At last, there is a pic­ture book biog­ra­phy of the cru­sad­ing fem­i­nist leg­is­la­tor and activist Bel­la Sav­itzky Abzug (1920−1998). Author Sarah Aron­son and illus­tra­tor Andrea D’Aquino present Abzu­gr as a smart and tough native New York­er, a girl who grew up defy­ing gen­der roles and con­tin­ued on that path through­out her career. Abzug’s roots in an immi­grant Jew­ish fam­i­ly helped to estab­lish her com­mit­ment to social jus­tice, both for her own com­mu­ni­ty and for the rest of the coun­try and world.

Women and girls who speak out are often sub­ject to strong dis­ap­proval; this reac­tion was even more dif­fi­cult to oppose when Bel­la was a child. When her father died when she was thir­teen, Bel­la resent­ed being denied the right to say kad­dish in his mem­o­ry and defied norms by pub­licly ignor­ing this pro­hi­bi­tion. D’Aquino depicts Bel­la in a bright red dress, and wear­ing a hat that presages her sig­na­ture style as an adult. She stands out among the gray-clad men in her syn­a­gogue, whose faces reflect dis­ap­proval. Her proud iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as a Jew did not require her to be uncrit­i­cal when she con­front­ed sexism.

Bel­la was ​“brazen,” but always for a good cause, whether fight­ing Sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt or rais­ing mon­ey for a Jew­ish home­land. After grad­u­at­ing from Colum­bia Law School and find­ing a sup­port­ive spouse in Mar­tin Abzug, she was unre­lent­ing in her lead­er­ship. Bel­la demon­strat­ed against Amer­i­can involve­ment in the Viet­nam War and demand­ed legal and social changes for women. (Adults may want to explain one scene where, as a col­lege stu­dent, Bel­la demon­strat­ed against ​“the war rag­ing over­seas,” refer­ring to World War II. Bel­la spoke out against Nazism and fas­cism, and ulti­mate­ly sup­port­ed Amer­i­can involve­ment in the war.) At the age of fifty she was elect­ed to Con­gress, and she mem­o­rably added an unof­fi­cial ​“people’s oath” to her for­mal one. Pio­neer­ing Black Con­gress­woman Shirley Chisolm presided over that cer­e­mo­ny. Aron­son clear­ly estab­lish­es the dichoto­my of views about a per­sis­tent woman who would nev­er give up. While many Amer­i­cans admired her as a trail­blaz­er, oth­ers attacked her as ​“loud” and ​“con­trar­i­an.” 

The range of Bel­la Abzug’s con­tri­bu­tions to the strug­gle for civ­il rights is her true lega­cy. A scene of diverse com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers hold­ing signs calls atten­tion to some of these: dis­abil­i­ty rights, gay rights, equal pay for equal work. Some of these caus­es are now broad­ly accept­ed, but when Abzug called atten­tion to them, she angered those who were threat­ened by change. D’Aquino’s close-up por­trait of her is as bold as the woman her­self, show­ing Abzug’s core mes­sage with­in a mouth wide open in speech. This Jew­ish Amer­i­can fem­i­nist leader would nev­er ​“tone down” that mes­sage, no mat­ter who took offense at her calls for equality.