing the trial, the text of Heart on Fire explains that "the judge ordered her to pay one hundred dollars plus court costs. Outrageous. Unbelievable. True.  She had one more thing to say, as a person and a citizen. 'May it please Your Honor,' Miss Anthony said, 'I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.' And Susan B. Anthony never did."