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Rise Up With a Song: The True Story of Ethel Smyth, Suffragette Composer is the second picture book biography for Diane Worthey, author of IN ONE EAR & OUT THE OTHER: ANTONIA BRICO & HER AMAZINGLY MUSICAL LIFE, which was a 2020 Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection and won the first place 2021 Paterson Prize for Young Readers in Grades 4-6. In addition to writing books for children with classical music themes, Diane is a classically trained violinist and performs in the Washington-Idaho Symphony. She also teaches violin and viola to all ages of budding musicians at the University of Idaho Preparatory Division in Moscow, Idaho. Visit her at dianeworthey.blog Helena Prez Garca is a Spanish illustrator whose work has appeared across magazines, newspapers, packaging, and books for children and adults internationally. Her illustrations are conceptual, whimsical, and rich in detail and color. Helena's primary medium is gouache, and her main sources of inspiration are art, literature, and cinema. After completing a Fine Arts Degree in Spain, Helena relocated to London in 2012, where she lived and worked for 6 years. During this period, and driven by the artistic history and cultural influences of the city and the country, Helena developed her characteristic style. She relocated to Madrid in 2018, where she is currently based. Some of her clients include Penguin Random House, The Body Shop, Tate Publishing, The Financial Times, Reader's Digest and Il Corriere della Sera, amongst many others.
KIRKUS REVIEWS, STARRED REVIEW: A stirring tribute to a free-spirited composer who rode roughshod over her time's constraints on women. Following up her profile of conductor Antonia Brico, In One Ear and Out the Other (2020), illustrated by Morgana Wallace, with a look at another strong-minded woman in music, Worthey introduces a British child who preferred outdoorsy adventures to genteel pursuits, fell in love with music at age 12, and went on to compose operas and chamber pieces despite her father's displeasure, the necessity of publishing anonymously (in early years, at least), and the refusal of some orchestras to perform anything by a woman. Joining the suffragettes, she set Cicely Hamilton's anthemic March of the Women to music--and after getting herself arrested, led fellow prisoners in performances waving a toothbrush as a baton. Perez Garcia illustrates that episode and earlier scenes in canted depictions of pale-skinned marchers and musicians in Edwardian dress arranged around a redheaded force of nature aglow with self-confidence. With a final view of a racially diverse group of modern women standing together arm in arm, the author closes with lyrical lines about Smyth's music marching on to inspire women worldwide ...today, / ...tomorrow, / ...and forever. An afterword with photos, a timeline, and a select but lengthy list of sources fills in further details of Smyth's long career. (This book was reviewed digitally.) A rare nod to a now (but undeservedly) obscure artist, eloquent and inspirational.
