It’s National Women’s History Month! Check out some of these great reads that celebrate the accomplishments of women throughout history!
Picture Books
Rosie Revere, Engineer
A young aspiring engineer must first conquer her fear of failure.
Under My Hijab
As a young girl observes that each of six women in her life wears her hijab and hair in a different way, she considers how to express her own style one day.
Beginning Reader Biographies
The first woman Cherokee Chief : Wilma Pearl Mankiller
The story of how Wilma Pearl Mankiller challenged gender norms introduced by settlers and became the first woman Cherokee Chief
Juvenile Biographies
Bold women in history : 15 women’s rights activists you should know
Short biographies of women who advocated for women’s rights.
Brave girl : Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909
When Clara Lemlich arrived in America, she couldn’t speak English. She didn’t know that poor young women had to go to work, that they traded an education for long hours of labor, that she was expected to grow up fast. But that did not stop Clara. She went to night school, spent hours studying English, and helped support her family by sewing in a factory. Clara never quit. And she never accepted that girls should be treated poorly and paid little. So Clara fought back. Fed up with the mistreatment of her fellow laborers, Clara led the largest walkout of women workers in the country’s history.
Choosing brave : how Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till sparked the civil rights movement
The story of the mother of Emmett Till, and how she channeled grief over her son’s death into a call to action for the civil rights movement.
Little Melba and her big trombone
A biography of African American musician Melba Doretta Liston, a virtuoso musician who played the trombone and composed and arranged music for many of the great jazz musicians of the twentieth century.
Rad American women A-Z
Profiled are 26 American women from the 18th through 21st centuries, who have made-or are still making–history as artists, writers, teachers, lawyers, or athletes.
Juvenile Graphic Novels
Mother Jones : labor leader
In graphic novel format, tells the story of Mary Mother Jones, a leading labor union and child labor activist in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Adult
Black Women Taught Us : an intimate history of Black feminism
Why has Black women’s freedom fighting been so overlooked throughout history, and what has our society lost in the meantime? A love letter to those who have been minimized and forgotten, this collection repositions Black women’s intellectual and political work at the center of today’s liberation movements.
The risk it takes to bloom : on life and liberation
A passionate, powerful memoir by a trailblazing Black transgender activist, tracing her life of transformation and her work towards collective liberation.
Twice as hard : the stories of Black women who fought to become physicians, from the Civil War to the 21st Century
No real account of black women physicians in the US exists, and what little mention is made of these women in existing histories is often insubstantial or altogether incorrect. In this work of extensive research, Jasmine Brown offers a rich new perspective, penning the long-erased stories of nine pioneering black women physicians beginning in 1860, when a black woman first entered medical school. Brown tells the stories of these doctors from the perspective of a black woman in medicine.