It's 1969, and Charlie and Ralph's mother is very excited that she will get to vote for the first time since the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. Before, Black people were made to provide documentation they didn't have in order to be abel to vote, or to pay a toll tax or even guess the number of jellybeans in a jar! Now, all that is ended. Madear gets dressed up in her best dress and takes the boys to City Hall to vote. It's a bit of a tense time; it wasn't always easy for Black people to vote in some places in the US, but Madear is able to vote without incident. After that, she voted every year, and in 2008 was able to vote for Barack Obama, the first Black president of the US.
Good Points
Wade Hudson's fantastic memoir, Defiant: Growing Up in the Jim Crow South (2021) as well as his contemporary middl grade fiction book The Reckoning (2024), both explore Civil Rights, so it is great that he is bringing this topic to younger readers, especially since the illustrator, Don Tate, has done several books on the topic as well, like Pigskins and Paintbrushes.
The illustrations get the details of the 1960s correct, and Madear's outfit somehow made me think of the rebooted Wonder Years television show that portrays the experiences of a Black family in Montgomery, Alabama during this time period. There's something about the clothing and the house that particularly ring true. Don't forget the plaid pants on some of the voters!
An end note says that this is loosely based on one family's experience, and gives more information about the historical period.
As we approach another presidential election cycle, it's important to teach young future voters the importance of making their voice heard. Keep The Day Madear Voted in heavy rotation for nightly read alouds along with Todd's Stacey Abrams and the Fight to Vote, Winter and Evan's Lillian's Right to Vote: A Celebration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to make sure that children grow up and fulfill their civic duty. Add Rockcliff's Around America to Win the Right to Vote, if you want to also include Women's Suffrage before 1920; my grandmother was 27 before she could vote for the first time, so it is not a right that I ever take lightly!
May 07, 2024 by Helvetiq
Copy provided by Young Adult Books Central
Born in 1930, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was raised in Reykjavík, Iceland. She loved nature, and had many varied interests. After World War II, when she was 19, she went to study in France, and loved the French culture. Upon her return home to Iceland, she held a variety of jobs, including teaching French both in the classroom and on television, working as a tourist guide, and running a theater. She was also the first single woman in Iceland to adopt a child alone. She was well known in the country, and after a women's strike in 1975, was asked to run for president. She had little interest in this, and was not planning on running until she got a letter from a group of fisherman who urged her to run. Even in 1980, the thinking of most people was that a woman couldn't be president, but Vigdís won the election and became the first woman to hold an elected position as a head of state. She served for 16 years, and always tried to do the best for her country. She lived in the official presidential residence, Bessastaðir, and was fond of visiting school groups. She would even take three birch tree saplings with her to present to them; one each in honor of the girls, the boys, and the children yet to be born!
Good Points Vigdís is still alive in 2024, and I don't feel too bad using her first name, since even the phone books in Iceland were arranged by first name rather than last because of the practice of giving children a last name comprised of their father or mother's first name combined with "son" or "dottir", so that each member of a family could have a different last name! The other item that caught my interest more than it should have was her Bessastaðir cookies even though women politicians often have a difficult relationship with baking; if I could find a recipe for them that wasn't in grams, I would try to make them!
This book is set up as though a young child were interviewing Vigdís at her house, and is illustrated in a colorful chalk pastel style. The hand lettered text is woven between the pictures, and there is a lot of information presented. The pictures also have lots of detail, and do a good job of capturing the clothing of the various points of time.
Even though I was reading the news in 1980, I was unaware of Vigdís' groundbreaking career, so I'm glad to add this to my library of picture books about women politicians, which includes Aronson's Abzuglutely!, Bryant's Fall Down Seven Times, Stand Up Eight: Patsy Takemoto Mink and the Fight for Title IX, Charles' Katanji Brown Jackson: A Justice for All, and Warren's Stacey Abrams: Lift Every Voice.
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