And the discussion continues...

Earlier this week, I brought up our Mary Dyer vs. Anne Hutchinson debate. Both women were set to be profiled in our next book but the group felt their lives might have been too similar. Evidently, they were more similar than I thought as Janet pointed out the illustration I'd included was not Anne Hutchinson at all, but Mary Dyer. Hmmm... the picture was in the Library of Congress section on Anne. If I'd have read just a bit further, however, I'd have caught my mistake. Just to give Anne equal time, I'm including her picture in this blog entry. Notice the similarities. Notice why The Write Sisters thought we ought to pick someone else to include from the 1600s.

So, it looks like we're going to subtract Anne Hutchinson (there are already a lot of books about her, anyway) and add Ann Bradstreet--a poet and the first woman to be published in the United States. This sets up a whole other issue, however. Our Massachusetts list is full of lady writers and scientists. We need to appeal to child readers who are into music and the other arts. While there are a number of well-known women artists, not all of them fit our criteria. We need someone whose life was suitable for children to read about, perhaps overcame some sort of obstacle to overcome, and easily can be researched by kids. The hunt continues!

In the meantime, we wait patiently for our copies of Women of Granite to arrive. They should be somewhere in the United States this week. We've received good feedback from our early reviewers and are already receiving pre-orders. Very cool!