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Heavy Medal
March 21, 2022 by Erika Thulin Dawes
In a picture book as vivid and colorful as the art it celebrates, author Jeanne Walker Harvey and illustrator Loveis Wise collaborate to introduce young readers to the life and work of Alma Woodsey Thomas. Alma was the first Black woman to have a solo art exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art and she created the first artwork by a Black woman to be displayed as part of the White House’s permanent collection. While highlighting her accomplishments, the narrative emphasizes Alma’s early appreciation of the beauty of nature, the joy she found in making art, and her commitment to providing art education to underserved children in Washington, DC.
September 28, 2021 by Erika Thulin Dawes
The year is 1818 and a young woman named Jeanne wanders the shores of Sicily. Formerly a seamstress, she reinvents herself as a scientist, a naturalist who explores the island on foot, journal in hand. Jeanne Villepreux-Power and her accomplishments is the subject of a fascinating new picture book biography collaboration by Evan Griffin and Joanie Stone. Use it to teach the disciplinary literacies of science, pair it with other stories of women “revolutionaries,” or as part of a historical study of scientific discovery and oceanography.
April 6, 2021 by Erika Thulin Dawes
Children’s Literature Legacy Award Winner Nikki Grimes builds powerful connections between the past and present in her anthology featuring women poets of the Harlem Renaissance and her accompanying innovations on these poems. Use the poem pairings of this thought-provoking book across the school year to highlight the voices and experiences of Black women and girls or dive into the collection as a whole; either approach yields important insights into the human experience and forefronts the boundaries imposed by racism and sexism.
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A Fuse #8 Production
by Betsy Bird
Politics in Practice
by John Chrastka
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