Books like The Little Red Fort
By Brenda Maier
For the kid who'd rather figure it out than be told they can't, Ruby's story is a quiet cheer of encouragement. Spunky, determined, and quietly triumphant.
A secret night-time inventor builds gadgets from odds and ends, but hides them under her bed until her great-great-aunt Rose visits and helps her see her crashed flying machine as a success, not a failure.
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 young inventor sets out to build the most magnificent thing she can imagine, but when try after try goes wrong, she gets so frustrated she quits — until her dog and a walk help her see things differently.
A born builder who once made a tower from diapers and glue faces a teacher who despises architecture — until a class picnic goes wrong and his skills turn out to be exactly what's needed.
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 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 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 little spider spins her web on a fence post while farm animals try one by one to lure her into playing instead, but she keeps at her work until it's finished.
A folk hero grows so fast he bursts through the porch roof, then grows into a legend — swinging two sledgehammers to build roads and racing a steam drill through a mountain.
An imaginative boy dreams up the ultimate house, sketching in a racetrack, a flying playroom, and a gigantic slide as his ideas grow wilder with every rhyme.
A fearless young woman falls in love with flying after her first airplane ride, then defies people who scoff at her dreams to become a pilot with the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II.
A boy whose mind bubbles nonstop with ideas and questions struggles to focus at school, until a friend helps him see that his one-of-a-kind brain is something to be proud of.
