Books for Black History Month and Beyond

If you’re looking for more people to study for Black History Month and beyond, I have a couple of book suggestions for you. Young, Gifted and Black and Young, Gifted and Black Too by Jamia Wilson and illustrated by Andrea Pippins each feature 52 Black artists, activists, athletes and more who made their mark on the world.

Each person is described in a brief biography and includes an illustrated portrait. The books are chronological in nature, but the first one focuses a lot more on people from the 20th and 21st centuries and current people readers might already know such as Beyonce and Solange Knowles, Oprah Winfrey, Venus and Serena Williams and Misti Copeland.

The first book covers some of the people you’d expect in a Black history book such as Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., George Washington Carver, Barack and Michelle Obama and Maya Angelou, but it also includes some lesser-known folks like Brian Lara, a Trinidadian cricket player, and British long-distance runner Mo Farah. You’ll also find profiles of people like Madam C.J. Walker, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Muhammad Ali, to name just a few.

The second book goes a bit more into history and includes more people from around the world who aren’t athletes. The book opens with Juan Latino, an Afro-Spainard who was born enslaved, married a Spanish noblewoman (in one of the first legally recognized mixed-race marriages in that country back in the 1500s) and published three books of Latin poetry.

It includes Queen Nanny, who led formerly enslaved Africans in Jamaica; Toussaint L’Ouverture, known as the father of Haiti, which became the first free state founded by formerly enslaved people; Moses and Calvin McKissack, who established the first Black-owned architecture firm in the United States; Albert Luthuli, whose non-violent efforts to end apartheid in South Africa led to him being the first African awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960; godmother of rock ‘n’ roll Sister Rosetta Tharpe; Gladys Mae West, whose computer programs helped in the development of GPS; and British fashion designer Ozwald Boateng to name a few.

More well-known names are also included in the second volume such as Coretta Scott King, Prince, Laverne Cox, Naomi Osaka and Amanda Gorman.

These books are colorful and dun to look at and to read and would make a great jumping off point for further research and reports about these figures from Black history.

About the books: each book is 64 pages long and hardcover. The first was published in 2018 and the second in 2023 by Wide Eyed Books. Suggested retail is $23.99 for the first and $24.99 for the second.

Black History Month Collaborative Quilt Project

Black History Month Puzzle Pieces

Black History Bingo Cards

My brother went through a phase where he was obsessed with maps. He loved to look at maps and he would draw maps of places real and imagined. He even drew maps that followed our route when we’d go to visit our grandparents in another state!

I assume there are still kids who go through map phases, and kids with an interest in history and how things got to be the way they are. Both kinds of kids will enjoy the book Borders: Understanding the Lines that Unite and Separate Us by Karim Ressouni-Demigneux, with illustrations by Karine Maincent.

The book describes how the original borders were natural, such as oceans, rivers, mountains and deserts, and while some of those borders are still in use today, many borders are human made, decided by treaties or carved out by colonizers. It covers the history of people congregating in one place and how city-states evolved into empires, how maps are drawn and how human conflicts can reshape borders.

There are stories about walls that reinforce borders, how borders work in the air and at sea, how people cross borders with passports or as refugees and how climate change is altering the borders of some countries.

You’ll also learn some fun border facts like the fact that if you stand in the middle of the bridge over the Zambezi River you can be in four countries at once because that’s where the borders of Botswana, Zambia, Namibia and Zimbabwe meet. Or how there is only one border crossing between India and Pakistan that’s closed each night in an elaborate ceremony.

The book talks about time zones, border towns and places where countries and parts of countries are inside other countries and places where borders are less important such as the European Union.

While there are serious subjects in the book, it’s still a fun read that’s sure to interest those kids around ages 8-12 who like travel, maps and weird but true facts.

About the book: 72 pages, hardcover, published 2026 by Blue Dot Kids Press. Suggested retail price $21.95.

Have you read?

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