What is all this about books for kids?

These are picture books about historical figures or historical times. These books are for kids ranging in age from pre-school to about second grade.

History

Aliki: A Medieval Feast

The King is coming to visit! The lord and lady of Camdenton Manor must work quickly to prepare for his arrival. It will take weeks to ready rooms, set up tents, and prepare the feast itself. Everyone is busy hunting and hawking, brewing and churning.

What’s not to like about food?

Cynthia Chin-Lee: Amelia to Zora (2008)

Cathy Goldberg Fishman: When Jackie and Hank Met (2012) (Sports) (History) (Non-WASP)

Jackie and Hank were born eight years and one thousand miles apart.

Nobody knew these babies would grow up and play baseball. Nobody knew Jackie and Hank would meet and become heroes.

Deborah Heiligman: The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos (2013)

If you have read many scientific journals, then you are probably aware of Paul Erdos, the man whose name is on more scientific papers than any other person. This story talks about the boy who became that man–and also about how he ended up publishing with so many people.

Margaret Hodges: Saint George and the Dragon

A re-telling from Spenser’s The Faerie Queene of George, the Red Cross Knight.

The Kitchen Knight (1990)

In the days when monsters and giants and fairy folk lived in England, a noble knight was riding across a plain. He wore heavy armor and carried and ancient silver shield marked with a red cross. It was dented with the blows of many battles fought long ago by other brave knights.

Kathleen Krull: Wilma Unlimited (2000)

No one expected such a tiny girl to have a first birthday. In Clarksville, Tennessee, in 1940, life for a baby who weighed just over four pounds at birth was sire to be limited.

But most babies didn’t have nineteen older brothers and sisters to watch over them.

Most babies didn’t have a mother who knew home remedies.

Andrea Davis Pinkney: Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra (2006) (Music)

You ever hear of the jazz-playin’ man, the man with the cats who could swing with his band? He was born in 1899, in Washington D.C. Born Edward Kennedy Ellington. But wherever young Edward went, he said, “Hey, call me Duke.”

Christopher Raschka: Charlie Parker Played Be Bop (1997)

Never leave your cat alone.

Be bop.

Mysterious Thelonious (1997)

John Coltraine’s Giant Steps (2002) (Music)

I love jazz. It’s the music that influenced so much of what we listen to day, but the music and the men who composed and played it were just as amazing.

Doreen Rappaport: Elizabeth Started All the Trouble (2016)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton couldn’t go to college but more importantly, she couldn’t vote.

A brief look at the start of the Women’s Suffrage Movement–and a time when women were still often treated as property rather than citizens.

Allen Say: Tea with Milk (1999)

From the window in her room, the girl could see the city of San Francisco. She imagined that it was a city of many palaces. And one day her father would take her there, he had promised, riding on a paddle steamer across the shining bay.

Her parents called her Ma-chan, which was short for Masako, and spoke to her in Japanese. Everyone else called her May and talked to her in English.

Tanya Lee Stone: The House that Jane Built

Jane Addams was the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her social activism.

Laurie Wallmark: Ada Byron Lovelace and the Thinking Machine (2015)

Any geek worth their salt knows that Ada Lovelace was the mother of computing. But if you aren’t a geek, then you may never have heard of the daughter of Lord Byron who created programming and changed the world to come.

Jonah Winter: Frida (Art) (2002)

I am a heathen. I know next to nothing about art, and generally don’t appreciate it. But even I know of Frida Kahlo.

Click through on any of the title (or book covers) to see the books on Amazon. (And if you buy, I get a few parts of pennies to build up towards a book for me!)