She's Wearing a Dead Bird on Her Head! - Softcover

Lasky, Kathryn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786811641 ISBN 13: 9780786811649

Publisher: Disney Pr, 1997

Synopsis

A fictional account of Harriet Hemenway and her cousin Minna Hall, and how the latest in Boston fashion led the two women to form the Audubon Society

About this title

From School Library Journal

Kindergarten-Grade 4?In an amusing picture-book format, Lasky tells the story of two strong-willed women who started the Audubon Society in Massachusetts around the turn of the century. When wearing dead birds as hat decorations became a raging fashion, Harriet Hemenway and her cousin Minna Hall were outraged. They contacted other ladies of fashion to start a club, named it after John James Audubon, and began the Bird Hat Campaign. The bird hats and their wearers look ridiculous, just as the cousins claim. The exaggerated expressions and postures of Catrow's figures bring humor to every page, but the serious business of political action comes through just the same. Lasky neatly includes the varied strategies that the women employed to achieve their purpose. Though equally determined, Harriet and Minna have distinctly different personalities. Most, but not all, of the incidents are based on actual events, which the author's note clearly explains. Like Rhoda Blumberg's Bloomers! (Bradbury, 1993), Lasky's title will entertain young readers while offering them a fascinating and little-known slice of history.?Steven Engelfried, West Linn Public Library, OR
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly

Proper Boston ladies Harriet Hemenway and her cousin Minna Hall are absolutely incensed by the latest style: ladies' hats topped with not just feathers but whole birds ("from egrets to pheasants to owls to warblers... even pigeons!"). The fad dovetails with the women's suffrage movement: "Fashion was killing birds as well as killing women's chances to have the right to vote and be listened to. For who would listen to a woman with a dead bird on her head?" Harriet and Minna found the Massachusetts Audubon Society; take their crusade to sportsmen, socialites and schoolchildren; lobby for laws to protect wildfowl; and even help bust an illegal feather warehouse. Catrow (The Cataract of Lodore; Ridiculous Rhymes from A to Z, reviewed below) contributes flamboyant caricatures of the behatted Bostonians in convincing period costume, and his watercolors of birds mimic John James Audubon's own naturalistic paintings. Despite Lasky's and Catrow's enthusiasm, however, Harriet and Minna in their zealotry seem just as exaggerated and one-dimensional as their fashionably feathered foes. Ages 5-9.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Disney Pr
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786811641
• ISBN 13: 9780786811649
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Catrow David
• Number of pages: 40