Here are 100 books that Leading the Way fans have personally recommended if you like
Leading the Way.
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I love kids' books that humanize historical figures, including our former presidents and first ladies. Extra points for texts that have fresh approaches, lots of lesser-known facts, and a few sentences about social context! Children need a realistic, detailed view of our country’s past leaders and the times they lived in. Writing truthful, inspirational stories is my job, as an author of nonfiction for young people. My books have won several state and national awards, including the PEN Steven Kroll Award for Picture Book Writing, the Jane Addams Book Award, and the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction (Younger Readers).
I like this book for its emphatic feminism—conveyed in an abundance of details in art and text. It tells how Abigail Adams used her smarts, wits, and willpower to transcend the misogyny/gender bias of the 18th century while supporting her husband, John, throughout his long career.
The book also honors the unpaid, unrecognized contributions of women during the revolutionary era—how they not only ran the household but helped the army by raising money, nursing soldiers, spying, and even fighting. This introduces young readers to the concept of “women’s work” and how essential females have been to politics and the economy.
Instead of keeping quiet, she blurted out questions. Instead of settling down with a wealthy minister, she married a poor country lawyer named John Adams. Instead of running from the Revolutionary War, she managed a farm and fed hungry soldiers. Instead of leaving the governing to men, she insisted they "Remember the Ladies." Instead of fearing Europe's kings and queens, she boldly crossed the sea to represent her new country. And when John become President of the United States, Abigail became First Lady and served as John's powerful adviser.
Did you know you can survive being swallowed by a whale? Or that octopus wrestling used to be an actual sport? Or, that once a town in Oregon didn't know what to do with a whale carcass that washed up on their beaches, so they...BLEW IT UP?
When I learned that Jackie Kennedy Onassis had helped save Grand Central I had to know more about her! This lead to being curious about other First Ladies and how they served America during and after they were in the White House. Often their contributions were overshadowed by their husbands, so with this list, I’m shining a light on little-known facts about these well-known women.
This is the perfect companion book to my book When Jackie Saved Grand Central. Both books fill out the story of two important buildings that she restored - The White House and Grand Central Terminal. In this story, you learn more about Jackie as a child. And I’m IN LOVE with the illustrations! Denos captured Jackie’s beauty and strength in drawings that remind me of fashion sketches.
A stunning and inspirational nonfiction picture book about the life and style of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis from Margaret Cardillo and Julia Denos, the team that created Just Being Audrey. This nonfiction picture book is an excellent choice to share during homeschooling, in particular for children ages 4 to 6. It's a fun way to learn to read and as a supplement for activity books for children.
Jackie Kennedy was an American icon of style and grace-but there was steel under that style. Her poise under fire, intelligence, and tireless work as First Lady earned her the respect of leaders worldwide…
When I learned that Jackie Kennedy Onassis had helped save Grand Central I had to know more about her! This lead to being curious about other First Ladies and how they served America during and after they were in the White House. Often their contributions were overshadowed by their husbands, so with this list, I’m shining a light on little-known facts about these well-known women.
This is a great resource if you’re just wanting to brush up on your First Ladies trivia or if you’re needing a starting point in your research. It contains photos, quotes, and delicious details. Although it’s more of a book for grown-ups, it can be used to explore First Ladies further with your child after reading a picture book.
The revised and updated edition, including all-new information on Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, and Betty Ford America's first ladies have captured the hearts of the citizens of our country ever since its humble beginnings. This newly updated edition of The First Ladies Fact Book is a comprehensive, fascinating, and intimate look at the life of each first lady from Martha Washington to Michelle Obama. Each profile includes a portrait, key biographical information, and several additional photographs. Among the topics covered are childhood and upbringing, early marriage years, the path to the White House, hobbies, career, style of dress,…
An interdimensional mixer with angels and other beings brings unexpected trouble for Malachi and his friends in this smart and uniquely funny second book about the squad of teens from hell.
When an angel comes to his home to deliver a message, Malachi immediately knows what’s going on. The seraph…
When I learned that Jackie Kennedy Onassis had helped save Grand Central I had to know more about her! This lead to being curious about other First Ladies and how they served America during and after they were in the White House. Often their contributions were overshadowed by their husbands, so with this list, I’m shining a light on little-known facts about these well-known women.
This picture book truly shows the importance of art and how it can empower kids when they see themselves in art. This is one reason why I like writing picture books! Art can speak volumes when the viewer connects, and this story of an African American child named Parker seeing Michele Obama as a queen in her portrait is so beautiful in many ways. You’ll be inspired to bring your child to an art museum.
A visit to Washington, DC's National Portrait Gallery forever alters Parker Curry's young life when she views First Lady Michelle Obama's portrait.
When Parker Curry came face-to-face with Amy Sherald's transcendent portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama at the National Portrait Gallery, she didn't just see the First Lady of the United States. She saw a queen-one with dynamic self-assurance, regality, beauty, and truth who captured this young girl's imagination. When a nearby museum-goer snapped a photo of a mesmerized Parker, it became an internet sensation. Inspired by this visit, Parker, and her mother,…
In my work as a news reporter and war correspondent, I met people on the worst day of their lives. I always wondered: What now? How will they get on with life? My own parents faced that dreadful dilemma. Penniless refugees, their families murdered in the Holocaust, unemployed in London, how on earth did they find the strength to carry on? One day at a time, they just did what they had to do. That is the subject of my fiction, always trying to answer that existential question: How do we live with trauma, and still find love and happiness?
It isn’t the best-written book but Waris Dirie’s account of her escape from Somalia, her life as a domestic servant in London, her marriages of convenience, and her ultimate triumph in New York’s world of fashion, haunted me for years.
A frank, intimate account of a beautiful woman’s escape from a nomadic tribal life of female abuse to scaling the heights of western fashion modeling.
Waris Dirie (the name means desert flower) lives a double life - by day she is a famous model and UN spokeswoman on women's rights in Africa, at night she dreams of her native Somalia. Waris, one of 12 children, was born into a traditional family of desert nomads in East Africa. She remembers her early childhood as carefree- racing camels and moving on with her family to the next grazing spot - until it came her turn to meet the old woman who administered the ancient custom imposed on most Somalian girls: circumcision. Waris suffered this torture when she…
For a long time, I’ve been intrigued by the different ways that people reason about moral issues. Add to that a mystification about why smart people do unethical things and you have the basis for our book on ethical leadership. I’ve spent the better part of my career evaluating and coaching potential leaders and realized relatively recently that I wanted to work with people who did the “right thing.” Demonstrating the moral courage to speak up in the face of opposition has become increasingly difficult—hence my list of books on moral courage. I hope you enjoy it.
I have ancestors who were involved in the early Women’s Rights Movement as part of the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, so I know that history. But I did not know that others, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, saw her as a competitor.
Stone has been largely forgotten—except by women who do not take their husband’s last name. She was an early voice crying out against male oppression.
Recounting the story of America's antebellum woman's rights movement through the efforts of Lucy Stone (1818-1893), this important account differs dramatically from those that focus almost exclusively on Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Million examines the social forces of the 1830s and 1840s that led Stone to become a woman's reformer and her early agitation as a student at Oberlin College, including what may well be the nation's first strike for equal pay for women. Million chronicles not only the public side of Stone, but her personal battles as well.
Considering a woman's right to self-sovereignty as the…
4.5 billion years ago, Earth was forming - but nothing could have survived there…
From Cells to Ourselves is the incredible story of how life on earth started and how it gradually evolved from the first simple cells to the abundance of life around us today. Walk with dinosaurs, analyse…
As an Arab American woman who grew up in Nashville in an evangelical church, I’ve always maintained complex understandings of myself as both an Arab and a woman. My experiences coupled with my love for reading led me to become a journalist where I could explore stories about Arab women in hopes of learning more about myself. After 9/11, watching my family face racism and hate from a country we're so proud to be a part of, I wanted to change the narrative. I got a Ph.D. in Media Sociology from the University of Missouri and started writing critical analyses of media’s poor representation of Arab women and how we can help change the game.
The title of the book alone is enough to pick it up.
Abu-Lughod’s book is the crux for so many other works focused on the misplaced victimization of Arab and Muslim women. Not only does she challenge the West’s flawed understandings of these women, but she also implicates the dangers of the West’s foreign intervention. But it’s not all academic jargon.
She includes real and moving stories from women’s experiences that helped me reflect on my own ideological stance as a feminist.
Frequent reports of honor killings, disfigurement, and sensational abuse have given rise to a consensus in the West, a message propagated by human rights groups and the media: Muslim women need to be rescued. Lila Abu-Lughod boldly challenges this conclusion. An anthropologist who has been writing about Arab women for thirty years, she delves into the predicaments of Muslim women today, questioning whether generalizations about Islamic culture can explain the hardships these women face and asking what motivates particular individuals and institutions to promote their rights.
In recent years Abu-Lughod has struggled to reconcile the popular image of women victimized…
We talk a lot about the big public events that expanded the #MeToo movement so astronomically, like the election to the US presidency of a man who bragged about assaulting women, and the allegations made against Harvey Weinstein. But I think most American women have other, more personal beefs that originate from their being a woman. I, for one, was shocked at how unnecessarily difficult it was to be a new mother in the US. Other places support this vulnerable group much more than we do here, and living that disparity angered me—like, for example, when my husband exhausted what little parental leave he had available before our twins were even released from the NICU.
I love Eltahawy’s approach to solving the problems of the patriarchy: She wants to teach and encourage women and girls to do all the things we’re taught not to do, specifically a series of seven dubitable “sins” that have been instilled in females for centuries.
She begins by promoting the expression of anger, which like the rest of the traits on her list is something that women have been told is harmful, unfeminine, and wrong. But Eltahawy is—admirably, inspiringly—driven to flip it on its head, thereby turning it into an asset that can be employed to improve conditions for all of us.
A bold and uncompromising feminist manifesto that shows women and girls how to defy, disrupt, and destroy the patriarchy by embracing the qualities they’ve been trained to avoid.
Seizing upon the energy of the #MeToo movement, feminist activist Mona Eltahawy advocates a muscular, out-loud approach to teaching women and girls to harness their power through what she calls the “seven necessary sins” that women and girls are not supposed to commit: to be angry, ambitious, profane, violent, attention-seeking, lustful, and powerful. All the necessary “sins” that women and girls require to erupt.
I have been writing about the history of women's rights and women's suffrage for over fifty years. Suffrage: Women's Long Battle for the Vote offers a comprehensive history of the full three-quarters of a century of women's persistent suffrage activism. I began my work inspired by the emergence of the women's liberation movement in the 1970s and this most recent history appeared in conjunction with the 2020 Centennial of the Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. My understanding of the campaign for full citizenship for women repeatedly intersects with the struggles for racial equality, from abolition to Jim Crow. Today, when American political democracy is under assault, the long history of woman suffrage activism is more relevant than ever.
I am recommending this book because it is a beautifully written, originally argued overview of women’s rights long history. Stansell organizes her compelling history of women’s rights around the shift from mothers’ perspectives (nineteenth-century feminism) to daughters’ perspectives (twentieth century). She writes beautifully and sweeps over this long tradition without minimizing the disagreements, shifts, and changes, all the while emphasizing the consistent theme of women’s individual freedom and collective struggle.
“A unique, elegant, learned sweep through more than two centuries of women’s efforts to overcome the most fundamental way that human beings have been wrongly divided into the leaders and the led. It’s full of surprises from the past and guiding lights for the future.”—Gloria Steinem
For more than two centuries, the ranks of feminists have included dreamy idealists and conscientious reformers, erotic rebels and angry housewives, dazzling writers,shrewd political strategists, and thwarted workingwomen. Well-known leaders are sketched from new angles by Stansell, with her bracingeye for character: Mary Wollstonecraft, the passionate English writer who in 1792 published the first…
The summer holidays have finally arrived and Scout can’t wait for her adventure in the big rig with Dad. They’re on a mission to deliver donations of dog food to animal rescue shelters right across the state. There’ll be dad-jokes, rock-collecting, and a brilliant plan that will make sure everyone’s…
I have always been passionate and outspoken about fairness. This passion evolved into my attention to words and laws and a belief that they could affect behavior. This passion evolved into my passion for social change. Finally, it evolved into a passion for public service, where I could make things happen that I believed would help people. My first action as Chief Ranger for Legislation in the Boston office of the National Park Service was proposing a new park for women’s history, which eventually became the Women’s Rights National Historical Park.
I found a quote from my father written in 1982 in my tattered copy of Stanton’s biography when I was appointed the first superintendent of the new park. He asked, “How do you know all this?” A perfect question from a well-educated and well-read father who was then 70. He surely never studied women’s history.
I, a graduate of the Arts College at Cornell University just 40 miles away from Seneca Falls, had never heard of Stanton or Seneca Falls until 20 years after my graduation. It’s remarkable how little awareness there was, even in such close proximity, about these historical figures and events that would become so central to my work. My personal knowledge of women’s history was practically non-existent at the time.
I began as superintendent in 1982, and of the very fine books here recommended, only one had been published in 1982: Stanton’s autobiography. Stanton’s descriptions, supplemented…
The autobiography of women's rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton-published for the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage-including an updated introduction and afterword from noted scholars of women's history Ellen Carol DuBois and Ann D. Gordon.
Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences 1815-1897, is one of the great American autobiographies. There is really no other American woman's autobiography in the nineteenth century that comes near it in relevance, excellence, and historical significance.
In 1848, thirty-three-year-old Stanton and four others organized the first major women's rights meeting in American history. Together with Susan B. Anthony, her partner in the cause, she led the…
