It’s my stop on the Vote For Effie blog tour, and I’m delighted to welcome author, Laura Wood, to tell us about  another young woman she admires.

Mhairi Black

Mhairi Black is a Scottish politician, who has been the SNP Member of Parliament for Paisley and Renfrewshire South since 2015, when she was 20 years old. She’s the youngest Member of Parliament elected to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom since at least the Reform Act of 1832.  She has been extremely critical about the government’s approach to unemployment and the need for food banks, and she made a brilliant and scathing speech about this that went viral, viewed more than ten million times in under a week.

Mhairi is someone I definitely thought about while I was working on Vote for Effie. I think it’s so inspiring to see a young woman in parliament, and she’s certainly the sort of role model Effie is interested in. I think it shows young girls what is possible for them, and I hope that MPs like Mhairi soon become the rule, rather than the exception.

You can watch her speech here.

Vote For Effie is out now, published by Scholastic. You can read my review here.

About Laura Wood…

Dr Laura Wood is an academic and writer. She is the winner of the Montegrappa Scholastic Prize for New Children’s Writing and the author of the Poppy Pym series.

Laura loves Georgette Heyer novels, Fred Astaire films, travelling to far flung places, recipe books, poetry, cosy woollen jumpers, Edith Nesbit, crisp autumn leaves, new stationery, sensation fiction, salted caramel, feminism, Rufus Sewell’s cheek-bones, dogs, and drinking lashings of ginger beer.

Huge thanks to Harriett and Laura for inviting me to take part in the Vote For Effie blog tour. Make sure you check out all of the stops to read about more young women who are fighting to make our world a better place.