Borrowed Names

 

Title: Borrowed Names

Author: Jeannine Atkins

Age: 11-14

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madam C.J. Walker, Marie Curie--were born in 1867; all three women were mothers. The poems are about these three women--their relationships with their daughters, their personal lives, their careers.  Her three subjects are presented not in their iconic splendor, rather as women in full, with sometimes bumpy childhoods, sometimes sour marriages, passionate in their work though sometimes drawn to it late, and all experiencing the joy and pain of mothering. It is the mothering and the daughtering that is the center of this book. The daughters' views of their famous mothers are given in this book; the strains of the relationships, the stresses of the times as the younger women make their own lives.  I sometimes gear my choices towards boys so I chose this one to be geared towards famous woman in history.