Books like The Water Princess
By Susan Verde
For the kid who's starting to notice that not every family has what theirs does, this is a gentle, honest way into that conversation. Warm, quiet, hopeful, and grounded in real life.
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 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 country cottontail raising twenty-one children dreams of becoming an Easter Bunny, and when the wise Grandfather Bunny notices how capably she runs her big household, he chooses her for the job.
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 young girl, her waitress mother, and her grandma save every spare coin in a big jar, hoping to finally buy a comfortable chair after a fire destroyed their old furniture.
A woman who loves the trees of her Kenyan homeland begins planting seeds one by one, teaching other women to do the same, until the whole country grows strong and green again.
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 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 granddaughter joins her granny and a growing group of neighbors on a mysterious, important walk through their community — one granny says will shape her into a leader.
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.
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 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.
