The latest review-proof book from the Rebel Girls industry follows the form of the previous gazillion – full-page illustration, as long as it's by a female artist, accompanying a brief non-fiction page about a woman or women who have gone their small way to change the world for the better, and often in ways that men won't or cannot. Here, however, the unique twist is that these are mother-daughter families as subjects, and in starting with Beyonce Knowles and her daughter it quite immediately shoots itself in the foot. OK, said child has been on a Grammy-winning record, but there are about two hundred of them every year and she's hardly managed to impact much at all.

Luckily there are much better pairings to come. The Pankhurts smashed lots of innocent shop owners' windows en route to getting the vote, the Curies suffered from working with radium and polonium but managed to save countless lives, and so on. There is a sense here that the Rebel Girls have got their fingers in so many pies, so anyone from Venezuelans showing off their country to Indigenous Canadian throat singers can get to feature. There is also the sense here that some of these stories I should have known about – I had no idea Julie Andrews and her daughter wrote kids' books together, nor that Prue Leith was an advocate for adopting Cambodian orphans such as she did.

Books that nobody can fail to learn from generally get high marks in my estimation, and this is definitely one of them, despite the desperation at including all and sundry at times.