Awesome book! Beautiful and inspirational! I really enjoyed this book.

 

The artwork was phenomenal and is a great place to start to get young readers interesting in empowering woman.

 

I liked that Chin-Lee used the women's first names/given names rather than their family names for each letter. This helped put the focus on the actual woman being recognized.

 

There was a good variety of women from different backgrounds and occupations. The women were from all of the world, some very famous and some not as well known, but no less inspiring.

 

Truly an amazing work, great for young readers. Each entry is fairly lengthy, but uses simple language to explain the women's lives and their contributions. There are also quotes from the women themselves (or about them), which added more depth to the entries. A pleasure to read.

written by Cynthia Chin-Lee, illustrated by Megan Halsey and Sean Addy

 

There's an interesting variety of men represented in this book. Lots of artists and peacemakers. It's also very diverse. I enjoyed this book. I wish Ama had Amelia to Zora too, but I'll just have to check that one out from the library.

 

Farmer's book was the basic set of historical facts on where Valentine's Day originated. Farmer debunks the old idea that this Catholic holiday was connected to an earlier Roman festival. She cites 'recent research', but the book has no source notes or bibliography to credit her sources. Unfortunately, the text of this book offers very little beyond the Wikipedia entry. The writing doesn't do much to create an overarching narrative or questions to be answered, so I am left wondering why this mirror of the internet gets to be printed on paper, hard-cover, and full color.

Halsey & Addy's collaged illustrations on canvas background gave the impression of beautiful valentines hand-made from ephemera. This was a fun style to look at and would make for a fun project to mimic. Farmer did add a couple of how-to instructions in the book to encourage this kind of project.