Votes for Women!: American Suffragists and the Battle for the Ballot

I was given this book by Algonquin Young Readers in exchange for an honest review.

Today's Nonfiction post is on Votes for Women!: American Suffragists and the Battle for the Ballot by Winifred Conkling. It is 312 pages long and is published by Algonquin Young Readers. The cover is red with different pictures of different women over the course of the eighty-year battle for the vote. The intended reader is someone who is interested in women's history, voting rights, and American history. There is no foul language, no sex, and no voiceless in this book. Conkling using many first hand sources to tell this story and we read much of it from the hands of the women themselves. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the back of the book- The story of the tenacious American women who demanded, fought for, and finally won their right to vote.
On August 18, 1920, ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment was the culmination of an almost eighty-year fight in which some of the fiercest, most passionate women in history marhced, protested, and sometimes broke the law inorder to win the right to vote.
In this expansive yet personal volume, author Winifred Conkling covers not only the suffragists' achievements and politics but also the private journeys that fueled their passion and led them to become women's champions. From Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (who founded the women's suffrage movement at the 1848 Senecca Falls convention) to Victoria Woodhull (the first female candidate for president) to Sojourner Truth and her famous speech ("Ain't I a Woman?") to Alice Paul (who was arrested and force-fed in prison), Conkling combines thorough research with page-turning storytelling to bring the battle for women's suffrage to vivid life.

Review- We all know how the story ends but we don't all know how it was started, how it was won, and the sacrifices made by the women who made it happen. This is a great way to introduce the battle for women's rights to young readers. It is well-written, it is the interesting, it gives the information without overloading the reader with too much detail, and it is well researched. Conkling had a hard job in this book with so much information that she could include about this right movement that she had to choose carefully so as to not overwhelm the reader but also to not leave anything important out. I think that she did a very good job. I was invested in this book and its narrative. I learned new information about the women, men, and laws around the women's right movement. I was never bored as I read this. I recommend this not just for young adults learning about the women's rights movement but for all Americans to remember our history.

I give this book a Five out of Five stars.