Inspired by an episode from the podcast The Memory Palace titled “Mary Walker Would Wear What She Wanted,” Negley created this picture book to share with the world Walker’s story and her message of wearing the clothes that make you feel the most comfortable. Walker was born in the 1830s when women were expected to wear dresses. She fought this construct, choosing a much more comfortable style of dress – pants!  Using spare text and a palate of pinks and grays in cut-paper collage, Negley focuses on Mary’s childhood when she first chooses to make the switch. She is supported by her father, shunned and chased by other children, and picketed by the townspeople. But Mary persists and by the end of the book things change for the better as more girls choose to wear what is comfortable instead of what is prescribed by society (this message could apply to any gender as it wasn’t about gender at all for Mary, but about comfort). The reader learns in an author note that Mary continued to fight convention by attending medical school and becoming a surgeon and then by fighting for women’s right to vote and wear what they wanted. Readers/listeners will cheer for Mary as they recognize the power struggle that getting dressed can represent but also as they struggle to understand that, once upon a time, girls couldn’t wear what they wanted and she persevered. The book deserves a place on the shelf along with the other books about forgotten women who took a stand and wrought change on an unforgiving and narrow-minded society thereby paving the way for women and girls today to use their voices to cast a ballot or wear the pants.

Reviewed by Jill O’Connor, Merrill Memorial Library, Yarmouth