"The stars were always within reach for Katherine Johnson. Using her mathematics skills, she helped NASA send astronauts to the moon and return them safely home. She also overcame racial and gender hurdles that helped make giant leaps for humankind.

One of her biggest accomplishments at NASA was helping calculate the trajectory, or path, of the country’s first human spaceflight in 1961, making sure astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr., had a safe trip. A year later she helped figure out John Glenn’s orbit of the planet, another American first. In 1969, she calculated the trajectories of Neil Armstrong’s historic mission to the moon on Apollo 11."

-excerpted from National Geographic Kids

Click here for a read aloud of the book "Counting on Katherine" by Helaine Becker

" Zitkála-Šá, aka Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, (1876–1938) was born on the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota, and left her community at age 8 to attend a Quaker missionary-run boarding school as part of a U.S. government policy to educate American Indian youth with the philosophy: “Kill the Indian, and save the man.” She went on to write about her childhood and boarding school experience, and American Indian struggles to retain tribal identities and resist assimilation into European American culture, in essays that were published in the prestigious magazines Harper’s and The Atlantic Monthly. Trained as a violinist at the New England Conservatory of Music, she co-composed and wrote the libretto for what is considered the first American Indian opera, The Sun Dance Opera, in 1913. Zitkála-Šá became increasingly involved in the struggle for American Indian rights, lobbying for U.S. citizenship, voting, and sovereignty rights. She was appointed the secretary of the Society of American Indians, the first national rights organization run by and for American Indians, and edited its publication American Indian Magazine. In 1926, she co-founded the National Council of American Indians to lobby for increased political power for American Indians, and the preservation of American Indian heritage and traditions.

-exceprted from PBS.com

Click here for a read aloud of Red Bird Sings: The Story of Zitkala-Sa

"Toni Morrison was a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, editor and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, exquisite language and richly detailed African American characters who are central to their narratives. Among her best-known novels are The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, Love and A Mercy. Morrison earned a plethora of book-world accolades and honorary degrees, also receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012."

-excerpted from Biography.com

Click here for a read aloud of "Please, Louise" by Toni Morrison

In 1864, Rebecca Crumpler became the New England Female Medical College’s only African-American graduate (the school closed its doors in 1873.) A few statistics help put her remarkable achievement in perspective. In 1860, there were only 300 women out of 54,543 physicians in the United States and none of them were African-American. After the end of the Civil War in 1865, the Crumplers moved to Richmond, Virginia, where, to use her own words, she found “the proper field for real missionary work, and one that would present ample opportunities to become acquainted with the diseases of women and children.”In Richmond, Rebecca valiantly ignored daily episodes of racism, rude behavior, and sexism from her colleagues, pharmacists, and many others, in order to treat, as she later wrote, “a very large number of the indigent, and others of different classes, in a population of over 30,000 colored.”

-excerpted from PBS.com

Click here for a read aloud of "Rebecca Lee Crumpler" by JP Miller

On June 26, 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made history when she thoroughly defeated 10-term Congressman Joe Crowley, the fourth most powerful Democrat in the House, in New York's 14th congressional district in the state's Democratic primary. On November 6, less than a month after her 29th birthday, she emerged victorious in the general election to become the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. It was her first time running for office, and as a Democratic Socialist of Puerto Rican descent, her stunning triumph was a boon to the progressive hopes of her liberal supporters.

-exceprted from Biography.com

Click here for a read aloud of the Bearcub Bio of AOC

Elizabeth grew up speaking Tlingit and English and living at a subsistence level with her parents in Sitka, a coastal city in the archipelago of southeast Alaska. When she was 10, the family moved s further southeast to Klawock, a Native village on Prince of Wales Island. There she met her future husband, the son of a fisherman from the Balkans, and a Tlingit woman. In 1941, the Peratroviches moved hundreds of miles north to bustling Juneau to play a larger role in regional politics. By the time Elizabeth was elected grand president of the Alaska Native Sisterhood, a counterpart to the Brotherhood, in 1944, Roy [Peratrovich] was leading the Brotherhood. Peratrovich and her husband rallied Natives to ensure the passage of the 1945 Anti-Discrimination Act, the first anti-discrimination law in the United States. She gave examples of the injustices that she and her family had faced because of their background and called on the lawmakers to act. “You as legislators,” she said, “can assert to the world that you recognize the evil of the present situation and speak your intent to help us overcome discrimination.” The gallery broke out in a “wild burst of applause,” Gruening wrote. The 1945 Anti-Discrimination Act was passed, 11-5.

-excerpted from The New York Times

Born in Karnal, India, on March 17, 1962, Kalpana Chawla was the youngest of four children. As a child, Chawla developed an interest in flying after first seeing a plane at around the age of three. She spent days with her father visiting her local flying club with her father and showed an interest in aviation while at school. After completing her engineering degree in India, Chawla immigrated to the United States in the 1980s and became a naturalized citizen to continue her studies. She obtained her masters degree from the University of Texas and earned a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado in 1988.

Chawla began working at NASA's Ames Research Center the same year, working on powered-lift computational fluid dynamics.

Kalpana Chawla became the first Indian-born woman to go to space in 1997. Six years later, on February 1, 2003, Chawla died when the space shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts on board.

Chawla's legacy has lived on, however. In particular, her talent and hard work have inspired young people in India and around Earth to consider careers in spaceflight.

Click here to watch a short video about the life Kalpana Chawla

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani education advocate who, at the age of 17 in 2014, became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize after surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban. Yousafzai attended a school that her father, educator Ziauddin Yousafzai, had founded. After the Taliban began attacking girls' schools in Swat, Yousafzai gave a speech in Peshawar, Pakistan, in September 2008. The title of her talk was, "How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?" Yousafzai became an advocate for girls' education when she herself was still a child, which resulted in the Taliban issuing a death threat against her. On October 9, 2012, a gunman shot Yousafzai when she was traveling home from school. She survived and has continued to speak out on the importance of education. In 2013, she gave a speech to the United Nations and published her first book, I Am Malala.

-excerpted from Biography.com

Click here to read "Malala's Magic Pencil" by Malala Yousafzai

Ibtihaj Muhammad is an entrepreneur, activist, speaker and Olympic medalist in fencing. A 2016 Olympic bronze medalist, 5-time Senior World medalist and World Champion, in 2016, Ibtihaj became the first American woman to compete in the Olympics in hijab. In 2014, Ibtihaj launched her own clothing company, Louella, which aims to bring modest, fashionable and affordable clothing to the United States market. In 2017, Mattel announced their first hijabi Barbie, modeled in Ibtihaj’s likeness, as part of Barbie’s “Shero” line of dolls. The Barbie became available for purchase in July 2018. Ibtihaj also released her debut memoir, PROUD: My Fight for an Unlikely American Dream. In September of 2019, Ibtihaj released her first children’s book The Proudest Blue: A Story of Hijab and Family, which instantly became a New York Times Best Seller.

Ibtihaj is a sports ambassador with the U.S. Department of State’s Empowering Women and Girls through Sport Initiative and was nominated by President Obama as a member of the President’s Council on Fitness, Health & Nutrition. She works closely with organizations like Athletes for Impact, the Special Olympics, and Laureus Sport for Good. Named to Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential list, Ibtihaj is an important figure in a larger global discussion on equality and the importance of sport. Her voice continues to unite both the sports and non-sports world.

Click here for a read aloud of "The Proudest Blue" by Ibtihaj Muhammad (read by the author)