Books like Mama Miti: Wangari Maathai and the Trees of Kenya
By Donna Jo Napoli
For the kid who wants to know that one person, one small action, can actually change something real — this is the true story that proves it. Grounded, reverent, quietly triumphant — a true story told with the weight and warmth it deserves.
A girl grows up among fig trees and clear streams in the Kenyan highlands, then returns from college to find the land stripped bare and her people struggling — so she begins teaching them to plant trees again.
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 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.
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.
Born into slavery, a woman hears the voice of God calling her north and escapes through the woods with only her faith, beginning the journey that will make her Moses to her people.
In a real Harlem neighborhood, a girl named Nevaeh calls an abandoned lot the haunted garden, until a caring man invites the local kids to transform it into a thriving farm.
An enslaved man endures separation from his family in Virginia, then hits on a desperate plan: mailing himself in a wooden crate to freedom in the North.
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 Jane grows up watching birds, trees, and animals with her toy chimpanzee Jubilee always at her side, dreaming of a life spent living among and helping all creatures.
A timid squirrel afraid of thunder, hawks, and dark forest paths must carry soup through Buckthorn Forest to her sick Granny Oak, facing creatures who want to help — and some who want the soup.
A young girl leaves her grandmother's house in Mexico to join her parents and brother in New York, facing a new language, unfair accusations, and the slow work of calling a new place home.
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.
