Your Mom and Grandma are really pretty smart.
They know stuff, and they’re happy to teach you about it. You’ve learned a lot from them, and you want to learn more, so read these books and see what the lives of other women and girls can teach you during Women’s History Month…
Alice Johnson was a girl built for speed. She loved to read, yes, but she also loved to fly with her Daddy in his Swallow biplane. So when she saw a newspaper article about a race in a soap box car – a race that was supposedly “only for boys” – well, as you’ll see in “Mystery Driver: The Story of Alice Johnson and the First Soap Box Derby” by Elizabeth Tracy, illustrated by Anna Aronson (MIT Kids Press, $18.99), Alice was pretty hyped!
This is a story of equality, but also perseverance and ingenuity; kids will also learn about life nearly a century ago, including what it was like to be a Depression-Era kid with dreams. Four-to-six-year-old girls and boys who crave a heart-pounding tale will love this one.
Here’s another story about a girl who did something big: “From the Fields to the Fight” by Angela Quezada Padrom, illustrated by Sol Salinas (Atheneum, $19.99) is the story of Jessica Govea Thorbourne, who rose before the sun and joined her family in the fields every morning, to pick crops. She was just four years old, but she knew that her parents were having a hard time with the work, the pesticides, long hours, no bathrooms, little food, and low wages. Other families in her farm worker’s community were struggling, too, but what could one little girl do about it? The answer will thrill the 5-to-7-year-old who cares about others or who wants to do good in their community. Out March 24.
And finally, the 7-to-12-year-old who wants to be amazed by a little British history will enjoy “The Six Queens of Henry VIII” by Honor Cargill-Martin, illustrated by Jaimee Andrews (Sourcebooks Explore, $16.99). It’s a graphic-novel-type book that takes young readers through the lives and times of the many wives of King Henry VIII, focusing on each woman in turn. This includes their educations, their dowries (if any), allies they may have had, things they liked to do that might have caught the king’s eye, and other tiny details that don’t often get mentioned in other, more comprehensive biographies about those six women. Kids who get to read this book will get a sense of what life was like for women in the sixteenth century, and why each of Henry’s wives’ lives ended as they did.
If these books don’t quite fit what your child might like to know about soap box derbies, activism, migrants, kings, queens, and women throughout history, then head for your favorite library or bookstore. There, you’ll find a staff willing to figure out what your child wants, and then they’ll help put the exact right book in their hands. They can make any month into Women’s History Month.
