30 Books That Show We’re In a Golden Age of American History for Kids

Don’t miss Abby Nolan’s in-depth exploration of this topic in her essay, How America’s Checkered Past Is Being Turned into Compelling Children’s Books.

Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream, Tanya Lee Stone (Candlewick, Ages 10 and up)

Breakthrough: How Three People Saved “Blue Babies” and Changed Medicine Forever, Jim Murphy (Clarion, Ages 10 to 12)

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, Phillip Hoose (Square Fish, Ages 12 and up)

Courage Has No Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles, Tanya Lee Stone (Candlewick, Ages 10 and up)

Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina & New Orleans, Don Brown (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Ages 12 and up)

Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty, Tonya Bolden (Abrams Books for Young Readers, Ages 10 to 14)

Fannie Never Flinched: One Woman’s Courage in the Struggle for American Labor Union Rights, Mary Cronk Farrell (Abrams, Ages 10 to 14)

Flesh and Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and Its Legacy, Albert Marrin (Knopf Books for Young Readers, Ages 12 and up)

The Great American Dust Bowl, Don Brown (Houghton Mifflin, Ages 12 and up)

I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsberg Makes Her Mark, Debbie Levy and Elizabeth Baddeley (Simon & Schuster, Ages 5 to 8)

Ida M. Tarbell: The Woman Who Challenged Big Business — And Won!, Emily Arnold McCully (Clarion, Ages 12 and up)

In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents and Five Black Lives, Kenneth C. Davis (Henry Holt, Ages 10 and up)

March (Books One, Two and Three), John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell (Top Shelf, Ages 13 and up)

The March Against Fear: The Last Great Walk of the Civil Rights Movement and the Emergence of Black Power, Ann Bausum (National Geographic, Ages 12 and up)

Master of Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover and American in the Age of Lies, Marc Aronson (Candlewick, Ages 14 and up)

Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War, Steve Sheinkin (Roaring Brook, Ages 10 to 14)

The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny and the Fight for Civil Rights, Steve Sheinkin (Roaring Brook, Ages 10 to 14)

Pure Grit: How American World War II Nurses Survived Battle and Prison Camp in the Pacific, Mary Cronk Farrell (Abrams, Ages 13 and up)

Rad American Women A–Z: Rebels, Trailblazers, and Visionaries Who Shaped Our History . . . and Our Future!, Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl (City Lights, Ages 10 and up)

The Secret Project, Jonah Winter and Jeanette Winter (Beach Lane, Ages 5 to 8)

Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez & Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation, Duncan Tonatiuh (Abrams, Ages 6 to 9)

Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up By Sitting Down, Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney (Little, Brown and Company, Ages 6 to 9)

Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday and the Power of a Protest Song, Gary Golio and Charlotte Riley-Webb (Millbrook, Ages 8 to 10)

Strike!: The Farm Workers’ Fight for Their Rights, Larry Dane Brimner (Calkins Creek, Ages 10 and up)

Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom and Science, Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos (Clarion, Ages 12 and up)

They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group Susan Campbell Bartoletti (Houghton Mifflin, Ages 12 and up)

This Land Is Our Land: A History of American Immigration Linda Barrett Osborne (Abrams, Ages 12 and up)

Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team, Steve Sheinkin (Roaring Brook, Ages 10 to 14)

Uprooted: The Japanese American Experience During World War II, Albert Marrin (Knopf Books for Young Readers, Ages 12 to 17)

Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement, Carole Boston Weatherford and Ekua Holmes (Candlewick, Ages 5 to 8)