A champion among Title IX books

One of the first things I did when I started researching the history of Title IX for my book was to read any Title IX books that came before. I believe I’ve read them all. The best written and most accurate one surprised me. It’s not the one I would have predicted that I’d like the best because it wasn’t written for adults.

Karen Blumenthal’s Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX, the law that changed the future of girls in America (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2005) is 152 pages full of great photos, anecdotes, data, context, and storytelling. Like most other Title IX books, it highlights Title IX’s effects on sports because it came out before the modern era of activism around sexual assault on campuses. But it covers the first 30+ years of Title IX exceptionally well.

Blumenthal, a journalist turned author, died this week of a heart attack at age 61.

Her last book came out this year — Jane Against the World: Roe v. Wade and the Fight for Reproductive Rights (Roaring Brook Press, 2020). Its clever title references not only Jane Roe (Norma McCorvey) of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion, but the underground Jane Collective that provided abortions to Chicago women from 1969 to legalization in 1973. You may have seen Jane Roe back in the news this week because a new documentary includes a deathbed confession by McCorvey — that religious antiabortion leaders paid her to renounce abortion in the last two decades of her life and become their poster girl.

Jane Against the World likely doesn’t include this bombshell but I’ll bet it’s still a fascinating read. I haven’t read it yet, but I have confidence in Blumenthal’s ability to condense complex and controversial subjects into compelling storytelling. Like her previous books, she wrote it for young readers. This older kid is putting it on my list.

Rest in peace, Karen Blumenthal.