Books like Malala's Magic Pencil
By Malala Yousafzai
For the kid who's just starting to notice that the world has problems worth caring about, this is a gentle first step into why that matters. Tender, hopeful, quietly stirring
During the Syrian Civil War, an ambulance driver stays behind in Aleppo when his neighbors flee, and finds himself feeding and comforting the many cats they left behind.
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 little girl named Little Miss plants a kiss in the ground, then tends and believes in it as it grows into something far bigger than she imagined.
A penniless orphan boy travels to London hoping to find his fortune, and it's his clever cat's rat-catching skill that changes both their lives forever.
A mysterious young stranger begs King Arthur to let him work in the castle kitchen, hiding his noble blood until Sir Lancelot knights him and he sets off to rescue a princess from the fearsome Red Knight of the Plain.
A servant girl in her own home dreams of attending the royal ball, until a fairy godmother's magic gives her a gown, a coach, and one midnight deadline.
A skilled quiltmaker refuses to make a quilt for a rich, unhappy king unless he gives away everything he owns — and the more he gives, the happier he becomes.
An old woman is too busy sweeping her house to join the three kings on their journey to find the Christ child — and has searched for Him every Christmas since.
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 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 determined young dancer in the 1930s and 40s trains for ballet despite discriminatory schools, then refuses to paint her skin white for a company's offer — and rises to become the Met Opera's first Black prima ballerina.
Imprisoned with her family at a WWII incarceration camp, a young woman finds a small library and, in it, a quiet friendship with a man who checks out an armful of books every single day.
