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Juliette Gordon Low: The Remarkable Founder Of The Girl Scouts (2012)

by Stacy A. Cordery(Favorite Author)

3.58 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0670023302 (ISBN13: 9780670023301)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Viking Adult

review 1: This was not my cup of tea. As a new Girl Scout leader who did not grow up with scouting, I thought it would be good to learn a bit about where scouting came from. This is the third biography I've read about "Daisy" Juliette Gordon Low, and it's my least favorite. Some of the historical facts do not match up with the other two biographies.While this book does contain some truly facinating information showing how the activities of the very first patrols impact us today (meeting snack time appears to stem from working with girls of little means who may have traveled a great distance for the meeting), it was also bloated with both unnecessary details (such as the genealogy of everyone Daisy ever met), irrelevant tangents (such as a paragraph explaining a misquoted poem in Da... moreisy's diary and what in may have meant), and rampant assumptions of the inner workings of the minds of various individuals. The writing was not always as clear as I would have liked, resulting in the need to reread several convoluted paragraphs.Girl Souting has an interesting origin story, and the founder of Girl Scouting in the US (who was also key in establishing an international organization) was an amazing woman. This book doesn't bring that to life.Apologies for typos, this was done on my Kindle.
review 2: Like many children growing up in the 1960’s I joined a scout troop as a Brownie and kept with scouting till I graduated from high school. I really enjoyed the Girl Scout summer camps (now long gone due to the economy) and working on badges. But it really never dawned on me that the Girl Scouting organization we now have was due to one very strong willed woman in the early 1900’s.Juliette “Daisy” Gordon was born in 1860 as a Southern belle in Savannah Georgia. Her mother was from a very prominent Chicago family and her father was a wealthy tobacco distributor. But soon the Civil War interrupted her family life and her father went to fight with the South while her mother’s family fought for the North. The first half of this biography follows her life during the Civil War and afterward (her family didn’t seem to have suffered financially and their homes were spared). We watch “Daisy” grow up and move into a social and educational life that covered two continents and then to a marriage to an English aristocrat. The second half of the book is her life after she took the almost unheard of step of divorcing her philandering husband William “Willy” Mackay Low in 1905 and then fighting his mistress for her inheritance rights when he suddenly dies before the divorce can be finalized.In the early 1900’s unmarried older women were expected to stay in the background of life but Juliette Low continued to be social and active in both America and England society including traveling the world. It was then she met Sir Robert Baden-Powell, a British army hero who founded the Boy Scouts in England. Watching how he made the organization both educational and fun (the premises was that boys would be taught skills used by army scouts) Juliette Low decided to do the same for girls. While “scouting” was too masculine the idea of Girl “Guides” was just right.In 1912 Juliette Low returned to her family home in Savannah to start troops of Girl Guides in America. Soon after Juliette Low changed the name to Girl Scouts (not without fighting the Baden-Powells and others over the idea) and she worked to spread the organization first north and east, and then west. It was World War I and the organizational and work skills of well trained Girl Scouts that led to the great popularity of Girl Scouts amongst both girls and adults throughout the country. After the war Juliette Low then worked to bring Girl Scouts/Guides to the international world that included German and Japanese girls. But overall it was Juliette Low’s tremendous organizational skills, influence with people in high places, perseverance (she wouldn’t take “no” for an answer) and money that Girl Scouts grew to over 90,000 members before she passed away from cancer in 1927.What was very unusual is that “Daisy” accomplished tremendous things while being partial to almost totally deaf most of her life. Hearing aids were unheard of and so she sometimes suffered the consequences from the inability to hear. But that did not stop her. The book shows a very headstrong woman (her nickname was “Crazy Daisy”) and she used her wealth and her connections in very high places to assist her in whatever project she set her sights on finishing.What comes out of this book is the belief that Juliette Gordon Low was a remarkable woman of her day. As was stated by the author “[s]he counted true and dear lifelong friends on both sides of the Atlantic. She had earned the respect of vibrant, dedicated women who shared her vision for the uplift of girls in the Girl Scouts, and the affection of those who struggled with her to bring about global understanding in the International Council. Through sculpture, sketching, painting, and metalwork, she created items of lasting beauty. Her remarkable experiences included meeting royalty, hunting tigers, flying in airplanes, climbing the Pyramid, nursing soldiers, living on two continents, and traveling to Africa and India. She went up the Eiffel Tower when it was new. She drove through Europe when automobiles were in their infancy, and made one of the earliest films. She invented and patented a liner for garbage cans.” And this is a woman of the early 1900’s when it was expected that they stay at home to care for family and hearth.Cordery is the author of Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker and two books on Theodore Roosevelt. She serves as the bibliographer of the national First Ladies’ Library and is a professor of history at Monmouth College (Illinois). This is a book for those who love historical biographies, women’s history and especially Girl Scouts. less

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