The Best Books About Famous People for Kids

A boy wonders what it would feel like to ride beside a beam of light, then spends a lifetime following the question.

A farm boy who loved drawing builds a cartoon studio, creates Mickey Mouse, and keeps expanding the size of the screen.

Before the chimpanzees of Gombe came a backyard, a notebook, and a girl who never stopped watching.

When illness makes painting difficult, Henri Matisse picks up scissors and invents a new way to make color move.

A poor boy fascinated by locks and magic remakes himself as Harry Houdini, the escape artist nobody can keep contained.

A girl who wanted adventure becomes the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic.

A child trained in acrobatics, martial arts, and theater grows into the stunt performer who made action movies funny.

A small-town boy becomes a Marine pilot, circles Earth, walks into the Senate, and returns to space at seventy-seven.

A boy who sees inventions in flashes of light grows up to build motors, coils, and an entirely new electrical system.

A child survives wartime hardship, studies ballet, becomes a film star, and spends her later years helping children.

Lew Alcindor grows from a shy, extraordinarily tall child into Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and one of basketball’s defining players.

A soccer-obsessed London boy practices his way from neighborhood fields to Manchester United, Real Madrid, and England’s national team.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s own words run through a life shaped by segregation, protest, and an insistence on being heard.

Ten scientists and one memorable idea apiece, packed into a sturdy first book for curious preschoolers.

A West Point graduate becomes a fighter pilot, an astronaut, and the second human being to walk on the Moon.