20 Picture Books to Teach About Women’s History Month in 2025

Women's History Month is around the corner, and picture books are a great way to expose young readers to the incredible achievements of diverse women throughout history. Children’s books bring inspiring stories to life for students, making history accessible, interesting, and memorable. These stories showcase the resilience, courage, and contributions of women across diverse fields.

Whether you’re a parent, caregiver, teacher, educator, or someone who shapes little minds, these picture books will empower the next generation to dream big, break barriers, and recognize the vital role women have played – and continue to play – in shaping our world.

Let’s dive in.

1. Shark Lady: The True Story of How Eugenie Clark Became the Ocean’s Most Fearless Scientist by Jess Keating

Eugenie Clark fell in love with sharks from the first moment she saw them at the aquarium. She couldn't imagine anything more exciting than studying these graceful creatures. But Eugenie quickly discovered that many people believed sharks to be ugly and scary – and they didn't think women should be scientists.

Determined to prove them wrong, Eugenie devoted her life to learning about sharks. After earning several college degrees and making countless discoveries, Eugenie wrote herself into the history of science, earning the nickname "Shark Lady." Through her accomplishments, she taught the world that sharks were to be admired rather than feared and that women can do anything they set their minds to.

2. The Oldest Student by Rita Lorraine Hubbard

This beautifully illustrated book proves that you are never too old to learn new things. It tells the story of Mary Walker, who was born into slavery in 1848 and finally freed at the age of 15. Unfortunately, being free did not solve all of Mary’s problems. Mary wanted to learn to read. But her life was still full of hard work and she did not have any time to pursue her goal.

As Mary got older, her sons would read to her since she couldn’t read on her own. But still determined to learn how to read, Mary joined an adult literacy class at the age of 114! Eventually, she accomplished what she never thought possible. She spent the rest of her years spreading the message that you are never too old to learn.

3. Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré by Anika Aldamuy Denise

When she came to America in 1921, Pura Belpré carried the cuentos folklóricos of her Puerto Rican homeland. Finding a new home at the New York Public Library as a bilingual assistant, she turned her popular retellings into libros and spread story seeds across the land. Today, these seeds have grown into a lush landscape as generations of children and storytellers continue to share her tales and celebrate Pura’s legacy.

This is an inspiring picture book biography of storyteller, puppeteer, and New York City’s first Puerto Rican librarian, who championed bilingual literature.

4. Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreño Played the Piano for President Lincoln by Margarita Engle

As a little girl, Teresa Carreño loved to let her hands dance across the beautiful keys of the piano. If she felt sad, music cheered her up, and when she was happy, the piano helped her share that joy. Soon she was writing her own songs and performing in grand cathedrals. Then a revolution in Venezuela forced her family to flee to the United States. Teresa felt lonely in this unfamiliar place, where few of the people she met spoke Spanish. Worst of all, there was fighting in her new home, too—the Civil War.

Still, Teresa kept playing, and soon she grew famous as the talented Piano Girl who could play anything from a folk song to a sonata. So famous, in fact, that President Abraham Lincoln wanted her to play at the White House! Yet with the country torn apart by war, could Teresa’s music bring comfort to those who needed it most?

5. Mae Among the Stars by Roda Ahmed

When Little Mae was a child, she dreamed of dancing in space. She imagined herself surrounded by billions of stars, floating, gliding, and discovering.

She wanted to be an astronaut.

Her mom told her, "If you believe it, and work hard for it, anything is possible.”

Little Mae’s curiosity, intelligence, and determination, matched with her parents' encouraging words, paved the way for her incredible success at NASA as the first African American woman to travel in space.

This profile of astronaut Mae Jemison will inspire other young girls to reach for the stars, to aspire for the impossible, and to persist with childlike imagination.

6. How the Cookie Crumbled: The True (and Not-So-True) Stories of the Invention of the Chocolate Chip Cookie by Gilbert Ford

Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!

Mmmmm!

Everyone loves chocolate chip cookies! But not everyone knows where they came from. Meet Ruth Wakefield, the talented chef and entrepreneur who started a restaurant, wrote a cookbook, and invented this delicious dessert. But just how did she do it, you ask? That's where things get messy!

Was it an accident? Was it because she had to spontaneously use a substitute in one of her recipes? Or was it carefully crafted and intentional? The chocolate chip cookie became a national hit thanks to Ruth and her recipe, which is still used today.

7. A Likkle Miss Lou: How Jamaican Poet Louise Bennett Coverley Found Her Voice by Nadia Hohn

Louise Bennett Coverley, better known as Miss Lou, was an iconic poet and entertainer known for popularizing the use of patois in music and poetry internationally – helping to pave the way for artists like Harry Belafonte and Bob Marley to use patois in their work. This picture book tells the story of Miss Lou's early years, when she was a young girl growing up in Jamaica.

The uplifting and inspiring story of a girl finding her own voice, this is also a vibrant, colorful, and immersive look at an important figure in our cultural history. With rich and warm illustrations bringing the story to life, A Likkle Miss Lou is a modern ode to language, girl power, diversity, and the arts.

8. Dressing Up the Stars: The Story of Movie Costume Designer Edith Head by Jeanne Walker Harvey

As a child in the small mining town of Searchlight, Nevada, Edith had few friends and spent most of her time dressing up her toys and pets and even wild animals using fabric scraps. She always knew she wanted to move somewhere full of people and excitement. She set her sights on Hollywood and talked her way into a job sketching costumes for a movie studio.

Did she know how to draw or sew costumes? No. But that didn’t stop her!

Edith Head grew up in a small town but always had big dreams of becoming a costume designer in Hollywood.  She became the first woman to head a major Hollywood movie studio costume department and went on to win eight Academy Awards for best costume design—and she defined the style of an era.

9. Kamala Harris: Rooted in Justice by Nikki Grimes

Discover the incredible story of a young daughter of immigrants who would grow up to be the first woman, first Black person, and first South Asian American ever elected Vice President of the United States—and in a history-making turn of events, became the Democrats’ 2024 Presidential nominee—in this moving picture book biography of Kamala Harris.

Told in Nikki Grimes's stunning verse and featuring gorgeous illustrations by Laura Freeman, this picture book biography brings to life a story that shows all young people that the American dream can belong to all of us if we fight for one another.

10. Hedy Lamarr's Double Life: Hollywood Legend and Brilliant Inventor by Laurie Wallmark

To her adoring public, Hedy Lamarr was a glamorous movie star, widely considered the most beautiful woman in the world. But in private, she was something more: a brilliant inventor. And for many years only her closest friends knew her secret. Now Laurie Wallmark and Katy Wu tell the inspiring story of how, during World War Two, Lamarr developed a groundbreaking communications system that still remains essential to the security of today's technology.

Even older readers familiar with the Hedy Lamarr of Hollywood fame may be surprised to learn about her passion for and contribution to the scientific community, which included a frequency-hopping system patented in 1942 but not put into use by the U.S. Navy until 20 years later.

11. Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement by Carole Boston Weatherford

“I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

Despite fierce prejudice and abuse, even being beaten to within an inch of her life, Fannie Lou Hamer was a champion of civil rights. Integral to the Freedom Summer of 1964, Ms. Hamer gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention that, despite President Johnson’s interference, aired on national TV news and spurred the nation to support the Freedom Democrats.

Told through a series of first-person free-verse poems, this biography shares the story of her tireless fight for equality with a message of hope, determination, and strength. And unlike most biographies written for younger audiences, this one doesn’t shy away from the harsher realities of Hamer’s life, offering a perspective on racism and racial violence most children won’t be familiar with.

12. Queen of Physics: How Wu Chien Shiung Helped Unlock the Secrets of the Atom by Teresa Robeson

When Wu Chien Shiung was born in China 100 years ago, most girls did not attend school; no one considered them as smart as boys. But her parents felt differently. Giving her a name meaning "Courageous Hero," they encouraged her love of learning and science.

This engaging biography follows Wu Chien Shiung as she battles sexism and racism to become what Newsweek magazine called the "Queen of Physics" for her work on beta decay. Along the way, she earned the admiration of famous scientists like Enrico Fermi and Robert Oppenheimer and became the first woman hired as an instructor by Princeton University, the first woman elected President of the American Physical Society, the first scientist to have an asteroid named after her when she was still alive, and many other honors.

13. Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors?: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell by Tanya Lee Stone

In the 1830s, when a brave and curious girl named Elizabeth Blackwell was growing up, women were supposed to be wives and mothers. Some women could be teachers or seamstresses, but career options were few. Certainly no women were doctors.

But Elizabeth refused to accept the common beliefs that women weren't smart enough to be doctors, or that they were too weak for such hard work. And she would not take no for an answer. Although she faced much opposition, she worked hard and finally—when she graduated from medical school and went on to have a brilliant career—proved her detractors wrong. This inspiring story of the first female doctor shows how one strong-willed woman opened the doors for all the female doctors to come.

14. Grace Hopper: Queen of Computer Code by Laurie Wallmark

Grace Hopper was a computer scientist and a U.S. Navy rear admiral who revolutionized computer programming by creating a code that allowed computers to communicate “in English.”

Tracing Grace’s life from her childhood taking apart clocks to her coining the term “computer bug” to her (second) retirement from the Navy at 80, this wonderful book tells Amazing Grace’s inspiring story with fun and whimsical illustrations and some of Hopper’s own quotes.

15. Turning Pages: My Life Story by Sonia Sotomayor

As the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor has inspired young people around the world to reach for their dreams. But what inspired her? For young Sonia, the answer was books! They were her mirrors, her maps, her friends, and her teachers. They helped her to connect with her family in New York and in Puerto Rico, to deal with her diabetes diagnosis, to cope with her father's death, to uncover the secrets of the world, and to dream of a future for herself in which anything was possible.

In Turning Pages, Justice Sotomayor shares that love of books with a new generation of readers, and inspires them to read and puzzle and dream for themselves. Accompanied by Lulu Delacre's vibrant art, this story of the Justice's life shows readers that the world is full of promise and possibility – all they need to do is turn the page.

16. Hidden Figures: The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly

Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden were good at math…really good.

They participated in some of NASA's greatest successes, like providing the calculations for America's first journeys into space. And they did so during a time when being black and a woman limited what they could do. But they worked hard. They persisted. And they used their genius minds to change the world.

Based on the New York Times bestselling book and the Academy Award–nominated movie, author Margot Lee Shetterly and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Award winner Laura Freeman bring the incredibly inspiring true story of four black women who helped NASA launch men into space to picture book readers!

17. Pocket Full of Colors: The Magical World of Mary Blair, Disney Artist Extraordinaire by Amy Guglielmo and Jacqueline Tourville

What’s your favorite classic Disney movie? Cinderella? Peter Pan? Alice in Wonderland? Do you know who did the concept art for those? Mary Blair, whose art was deemed too difficult to animate by the male animators, despite the studio loving her imaginative use of lines, colors and shapes.

Mary Blair lived her life in color: vivid, wild color.

From her imaginative childhood to her career as an illustrator, designer, and animator for Walt Disney Studios, Mary wouldn’t play by the rules. At a time when studios wanted to hire men and think in black and white, Mary painted twinkling emerald skies, peach giraffes with tangerine spots, and magenta horses that could fly.

She painted her world.

18. Alabama Spitfire: The Story of Harper Lee and To Kill A Mockingbird by Bethany Hegedus

Unlike most girls at that time and place, Nelle preferred overalls to dresses and climbing trees to tea parties. Nelle loved to watch her daddy try cases in the courtroom. And she and her best friend, Tru, devoured books and wrote stories of their own. More than anything Nelle loved words.

This love eventually took her all the way to New York City, where she dreamed of becoming a writer. Any chance she had, Nelle sat at her typewriter, writing, revising, and chasing her dream. Nelle wouldn’t give up—not until she discovered the right story, the one she was born to tell.

Finally, that story came to her, and Nelle, inspired by her childhood, penned To Kill a Mockingbird. A groundbreaking book about small-town injustice that has sold over forty million copies, Nelle’s novel resonated with readers the world over, who, through reading, learned what it was like to climb into someone else’s skin and walk around in it.

19. Before She Was Harriet by Lesa Cline-Ransome

We know her today as Harriet Tubman, but in her lifetime she was called by many names. As General Tubman she was a Union spy. As Moses she led hundreds to freedom on the Underground Railroad. As Minty she was a slave whose spirit could not be broken. As Araminta she was a young girl whose father showed her the stars and the first steps on the path to freedom.

An evocative poem and stunning watercolors come together to honor a woman of humble origins whose courage and compassion make her a larger than life hero.

A lush and lyrical biography of Harriet Tubman, written in verse and illustrated by James Ransome, winner of the Coretta Scott King medal for The Creation.

20. The ABC's of Women's History by Rio Cortez

In a beautiful picture book brimming with G for Groundbreaking women, National Book Award nominee Rio Cortez and illustrator Lauren Semmer celebrate all the joys, challenges, and historic forward movement of women's history in the United States, with a special focus on the Black women, brown women, transwomen, and others who make change happen.

The ABCs of Women's History is a story of persistence. It's a story of pride. And it's a story of progress. This book celebrates the disruptors, the dreamers, the determined, and the do-it-yourself-ers who continue to inspire the next generation of women to build a brighter, better tomorrow.

This is just the start!

There are so many great diverse picture books to use with young learners. For many more diverse kids' book recommendations, grab our Big List of Diverse Picture Books.