UNSHAKABLE ELEANOR

This picture-book biography focuses on Eleanor Roosevelt’s work for social justice.

From volunteering with “poor immigrants” as a young woman to chairing the UN Human Rights Commission, Roosevelt works to overcome her shyness and stand up for people on the margins. Markel’s swift survey lays out a dizzyingly impressive list of accomplishments: supporting labor reform in the 1920s; advancing the rights of women, poor people, and African Americans in the ’30s; fighting racism against Japanese Americans and Black people during World War II; and championing human rights worldwide in the postwar era. Roosevelt is consistently presented as a person who understands the right thing to do and then does it despite internal anxiety and external detractors. Largely missing, however, is the mental work Roosevelt needed to do to reach her convictions, aside from a brief mention of an adult awakening to white supremacy. Also missing is significant context. Readers must squint at the small type in the backmatter to learn that Japanese Americans were imprisoned in camps during the war despite Roosevelt’s advocacy for their rights. If the treatment is necessarily abbreviated, however, Roosevelt nevertheless emerges as a role model for allyship. Working in a clean, graphic-arts style, Mesa contributes depictions of Roosevelt at work that complement but do not significantly expand on the text.

A serviceable introduction to an influential first lady.