3 New Inspirational Girl-Power Middle Grade Books
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These girl-powered middle-grade books feature the true stories of girls and women who achieved amazing things with creativity, hard work, and determination. Use them in the classroom or at home to show your children possibilities — the possibilities of dreaming big and achieving those dreams.
Middle-Grade NonFiction: Female Leaders and Entrepreneurs
Girl CEO Priceless Advice from Trailblazing Women by Ronnie Cohen and Katherine Ellison
The 40 fascinating female biographies in this book will inspire your girls and boys to see their dreams as possibilities. Because many of the CEO (chief executive officer) girls and women in this book are also entrepreneurs that came up with their own original ideas for a company. It’s SO interesting to read how each woman saw a need, often from their own life experience, and created a product or service to meet that need. (Example: Josephine Cochrane invented an automatic dishwasher after one too many chipped dishes.)
Each featured story contains illustrations, an important quote, and 3-4 pages about the woman which reflect the authors’ depth of research and personal interviews with the women. The book also contains informational insets throughout explaining concepts what a CEO is or women in STEM. Biographies include:
- Haile Thomas who started the nonprofit HAPPY (as a 12-year-old!)
- Katrina Lake, founder of Stich Fix
- Ayanna Howard, creator of Zyrobotics
- Anne Wojcicki, founder of 23andme
- Heidi Ganahl, founder of Camp Bow Wow
How can you use this book? Use it to inspire an enterprising young person. Use it to study leadership. Use it to study women-owned or women-run businesses. Use it to launch an entrepreneur study. There are so many possibilities! Well-written and well-designed, this is a worthy addition to any middle school library and classroom.
Middle-Grade NonFiction: Inspiring Girl Biographies
Rad Girls Can Stories of Bold, Brave, and Brilliant Young Women by Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl
Note the word “GIRLS” in the title. This book’s biographies are all about females who as girls, from the present day to farther back in time, have contributed something inspiring to the world — through athletics, lots of activism, writing, leadership, and more. There are a LOT of biographies — 50 total — many of which are new to me. The girls are diverse, from a transgender advocate named Jazz to a civil rights hero named Ruby Bridges to a chess champion from Uganda to superstar basketball sisters from the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
Middle-Grade NonFiction: Amazing Female Athletes
Women Athletes Who Rule! Sports Illustrated Kids
This book is set up so kids can flip through to find photographs and topics that interest them. Each page asks a question which it then answers. For example: Who has won the most beach volleyball tournaments of all time? or Who is the only American woman to win six medals in one Olympics? or Who was the first woman to play pro baseball? Find a question you like, then read the answer. I predict you’ll love learning about these amazing athletes. The variety of sports is impressive, too from hockey to diving to NASCAR and plenty more. Get inspired as you read about record-breakers, trailblazers, superstars, and champions!