Women’s History Month: 3 Women for the Books
Discover some of history’s forgotten, neglected, and misunderstood heroines this March for Women’s History Month. In this edition: Three women who made the literary world a more interesting place.
Anne Carroll Moore
Kids owe more than they know to Moore, who helped create the young reader-friendly libraries we know today. Moore shook things up at the New York Public Library during her tenure there from 1906 to 1941, creating the first children’s reading room, extending library checkout privileges to children, and arguably helping to launch the children’s literature boom of the 20th century.
Read more about her in: Miss Moore Thought Otherwise: How Anne Carroll Moore Created Libraries for Children by Jan Pinborough
Mary Shelley
Though best-known for her famous relations (she was the daughter of early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and radical philosopher William Godwin, as well as the wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelly) and for her “monster novel” Frankenstein, Mary Shelley was one of the pioneers in the field of short stories, a critic, editor, literary travel journalist, poet, and devoted mother.
Read more about her in: Mary Shelley by Miranda Seymour
Beverly Cleary
The writer who brought us Ralph S. Mouse, Ramona Quimby, and Henry Huggins always had an empathy for children trying to navigate the complicated rules of the adult world.
Read more about her in: A Girl from Yamhill by Beverly Cleary
This information was originally published in the winter 2015 issue of home/school/life, but Women’s History Month seemed like the perfect time to bring it to the blog. You can read the full article—with lots of other cool women included—in that issue.
