Book Review: A Woman For President

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Krull, Kathleen. 2004. A WOMAN FOR PRESIDENT. Ill. by Jane Dyer. New York, NY: Walter and Company. ISBN 0802789080

2. SUMMARY
Born Victoria Claflin, Woodhull was raised in a very large and impoverished family led by an abusive father. When she was five years old, she came to a neighbor's house to do chores in exchange for food, but what she found was a kindly young woman who taught her how to read. The neighbor died shortly after that, but this experience helped Woodhull not only see her potential, but see that there were other ways of living than the way she shared with her family. A few years later, Woodhull's father discovered that she had a talent for preaching and conducting seances so he took her on the road with her sister to earn enough money to support the family. This lifestyle caused her to become exhausted and sickly, and at the age of fourteen she decided to escape by marrying her doctor. Dr. Woodhull turned out to be an alcoholic and an unreliable husband and doctor, causing permanent damage to both of her children during the delivery process. Woodhull ended up supporting him with her spiritual readings, even after she divorced him. She became a millionaire when Mr. Vanderbilt shared half of his profit with her from a stock trade made based upon Woodhull's "spiritual reading". With this money, she and her sister began the first female run stock brokerage firm. Woodhull began speaking about the right to vote for women, and eventually decided to run for president, even though she still could not vote. She lost of course, but people noticed, which was what Woodhull had hoped for. Unfortunately, many people, including famous women like Harriett Beecher Stowe did not approve of what she was doing with her life and defamed her in any way they could. Woodhull's defense cost her most of her fortune, so she and her sister divorced their husbands and moved to England where they both married rich Englishman and "lived out their days in great style".

3. ANALYSIS
This biography does a good job of keeping the story as authentic as possible for its young readers. The reader gets a sense that all of the dialogue shared in this book is dialogue that the characters have actually been documented in saying because they are written with quotation marks around them. Also, Krull includes a bibliography at the end of the book. Listing her sources legitimizes her claims. It is true that Krull only paints a pleasing picture of the life of Woodhull and skims over her less accepted views on free love and eugenics, but nowhere in the book does she claim to be writing an all inclusive portrait of the life of a perfect woman. The story is about how a woman who started from humble beginnings decided to run for president. Her other political and social views are not relevant here.

Jane Dyer's watercolor illustrations are each beautiful and intricate enough to be a stand alone work of art. However, in many of the pictures, Woodhull appears to have bright rouge on her cheeks, lipstick, and even blue eye shadow. This image is in direct contrast with Krull's text that states that Woodhull never wore makeup.

4. REVIEWS
SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL: "This book, though soft-pedaling the more scandalous aspects of her life, rectifies that omission"
BOOKLIST: "lively and astute writing"

5. CONNECTIONS
* Collect and share other materials about the suffragette movement.
*Have both girls and boys plan their own platforms for fictional presidential campaigns.