This is a book about Alice Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter. Alice was not like other ladies of her time. She craved fun, adventure, and excitement rather than being concerned about poise and being proper. Instead of playing with the girls, Alice joined an all-boys club and even disguised the members as females so she could play with them in public. She also drove a runabout while other ladies rode in carriages. Theodore had had enough and demanded that Alice attend boarding school. Alice did not agree to her father’s punishment and told him that she would learn by spending hours in his library. Indeed, Alice learned many subjects on her own and even grew curious about politics. With this growing curiosity, Alice took a boat with the American delegation to Asia concerning a peace treaty. While on the trip Alice found a fiancé and brought him back to the states and was married soon after. Alice suggested that for wedding presents she wanted trinkets; she received: snakes, hay, cakes, and the pet monkey she dreamed of. Although Alice grew better behaved as she became more involved in her fathers Presidential term, she still wanted to have fun and be adventurous.
I would use this book in my classroom to illustrate how expectations for gender roles have changed over time. This book talks about the expectations for females in the early 1900’s and how Alice deviated from those. I would want students to compare these expectations to today’s.
