BOOK REVIEW: Fantastically Great Women Who Made History by Kate Pankhurst

BOOK REVIEW: Fantastically Great Women Who Made History by Kate Pankhurst

Bloomsbury Children’s Books
March 2018
Paperback, $14.99
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar

Non-fiction / Picture book / Children’s

8.5/10

Thankfully equality seems to finally be moving forward at an appreciable rate, with too-long-entrenched attitudes and bigotries being overwritten.

Any look at the shelves of your local booksellers will support this, with a growing variety of books aimed to educate children and adults alike by redressing the balance between biographies of men and women.

UK author Kate Pankhurst celebrates female accomplishment in this delightfully written and illustrated sequel volume to Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World.

Pankhurst focusses on an intriguingly wide variety of women here: celtic warrior queen Boudicca, author Mary Shelley, sultana and pirate queen Sayyida al-Hurra, first woman to achieve a degree in medicine Dr Elizabeth Blackwell, WWII spy Noob Inayat Khan, the first woman in space Valentina Tereshkova all feature, and more besides.

I’ve said it before and I shall undoubtedly say it again: we need to not only treat all our children as equals no matter their gender or skin colour or any other points of difference, but we also need to teach our kids – boys and girls – that women can achieve anything men can, and often better. The best way to teach these lessons is to show them historical examples, which is exactly why I never tire of reading these sort of books with my own daughter.

Category: Book Reviews