Where’s THEIR Book? Ten Historical Figures I’d Like To See in Picture Book Biographies

It wasn’t that long ago that biographical subjects in picture books were limited to the already famous. If you wanted to do, say, a picture book on Peg Leg Bates, you were likely to run into a publisher saying, “Sorry. There’s already one out there. Pick someone else.” Frankly, you’d have a much better chance of getting your book published if it was on Keller/Lincoln/Tubman/Earhardt/Einstein/Edison.

But that’s all changed now, hasn’t it? This year alone I’ve seen extraordinary picture books on Autumn Peltier, Edith Clarke, Edna Lewis, Cecilia Payne, Roberta Flack, Jackie Ormes, Augustus Jackson, Tom Crean, Major Taylor, Mary Lou Williams, and Jeannette Rankin, to name but a few! What caused this seismic shift in the publishing landscape? You can lay some of the credit on the Common Core Curriculum, and some on the We Need Diverse Books Movement, alongside a general shift in how we view nonfiction for kids.

I say all this, but even now it is not enough. Nope. Not enough at all. Greedy guts that I am, I want more. I want more heroes on the page! More picture book bios! And if I have to write up a whole piece on the matter, so be it.

Here then are ten people that I think are deserving of some righteous, weird, and magnificent picture book biographies. One of these I’d like to do myself, but I’ll never tell you which one . . .

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Katherine Sui Fun Cheung

Not gonna lie. More than one person on this list was discovered via the site Hark, A Vagrant by Kate Beaton. Case in point:

Honestly, I get why Beaton doesn’t do the strip anymore but if she ever wants to truly write a great book for kids, all she has to do is adapt her history stuff for a slightly younger audience.

As for Katherine Sui Fun Cheung, she truly was as cool as she’s made out here to be. Born in 1904 she moved to the U.S. from China at the age of 17 and after marrying and having two kids decided to become a kickass pilot. Which she did. Splendidly. Look her up sometime. It’s definitely time to get her some more attention.

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Charles Proteus Steinmetz

Yeah, we’re all for patting ourselves on the back on how diverse our picture book bios are these days. But are they? I mean, have you ever seen a single one about someone with dwarfism? I’m including Steinmetz here partially because my mom is his #1 fan of all time, but also because the man was a friggin’ genius. Everyone likes to talk about Edison and Tesla, but Steinmtez was just as famous back in the day, and an actual nice guy to boot. When he died he held over 200 patents, so you would have to be able to explain his relationship to electricity if you wrote a book about him. Still, he’s a fascinating guy. There’s a lot to work with here.

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Salif Keïta

Just as there is no picture book biography in American that I’ve ever seen on a famous figure with dwarfism, so too is there no book on someone with albinism. I find this odd. It’s also almost never mentioned in children’s nonfiction in general, except perhaps in a large round-up of different kinds of people. This year the book Crowned: Magical Folk and Fairy Tales from the Diaspora by Kahran and Regis Bethencourt does feature a kid with albinism but that is literally the first time I’ve ever seen it mentioned in a book. Seems to me that a bio of Malian singer-songwriter Salif Keïta could change all that. Look up his biography sometime too. The man has led a fascinating life. Plus I just spent an inordinate amount of time listening to his music on Spotify.

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Public Universal Friend

I first came to hear the story of the Friend via one of my favorite podcasts, Stuff You Missed in History Class (heard here):

The Friend’s story is not uncomplicated, but I think there’s a lot to consider here when we discuss non-binary figures in American history. I recommend that you listen to the podcast sometime and consider the Friend’s role. It wouldn’t be a straightforward or easy bio to write, but I have faith that someone somewhere could do a stand up and cheer job of it. After all, how many historical non-binary figures do we have on our shelves right now?

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Charles Drew

Here’s where we have to define what I mean when I say that no one has ever done a picture book biography of these people. Yes, some have appeared in books. Yet they deserve more than just a rote recounting of their lives. A truly great picture book biography delves deep. Take Charles Drew as one example. Here we have the Black scientist that created the large-scale blood bank system early in World War II. He literally has saved millions of lives and yet where the heck is his glorious picture book bio celebrating his life? Recently I heard him featured on the Sawbones podcast (you can read the transcript here), and it just made me even more determined to read about him on the page someday.

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Rosalind Franklin

A couple years ago my daughter was in a summer camp where the kids would learn about someone historical and then reenact their life. I’m sure I watched many a fine skit at that time, but the only one I can actually recall is the one my daughter performed of Rosalind Franklin. It wasn’t the most accurate representation of her life, but it was thoroughly enjoyable. Essentially, it mostly consisted of kids pretending to be Crick and Watson, stealing Rosalind’s work over and over again. And if we’d had a picture book biography about her I could have showed my daughter where the truth intersected with her tale.

And yes, of course there’s a Hark, A Vagrant about her:

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Buffy Sainte-Marie

Kind of an interesting choice since Buffy has been creating picture books of her own these days (did you see her stunning Still This Love Goes On?). Of course I’ve been watching this Piapot Cree Nation singer-songwriter since she was on Sesame Street back in the day. Seems to me that if we can have picture book bios of folks like Taylor Swift and Dolly Parton then we can doggone have some about Buffy. I mean, her personal story is wrenching at times.

Here’s Buffy discussing the sequence where she breastfed on Sesame Street.

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Mary Seacole

Okay, there actually was a perfectly nice Mary Seacole picture book bio out a couple years ago (Mary Seacole: Bound for the Battlefield by Susan Goldman Rubin) but I think the world deserves to have multiple Seacole bios. Not just a single solitary one. I’ve a need for more picture book bios of folks from Jamaica on my shelves too, and that’s where Mary comes in. She was amazingly brave AND Florence Nightingale did not like her one bit, so that’s a bit of interesting complexity an author could work in as well.

As seen in the following Hark, a Vagrant:

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Sonia Manzano

Yeah, I’m just pulling out all my favorite Sesame Street performers now. So sue. Sonia, like the aforementioned Buffy, has quite a few children’s books of her own under her belt, as well as an actual honest-to-goodness memoir called Becoming Maria. That said, I want to see her story in picture book form. Show her on Broadway! Show her interacting with Muppets! There’s a lot to chew on here, and if she wants to do it herself, that is a-okay too.

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Babe Didrikson Zaharias

GOAT of the past? You be the judge. I heard about Babe thanks to (of all things) Drunk History and I’ve never forgotten her story. You name the sport and this woman conquered it. Golf, basketball, baseball, track and field, the works! She may also have been a great diver, roller-skater, and bowler too, by the way. To this day she’s the world record holder for the farthest baseball thrown by a woman. And darn it, we need some sportsy women on this list.

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Come on. I know you have some of your own. If you could see a picture book biography created of anyone at all, who would it be?

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