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March is Women’s History Month! There is so much that we can learn from the inspiring women that currently are shaping our society and those from the past who have paved the way for us. Yes, this is a huge push in March since the month is dedicated to it! However, let’s fill our bookshelves at home, in our clinics, libraries, and classrooms with books about inspiring women ALL the time! I have gathered 18 pictures books about inspiring women that we can learn from. I have categorized them a bit so that you can find some that fit a need or a desire for your setting. I think reading picture books about mathematicians before math, or an inventor before a STEM lesson (etc) can be incredibly powerful for children. What do you think?
Inventors
Josephine and her Dishwashing Machine
A book about Josephine Cochrane, who invented the first commercially available dishwasher machine. My personal hero, as I admittedly cannot survive without a dishwasher.
This book shares about Emma Lillian Todd, the first female to design an airplane! A HUGE feat.
Environmentalists
Eugenie Clark was a pioneer in the field of scuba diving for research purposes. This beautiful book tells the story of how she studied shark behavior and other sea creatures. Did you know the study of sharks is called ichthyology?
This book shares about the amazing Margaret Lowman. She’s a biologist who studies forest canopies! She is one of many inspiring women in science, and has many features and websites that show what she’s currently studying and speaking about around the globe.
The Girl who Thought in Pictures
This book shares of the ongoing accomplishments of Dr. Temple Grandin. She’s an animal behaviorist that focuses her research on the humane treatment of livestock. Temple is autistic and the book shares in kids terms how autism has created both doors and barriers to her many successes.
Mathematicians
This beautiful picture book is about Edith Clarke. She was the first woman employed as an electrical engineer in the Unite States! One of the most amazing and inspiring women we can learn about in the field of math.
The Girl with the Mind for Math
This book is about a woman I had never heard of and just learned about, Raye Montague. She was the first female program manager of ships in the US Navy. She would be a great and inspiring woman to read and study about for Veterans Day.
This picture book shared the incredible story of Sophie Germain. She was a French woman living in the 1700s where she faced incredible barriers to education, and taught herself math using her father’s textbooks! This picture book would be amazing to help teach about perseverance. Sophie’s work was hardly recognized, but her theories and work were the foundation for many mathematicians who came after her.
I love how this book teaches about a math mind that many of us have never heard of, Maryam Mirzakhani. She was an Iranian mathematician. She was the only woman to have ever won the Fields Medal, the highest award in mathematics.
Space Scientists & Astronauts
Many of us know about the inspiring women featured in the movie and book Hidden Figures. One of them is Katherine Johnson, a mathematician for NASA who helped Apollo 13 land on the moon! This beautiful picture book shows us how Katherine played pivotal roles in the Black community, especially for females in the STEM field. This picture book would be such a cool read to help tie math into everyday life, history, and women’s studies!
This picture books highlights another one of the inspiring women from Hidden Figures, Mary Jackson. She was an aerospace engineer for NASA, and NASA’s first Black, female engineer. If you teach students about coding, space, or the many fields of math, this book is a must have for your shelf.
It wouldn’t be a list of inspiring women in space science if I didn’t share this book about Dorothy Vaughan. You may know her name because she, also, is one of the “Hidden Figures”. She was NASA’s first Black manager and the first Black individual to receive a promotion at NASA.
This book shares about another inspiring woman in space science, Margaret Hamilton! The code that she wrote for NASA made the Apollo missions possible. I love the whimsical illustrations in this picture book, too.
There are quite a few books about Mae Jemison, the first Black woman to travel into space, but this one is my favorite! I love how it focuses on her childhood and how she became a successful astronaut, and the illustrations are absolutely stunning.
Other incredible accomplishments
This is the picture book sharing the story of an unsung hero, Molly Williams. She was the first known female, and first known Black, firefighter in the United States. This book also does a great job of explaining how they would fight fires back in the 1800s. This would be great for a past vs. present, then vs. now kind of venn diagram!
This unique picture book about Englishwoman Mary Annig will be so inspiring to many students, especially those who love dinosaurs! It shares how Mary discovered dinosaur bones when she was digging and exploring one day, which led to the entire field of paleontology being discovered!
I absolutely love this picture book about the innovative Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid. She faced many barriers and hurdles in her field as a Muslim woman, and overcame them to create incredible, unique buildings all over the world!
Grace Hopper Queen of Computer Code
This is the cutest, most lighthearted biography picture book of computer scientist Grace Hopper. The book walks us through her accomplishments and how she taught computers to “speak English”. It has tons of witty, cute quotes that would be great to pull out and use over and over again for examples and inspiration.
Opening up the world, our past and present, through picture books, is so huge! Picture books can open doors for children to see themselves and the contributions of others who have paved the way for us. I hope you add some of these books about inspiring women in our world to your bookshelves!
