This engaging informational text describes how women have participated in our House and Senate over the decades. Given that female representation in government is still low, these representatives’ and senators’ stories are particularly inspiring! Appendices, Bibliography, Websites.

As former U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe writes in the forward to this book geared to ages 10-14, “The total number of woman senators and representatives in America’s history is 296. That’s out of a total of 12,099 individuals who have served in Congress.”

Ilene Cooper takes readers from the first Congress in 1789 through the Congress of 2010; from the beginnings of the women’s suffrage movement to a Congress with a woman Speaker of the House. She tells you what life was like for American women in the early 1800s, and about the trail-blazing women who fought for women to have the right to vote. (The 19th Amendment, stating that the right to vote shall not be denied on account of sex, was passed in 1920.) She continues through the eras, first introducing a bit of the sociopolitical background and then highlighting the females who struggled against sexism and racism to serve in Congress.

Many notable women are introduced to the reader: from Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to serve in Congress (in 1917); to the women who came to Congress to finish out the terms of their husbands or fathers; to Margaret Chase Smith, who served in both the House and the Senate; to Patsy Mink, the first woman of color and first Asian American woman to be elected to the House of Representatives; and Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to serve in the Congress.

Older readers may remember the colorful Bella Abzug of New York, known for her hats and her courage in taking on powerful men, and Millicent Fenwick, considered the inspiration behind Lacey Davenport, a fictional character in Garry Trudeau's comic strip Doonesbury.

In 1992, four women won Senate races, bringing the total number of women in the Senate to six, the highest number ever serving at one time.

From recent times, readers may recognize the name of Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to run for vice president from one of the two major parties. Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Elizabeth Dole, Elizabeth Warren, gained national reputations as did Olympia Snowe and of course Hillary Rodham Clinton. Gabrielle Giffords was a well-known representative from Arizona even before she was shot in 2011 at a meeting with her constituents in Tucson. Tammy Baldwin became the first openly gay U.S. Senator, and Mazie Hirono the first Asian American female senator.

The position of Speaker of the House of Representatives, one of the most important positions in the U.S. government, went to a woman in 2006, Nancy Pelosi, currently serving as Minority Leader of the House.

The author concludes:

“Today, most American women have choices about how to spend their lives. They can be at home taking care of their families. They can also be out in the working world. Many, many women do both. For some of those women, their work will be in political office, helping to shape and make the laws of the United States.”

Illustrations by Elizabeth Baddeley include both pictures and quotes accentuated by a comic-books style manner.

The book also features photographs, an appendix that explains terms, institutions, and procedures mentioned in the book, bibliography, and a chart highlighting every woman who has served in the U.S. Congress.

Evaluation: This valuable compendium full of photos, entertaining facts, and catchy artwork is an excellent addition to histories that are so heavily weighted with a focus on famous men. Young girls will be inspired by all of their foremothers who worked hard to break the governmental “glass ceiling” (an unofficially acknowledged barrier to advancement in a profession, especially affecting women and members of minorities). ( )

A Woman in the House (and the Senate):How Women Came to the United States Congress, Broke Down Barriers, and Changed the Country by Ilene Cooper and Elizabeth Baddeley As suggested by the title, this book chronicles the history of women in politics in the United States Congress. Beginning in the House of Representatives and eventually getting seats in the Senate as well, women have been working in politics for far longer than we get credit for. Granted, many of those first seats were obtained through special elections and appoints where the women filled their husband's seats, not all of them did. In fact, the first one got there all on her own. Even those who did follow their husband's did good work and often stayed well passed the initial appointment/special election. 
I enjoyed the demographics that our pointed out right at the beginning that in the whole history of the United States, we still have not had enough women serve to fill the house of Representatives alone. And some believe that we have equality, not with those numbers. We still just over half, after all this time. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect the overall numbers to eventually even out, men are over 12,000 seats ahead of us. All the same, the book brings to life women who have served, how they got there, and how they moved the progress forward, which glass ceilings have been broken or shatter or merely dented. 
There's a lot of information packed into a tiny book!
The illustrations by Elizabeth Baddeley were gorgeous and gave beautiful touches to the stories of the women mentioned in the book. If you get the Kindle edition, as I did, bear in mind that the formatting doesn't sit well for phone reading. At least it didn't for me. It was really only readable on my tablet or computer, which was fine, but just know going into it. Overall, a great book for anyone who is interested in the Herstory of U.S. politics, especially for the children it was written for. It's great that we get taught the history of our nation and get that government class in high school, but schools often leave out the accomplishments that lean toward equality unless their spefically the Civil Rights Movements and the Equal Rights Amendment. There's a long, slow road that gets us to those things and the people who work on and build that road need to be remembered too.  ( )

Now THIS is an empowering book for creating equity in our communities. I don't think this book is just good for girls, but also boys as well. ( )

For the first 128 years of our countrys history, not a single woman served in the Senate or House of Representatives. All of that changed, however, in November 1916, when Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to Congress, even before the Nineteenth Amendment gave women across the United States the right to vote. Beginning with the womens suffrage movement and going all the way through the results of the 2012 election, Ilene Cooper deftly covers more than a century of U.S. history in order to highlight the influential and diverse group of female leaders who opened doors for women in politics as well as the nation as a whole. Featured women include Hattie Caraway (the first woman elected to the Senate), Patsy Mink (the first woman of color to serve in Congress), Shirley Chisholm (the first African American woman in Congress), and present day powerhouses like Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. The book is filled with lively illustrations and archival photographs. It includes a glossary, index, and chart of all the women who have served in Congress. ( )