100 Books Like The Secret Garden of George Washington Carver

My memories of childhood are of white winters and deep snowfalls. Like anyone in a perfect snowstorm, I have often looked at the flakes on the shoulders and sleeves of my coat and wished I could preserve that perfect crystal. I also wondered if the saying was true—that no two snowflakes are alike—and how anyone could possibly know.

I had no idea as a child that a Vermont farmer, Wilson Bentley, studied and photographed snowflakes for years, leading to discoveries about these six-sided, fleeting jewels. In Snowflake Bentley (another Caldecott recipient), Jacqueline Martin introduces us to a time “In the days when farmers worked with ox and sled,” and a boy “who loved snow more than anything else in the world.” A fascinating, educational,  and true story to explore.

In more recent years, Jeannine Atkins has given us the beautifully written “novels-in-verse” Finding Wonders: Three Girls Who Changed Science and Grasping Mysteries: Girls Who Loved Math. The richly illustrated picture book Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon is one of Atkins’s earlier efforts to showcase the contributions women and girls have made to science. The story of Mary Anning is also important for what it tells us about the role of working-class people in the history of science. Mary’s father had been a carpenter until his untimely death, and the family supplemented their meager income by selling “curiosities” (i.e., fossils) they unearthed on the seashore near their home in Lyme Regis, England.

Mary’s careful reconstructions of fossils (including the world-famous ichthyosaur that she and her brother uncovered) helped transform the field of paleontology, earning her as much respect as a working-class woman could get in the world of… show more.

This book is sadly out of print, but readers looking for a lavishly detailed and colorfully illustrated account of technology in the service of ecological restoration should hit the used book market and add this to their home libraries. It tells the story of John Todd, a scientist from Massachusetts who created  “Living Machines” that use biological processes to transform sewage into clean water. Meanwhile, down in Tennessee, factory pollution has turned Chattanooga Creek into a stream of sludge that poisons the land and sickens the residents. The city council invites Todd to visit, and Todd adapts his Living Machines to handle not just ordinary sewage, but toxic waste.

Bang’s illustrations bring the reader to the microscopic level and back again to show just how the ecological principles of the Living Machine work. We learn that success doesn’t come easily, and science alone will not fix every problem, but an… show more.

The story of environmental activist Wangari Maathai has been told many times, including in several children’s books. I chose this book not only for its spectacular scratchboard illustrations of the Kenyan countryside but also because of its thoughtful attention to Maathai’s passion for science and her path-breaking journey as an African woman scientist. Having overcome gender barriers in the pursuit of her education, Maathai went on to become the kind of scientist who stands up against injustice and for the land and its people.

Her mobilization of village women to plant trees all across Kenya, along with her bold political activism for freedom and democracy, won her the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. This book’s depiction of a scientist who moves between villages and university laboratories, valuing the work of rural people as much as that of city elites, reminded me of the ideal I tried to convey in Moth… show more.

As a man and a scientist, George Washington Carver is captured in impressive detail by Christina Vella. George Washington Carver: A Life chronicles the details of an extraordinary life upon which I have based my own short biography. I focus on how this towering figure conceptualized the future of America and then helped to shape it. Carver had to choose between becoming an artist or a scientist, but he chose to become a scientist so that he could open doors of discovery and opportunity that only a strong, proud, and brilliant man could have managed.

Acres of Diamonds is a timeless tale that has impacted generations of readers including me. It reminds us that before we begin searching throughout the world for the things we think we don’t have, we need to look inside of ourselves and explore what we really do have. As an African farmer leaves his home and everything he knows to begin a frantic search for diamonds, he discovers the eternal lesson that we get what we love when we learn to love what we have. 

This. Book. 

Wow. 

I felt changed after I read it and talked about it with everyone who would listen. Not only is this book a riveting, fast-paced read, but it’s an important novel about assault, grooming, and the abuse of power.

The protagonist is an aspiring teenaged singer who gets discovered and then manipulated and abused by a much older celebrity R&B artist. When she wakes up with her hands covered in his blood and finds him dead, she realizes she has no memory of what occurred the night before. This novel was enticing as much as it was heartbreaking.

Robert C. Smith (1947-2023) was one of the most prolific political scientists who wrote about Black political leadership.

This book is a critical examination of national Black political leadership in the U.S. after the 1960s. Smith posits a thesis that after the Civil Rights Movement, Black Americans became incorporated into the Democratic Party, becoming a critical component of the party’s governing coalition. However, Smith maintains that Black political leadership also became much more mainstream, co-opted, and marginalized.

This book questions the extent to which Black Americans have made substantive policy gains since the 1960s and whether their incorporation into the political system has helped or hurt their capacity to press their demands on the political system.

Drawing upon her expertise in African American literature, Katherine Clay Bassard writes about the ways Black women poets, novelists, preachers, and orators from the 1700s through the 1900s used biblical themes and images to challenge the dominant culture’s oppression of women and people of color. African American women used a variety of scriptural images, including the Queen of Sheba and the “black but comely” female speaker in the Song of Songs, to argue for Black women’s dignity. Bassard celebrates African American women’s creativity and their shrewd employment of scriptural passages to engage in resistance to racism and sexism.   

This book is a real joy to read, with a particular story of a particular family but a universal feel to it. It could be my story or yours. The illustrations have the charm of the eighties, but the story doesn’t feel dated, and it is really inspirational to get quilting or think about which pieces of fabric I would use to tell my family’s story.