Books like Brave Ballerina: The Story of Janet Collins
By Michelle Meadows
For the kid who practices twirls in the living room and needs to know dreams are worth fighting for, Janet Collins's story lands like a promise. Lyrical, dignified, quietly triumphant.
A young left-handed girl picks up her brother's guitar, flips it upside down to play it her own way, and by age eleven has written "Freight Train," a song the world would come to know.
A boy who longs to be a trumpeter can only play an imaginary horn, until a musician from the neighborhood night club notices his ambition and takes him seriously.
A legendary railroad worker, born with a hammer in his hand and stronger than anyone around, takes on a steam drill to see who can dig through a mountain faster.
A Black boy growing up in segregated 1940s North Carolina loves to draw everything around him, but becomes a football star instead — until his dream of making art finds its way to him.
A biography of jazz pioneer Duke Ellington, tracing his rise from playing pool halls and cabarets as a teenager to leading his orchestra through a groundbreaking Carnegie Hall performance of Black, Brown, and Beige.
A young Japanese American artist grows up determined to draw, even as her family is sent to a WWII internment camp — and she goes on to create groundbreaking picture books that show children of every race together.
A picture-book biography traces Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s path from a childhood in the segregated South to becoming a minister and civil rights leader, told through his own powerful words.
A real-life picture book biography follows young Alma Thomas from a childhood soaking up color in Georgia to becoming a celebrated painter — teaching art for decades before beginning her own boundlessly colorful paintings near age seventy.
A bricklayer works hard every day building the city, while his son works hard at school and plays at molding tiny clay bricks, until one Saturday his father surprises him with something built just for their family.
A boy in Punjab, born with weak legs that kept him from playing cricket or walking to school, grows stronger year by year on his family's farm and eventually runs marathons at over one hundred years old.
A spirited young girl navigates segregated 1950s Nashville alone, facing Jim Crow signs and painful moments on her way to the one welcoming place in town: the public library.
A young girl, her waitress mother, and her grandma save every spare coin in a big jar, hoping to finally buy a comfortable chair after a fire destroyed their old furniture.
