When Sarah Aronson was a nine-year-old girl growing up in Pennsylvania, she writes in the Author's Note to her new book, Abzuglutely: Battling, Bellowing Bella Abzug (Calkins Creek, 2025), she learned about a woman named Bella with a strong New York accent and a powerful voice that let people know what she believed.
Years later Aronson decided to write a picture book about her childhood heroine.
Bella grew up as a young Jewish girl in the Bronx, the daughter of immigrants, Aronson tells us, and she was "never a sugar-and-spice gal."
From her parents Bella learned about Tikkun olam--a Jewish value that means repairing the world and eliminating injustice and inequality. Determined to make a difference in the world, to make the world a better place, she devoted her life to bringing justice into the world for everyone, not just for Jews.
With her big hats and loud voice, Bella could be seen as a strident example of how a woman should not behave. But for many Bella was leading the way to help make the world a better place, just as she'd hoped to do as a child.
Bella's voice made a difference in the world, Aronson tells us. Bella became a lawyer. She raised money for causes and organizations that she believed deserved support. She led protests and fought for the rights of women and equal rights and education for everyone. She organized large rallies against the Vietnam War.
She stood up to one of the most despicable senators in American history--Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin. She believed in protecting the environment. She believed in racial equality. She believed in social justice.
As Aronson writes, "Bella was a trailblazer." She became the second Jewish woman to serve in Congress, and her victory was proof, as Aronson explains, that the voices of young girls and women matter in the world.
If you speak like Bella with courage and passion for what matters to you, Aronson suggests, you can make a difference in people's lives.
In the end, Bella's story is a story about the courage to stand out and be yourself, to use your voice to call out injustice, to believe in yourself as a woman who has the power to change things and not submit to society's expectations of women as weak or subservient. It's a story about speaking your truth to the world.
But Bella's story is also a story about love--not just about Bella's love of justice and fairness for all but of Aronson's love for Bella, a woman who showed the author when she was a young Jewish girl growing up in Pennsylvania that she could be a girl with a strong voice who didn't have to be someone she wasn't, and that she could grow up to become a woman with a strong voice of her own... speaking and writing her own truth.
For more information about Abzuglutely, take a look at these reviews:
And for more information about Sarah Aronson, visit her website:
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