Books like The Kitchen Knight: A Tale of King Arthur
By Margaret Hodges
For kids captivated by knights, castles, and the idea that greatness can start in the humblest place, Sir Gareth's story lands somewhere between fairy tale and legend. Stately, romantic, and heroic, with the hushed grandeur of a medieval tapestry come to life.
A determined mountaineer dreams of climbing despite being told no by men, sponsors, and gear made only for men's hands — so she leads an all-women team up Everest, battling avalanches and icy crevasses along the way.
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 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.
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 young girl in Pakistan wishes for a magic pencil to fix small things — the smell of garbage, an extra hour of sleep — then realizes the world needs bigger fixes, and she can work toward them herself.
An engineer and an explorer climb into a hollow metal ball they invented called the Bathysphere, risking leaks and explosions to dive deeper into the ocean than anyone has gone before.
After the gods fail again and again to create lasting humans across five different suns, Quetzalcóatl the Feathered Serpent alone refuses to give up, journeying to the underworld to retrieve the sacred bones of creation.
In 1974, a French aerialist strings a tightrope between the two towers of the World Trade Center and spends an hour walking, dancing, and performing tricks a quarter mile above the city.
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 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 knight known as the Red Cross Knight sets out with a princess to face a dragon that has terrorized the countryside for years, in a battle that will decide the land's fate.
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.
