Books like Firebird
By Misty Copeland
For the kid who watches older dancers, athletes, or performers and wonders if someone who looks like them could ever get there too. Lyrical, encouraging, and quietly powerful, with artwork that moves like dance itself.
A long-legged girl who dreams of ballet worries her too-big feet and outspoken mouth will hold her back, so she takes bold, attention-grabbing risks when a famous director visits her class.
A gallery of real women athletes — from Wilma Rudolph to Simone Biles to Serena Williams — face doubters and setbacks in sport after sport, and persist anyway.
A boy settles into the barber's chair for a fresh cut, and with every snip of the clippers feels himself transform into something sharper, prouder, and more sure of who he is.
A musical girl from small-town North Carolina, born Eunice Kathleen Waymon, grows into the singer Nina Simone — her sweet voice rising into a thunderous roar of protest during the Civil Rights Movement.
A glamorous Hollywood movie star secretly spends her nights inventing — and during World War Two, she develops a groundbreaking communications system the military doesn't take seriously, at first, because of who she is.
Two sisters wake before sunrise six days a week to practice tennis, pushing through boos and taunts from a sport that didn't expect them, on their way to becoming legends.
A determined little blue engine returns with words of encouragement for anyone facing a new chapter, showing that the same grit that carried her up the mountain can carry you forward too.
A confident Black boy affirms everything he is — creative, funny, brave, sometimes afraid, always resilient — celebrating his own worth in a string of joyful, declarative statements.
A picture book biography of the first Black woman elected to Congress, tracing her early years, her fight for a seat in the halls of power, and her bid to become president.
A true story about a young inventor who builds his own microphone from a broomstick, a cinderblock, and a telephone, then goes on to engineer the world's first solid-body electric guitar.
An original poem celebrates girls and girlhood in all their forms, honoring how girls have shaped history while calling them to stand together and march boldly into the future.
A girl who loves running isn't allowed on her school's track team, so when officials say women can't handle the Boston Marathon's distance, she sets out to prove them wrong.
