Becoming RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Journey to Justice

by Debbie Levy, Whitney Gardner (Illustrator)

Overview

From the New York Times bestselling author of I Dissent comes a biographical graphic novel about celebrated Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a modern feminist icon—a leader in the fight for equal treatment of girls and women in society and the workplace. She blazed trails to the peaks of the male-centric worlds of education and law, where women had rarely risen before.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has often said that true and lasting change in society and law is accomplished slowly, one step at a time. This is how she has evolved, too. Step by step, the shy little girl became a child who questioned unfairness, who became a student who persisted despite obstacles, who became an advocate who resisted injustice, who became a judge who revered the rule of law, who became...RBG.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781534424562
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Publication date:	11/05/2019
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	1,108,793
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)
Lexile:	GN910L (what's this?)
Age Range:	10 - 15 Years

About the Author

Debbie Levy is the award-winning author of many books of nonfiction and fiction, including the New York Times bestseller I Dissent, This Promise of Change, The Year of Goodbyes, and the young adult novel Imperfect Spiral. She lives in Maryland with her husband. They have two grown sons.

Whitney Gardner is an author, illustrator, and cartoonist. She started drawing stick figures in second grade and somehow no one’s been able to stop her. If there’s ever a moment when she isn’t drawing, she’s likely to be found rolling twenty-sided dice. Her favorite color is yellow. She is the author of the YA novels You’re Welcome, Universe and Chaotic Good, as well as the creator of Fake Blood and Long Distance and the illustrator for Debbie Levy’s Becoming RBG and Stephanie Cooke’s The Racc Pack series.

Editorial Reviews

10/25/2019

Gr 6 Up-Levy once again turns to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom she profiled in the picture book I Dissent, this time writing a biography of the Supreme Court Justice for the middle and high school set. Juxtaposing Ginsburg's childhood as a Jew in 1930s America with the Nazi uprising in Europe and the proliferation of anti-Semitism, Levy demonstrates how Ginsburg's sense of justice was formed at an early age as young Ruth realized that bigotry can flourish anywhere, even in the United States. Inspiration from heroes such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Ruth's mother, Celia Bader, set Ginsburg on the path to greatness. At Harvard Law, where she was one of only nine female students, she rose to the top of her class, navigating sexism with the support of her unorthodox husband, Marty Ginsburg. Levy expertly makes Ginsburg's landmark court cases relevant to a middle and high school audience. Gardner's minimalist, three-color artwork echoes Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. At times, placement of text bubbles distracts from the flow of the narrative, cutting sentences in half and continuing them on another panel, but overall the illustrations are effective, and Gardner's depiction of Ginsburg is abstract enough that all readers will see themselves in her story. VERDICT Fans of graphic biographies such as Penelope Bagieús Brazen or John Lewis's March will appreciate this look at how the "Notorious RBG" came up.-Elise Martinez, Zion-Benton Public Library, IL

School Library Journal

2019-08-26
Levy expands upon I Dissent (2016), her picture-book biography of the Supreme Court justice and cultural icon, in this graphic biography.

Octogenarian Ruth Bader Ginsburg is widely renowned for her intelligence, clarity, perseverance, and determination to move the needle of the American judicial system toward tangible justice and equity. With clear, effortless text conveyed in narrative boxes and speech bubbles, author Levy shows readers that these traits have been core tenets of Justice Ginsburg's life since childhood. The evenly paced narrative provides an overview of Ginsburg's life from her birth through her appointment on the Supreme Court, showing how her relationships with family members and her (delightfully unconventional) husband and the discrimination she faced as a woman and a Jew affected the arc of her life and career. Levy seamlessly provides historical context for this discrimination and the discrimination of other marginalized people Ginsburg worked with, and she neatly breaks down some of Ginsburg's key legal cases to make them accessible. A detailed prose epilogue charts Ginsburg's time on the Supreme Court, the personal and professional challenges she has faced since her appointment, and the cultural impact she continues to have. Gardner's two-tone illustrations (a patriotic deep blue with red-pink highlights and ample use of white space) are friendly, easy to follow, expressive, and engaging, though at times text-box placement is awkward, and the use of type is unexceptional. Backmatter includes a timeline, a select bibliography, and endnotes with quotation sources.

Enlightening, inspiring, and empowering. (Graphic biography. 10-adult)

Kirkus Reviews

…the high-impact moments in this book will not be news to most readers. But Levy, drawing on copious research and interviews with the justice herself, fills in many less familiar details, laying out a path from the shy, smart child to the force she would become…Levy skillfully incorporates examples of [Ginsburg's] writings into the text…She is especially effective at distilling language in Ginsburg's key cases to be easily understood by a layperson.

The New York Times Book Review - Jennifer Harlan