In the 1840s, Elizabeth Blackwell decided to become a physician after an ailing female friend confided that she wished she could have been examined by a woman doctor. Tanya Lee Stone’s Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors?: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell (illustrated by Marjorie Priceman; Holt, 2013) reminds us that this was unheard of at the time. Shocking! Horrifying! What was she thinking? Blackwell applied to medical schools and was summarily turned down by 28 of them. She was accepted by her 29th choice—the medical school in Geneva, New York. When Blackwell arrived for classes, she learned that her acceptance had been voted on by the male students, who thought the whole thing was a joke.

But Blackwell toughed it out. Eventually, she graduated at the top of her class, but still had to land a job, which proved just as difficult as getting into medical school. As Stone says, “Being a doctor was definitely not an option [for women]. What do you think changed all that?” Blackwell did, of course. Although intended for elementary school readers, you can also share this simple book with high school students who will be shocked by the obstacles that Blackwell had to face. Also, tell them that today more than half of all medical students are women.

Women had to be plain, strong, and unmarried to serve as nurses in the Civil War, Kathleen Krull tells readers in Louisa May’s Battle: How the Civil War Led to Little Women (illustrated by Carlyn Beccia; Walker, 2013). Thirty-year-old Alcott met those requirements. However, up until that moment, she had not succeeded at fulfilling her own prophecy, written at age 15: “I shall be rich and famous and happy before I die, see if I won’t!” An abolitionist, Louisa traveled to Washington, DC, to work in a hospital, tending to the Union soldiers who suffered horrible wounds and disfigurements. The experience lasted only a few weeks, but it changed her life forever. Alcott caught typhoid in the filthy hospital and was sent home to recover.

The future novelist continued to reflect on that period of her life, writing about it in her letters and her journals. She realized she could use that experience in her fiction writing as well. The first volume of Alcott’s Little Women, one of the first novels set during the Civil War, was published in 1868 and became a huge hit. “By the time Louisa was thirty-six, it made all of her dreams come true!” And by the time she died, the woman who had lived in poverty for most of her life was making the modern equivalent of $2 million a year.

Clara Lemlich couldn’t even speak English, let alone write it, when she arrived in America from Ukraine. Michelle Markel’s Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909 (pictures by Melissa Sweet; HarperCollins, 2013) tells the ultimately joyful story about the tiny immigrant who attended school at night, earned meager wages, and worked under ghastly conditions in a garment factory. Determined to change it all, Lemlich led a huge walkout of women workers, inciting them in her native Yiddish. While her male colleagues were afraid to follow suit, the young champion urged a general strike, which eventually enabled many workers to unionize.

When discussing these biographies, I urge my booktalk audience to do what I do when something intrigues me: dig in, investigate, and find out more. I discovered that Blackwell wrote about the various men she met. Lemlich lived a long life as a union activist, and when she entered the Jewish Home for the Aged in the 1960s, she encouraged the workers to organize. Although these informational books were written for younger children, they will pique the interest of readers of all ages.

The experiences of a free New Yorker are told in Judith and Dennis Fradin’s Stolen into Slavery: The True Story of Solomon Northrup, Free Black Man (National Geographic, 2012). In 1841, Northrup, a resident of Saratoga Springs, New York, and a fine fiddler, was lured by a couple of con men to New York City with the promise of performing with a circus. Once he arrived, Northrup was drugged and sold into slavery and his name was changed by his Louisiana owners. All evidence that he was free vanished. He was methodically beaten and threatened to never tell anyone his story or reveal that he was literate.

His nightmare lasted 12 years. Northrup eventually found someone he trusted enough to take a letter back to Saratoga Springs. After several months, two white men who knew him went to Louisiana and brought him back home. Show your booktalk listeners the photograph of Northrup’s descendants celebrating his life. They’ll feel like celebrating, too!

In Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad (Holiday House, 2013), David A. Adler isn’t content with simply focusing on the most famous escape artist of all. He introduces those who joined Tubman in one of the 13 death-defying exoduses she led from the slave states. Among the escapees was Peter Still, who crossed the Ohio River, asked locals for help, and was directed to an abolitionist society. The man to whom Still told his story realized that they were brothers—and took him to see their mother, whom he hadn’t seen in decades.

Adler outlines the horrors of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which made it possible for Americans born free to be sold into slavery. These individuals were not allowed to testify on their own behalf in a court of law. The judges who made these decisions were paid $10 to declare the person a slave and $5 to declare someone free. Ask your booktalk audience how they think a judge would rule. In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled that no African American descended from a slave could ever become a citizen and that Congress could not exclude slavery from any of its territories. This decision turned many disinterested people into abolitionists.

The Price of Freedom: How One Town Stood Up to Slavery (Walker, 2013), also by Judith and Dennis Fradin, introduces John Price, a slave who fled to Oberlin, Ohio, in 1856. The citizens of Oberlin believed that there was a higher law than the Fugitive Slave Act—the law of right and wrong. When Price was recaptured by a slave hunter, word spread quickly. Townsfolk, farmers, former slaves, and businessmen gathered to demand his release. He was freed and they put him on a train bound for Canada, where slavery was illegal. His rescuers then waited calmly for the laws at home to catch up with them. The town subsequently passed a new law: “No fugitive slave shall ever be taken from Oberlin either with or without a warrant, if we have the power to prevent it.” The two-page photograph of Price’s rescuers (some in danger of being returned to slavery) in the courtyard of the Cuyahoga County Jail will have a powerful effect on readers, and Eric Velasquez’s stunning, full-color illustrations will be remembered for a long time.

Civil rights and responsibilities are topics that young readers often hear adults debating. Offer these books to children in the fourth grade and above so they, too, can discuss these issues and develop a sense of pride in our country’s history.

Cozy, cuddly, cute—yes, I’m talking about bears. Penguins may be popular, but bears are perennial. And K–4 readers can virtually cuddle away when they stare at the bruins in these colorful books.

Lia Kvatum’ s Saving Yasha: The Incredible True Story of an Adopted Moon Bear (National Geographic, 2012) introduces us to a cub whose mother was killed by hunters in eastern Russia. A group of scientists rescued Yasha and two black bear cubs, and then spent two years teaching them how to live in the wild, replicating what their mothers would have done. The cubs began in a specially built house and then slowly ventured out to explore and climb in the surrounding woods. The scientists wore special clothes that covered up their smell. They didn’t interact with the cubs, but made plenty of notes. Their goal was to integrate them fully into the wild, not make them comfortable around human beings. Show your booktalk listeners the photos of Yasha and her playmates romping. Irresistible!

When the baby bears in Suzi Eszterhas’s Brown Bear (Frances Lincoln, 2012) are born in Alaska in the dead of winter, it’s so cold they don’t leave their den until spring. They need two straight years being cared for and taught by their mother, who never leaves their side. The games they play teach them basic survival skills, most excitingly how to fish. At first, the mom has to fish for her entire family. Catching your dinner in the water is tricky.

Eszterhas’s book explores the full growing cycle of the bears. When the cubs are two and a half, their mother leaves—and in another 12 months, they separate from each other. Looking at the great photo of the two nearly fully grown bears fighting, it’s hard to believe it’s only make-believe.

Although pandas aren’t considered “true” bears by biologists, young readers, as well as adults, think of them as members of the same family. Joanne Ryder’s Panda Kindergarten (HarperCollins, 2009) and Sandra Markle’s How Many Baby Pandas? (Walker, 2009) open windows on the lives of panda cubs growing up in Wolong Nature Preserve in south-central China. A peculiar panda problem: the mothers can take care of only one cub at a time. Usually, when twins are born, one will die, but not at this special nature center. The mom’s cub is switched every week, so each cub gets the attention it needs. When the pandas are old enough to be separated from their mothers, they go to panda kindergarten. Ask your booktalk audience if that sounds like a fun class to attend.

Did you know that almost no one in North America had ever seen a panda until 80 years ago? The creatures were considered legends like the Loch Ness monster. But William Harkness, an American millionaire, decided to head to China and find out for himself. Unfortunately, he died early in the expedition in Shanghai, but his wife, Ruth, carried on his mission. Alicia Potter’s Mrs. Harkness and the Panda (Knopf, 2012), with beautiful pastel illustrations by Melissa Sweet, describes the journey the American fashion designer took up the Yangtze River to find a panda.

On the surface, Ruth didn’t seem the adventurous type, but she had astonishing luck. She found a healthy baby panda and brought it back to Illinois. Apparently, she never worried about the baby’s poor mother, or how it would survive. She named the cub Su Lin, which means “a little bit of something very cute” in Chinese.

Su Lin lived only a year and a half. Afterward, she was stuffed and placed in the Field Museum of Chicago, where tourists still flock to visit her. Su Lin’s story is a great topic of discussion for your audience. Every zoo wants a panda. People love to see them. Ask if it’s right to move pandas away from their native home, away from their families, so we can “ooh” and “aah” over them. All of these insightful books are fine choices to implement the Common Core. And as a friend of mine said, these books are so cute they make your teeth hurt!

Lee R. Berger and Marc Aronson’s The Skull in the Rock: How a Scientist, a Boy, and Google Earth Opened a New Window on Human Origins (National Geographic, 2012) opens with the discovery of an ancient shoulder bone of a nine-year-old male. That bone led scientists to the nearly complete skeleton of a creature older than any previously found, and possibly an ancestor of modern man. Not Early Man, but Early Boy! Berger had been scouring South Africa for years, but his insight that Google Earth could help him identify sites of ancient caves proved to be a startling technological leap.

Even more startling was his Sherlock Holmes-like deduction that another early child skeleton he had studied had probably been killed by an eagle. Show your audience the pictures on pages 28–29. Would they have come to the same conclusion as Berger?

Thousands of years ago, two young men wading in the Columbia River near Kennewick, WA, made their own discovery that caused one of them to smile. He saw a skull-shaped rock and picked it up to play a trick on his friend. Then he realized it was a real skull! Sally M. Walker and Douglas W. Owsley’s Their Skeletons Speak: Kennewick Man and the Paleoamerican World (Carolrhoda, 2012) details how this single object created a rippling effect of problems. Native Americans claimed the 9,000-year-old skull as an ancestor, while scientists wanted to keep it for further study.

The scientists won some time, but then they learned something that no one had expected. The skull didn’t belong to any Native American group. So where was it from? As the authors introduce us to other prehistoric American skeletons, we learn how hard the lives of ancient people were. Imagine having your teeth worn down to the gum line. How useless they must have been and how much they must have ached.

James M. Deem’s Faces from the Past: Forgotten People of North America (Houghton, 2012) not only describes faces from thousands of years ago to the early 1900s, but also tells us exactly how the artful science of facial reconstructions is performed, with work-in-progress examples. To a face fanatic like me, this book is a visual feast.

What do we learn from the skulls of soldiers whose bodies were left to rot on the battlefield of San Jacinto in 1836 Texas? And who even thought to collect them? It was bird-lover John James Audubon who picked up four of them as a gift for a collector friend in Philadelphia. Who knew there were skull collectors? Yuck.

Deem reconstructs the lives of those buried in the Almshouse Cemetery in Albany County, NY. The poorest of the poor are buried with convicts from the nearby penitentiary and drowning victims retrieved from the Hudson River. Poor as they may have been, life in the Almshouse was an improvement—the skimpy food, horrible living conditions, and lack of stimulating activities were better than starving to death or living without shelter. The riveting facial reconstructions reveal their lost lives: bad teeth often led to death, a common revelation of many ancient skulls. Maybe we aren’t grateful enough for modern dentistry!

Stare at the face of a French sailor from 1686, or of a Buffalo Soldier, a Chinese miner, or a lost Monacan Indian. The stories go on and on. And they can all be seen in people’s faces. Without saying a word, these skulls and skeletons tell us much about ourselves. Ask your booktalk audience, What does your face say about you?

Stare into these books. You might just find yourself staring back.

Start with Beverly Gherman’s First Mothers (Clarion, 2012), a catalog of powerful women who had powerful influence. Abigail Smith Adams, the wife of John and the mother of John Quincy, urged her husband in a letter to “Remember the Ladies… Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.” She was always willing to tell both of them what to do. Even after her son Lyndon became president, Rebekah Baines Johnson edited his speeches and reminded him to stand up straight. George H. W. Bush’s mother, Dorothy Walker Bush, was a great athlete. She disliked braggers, and she always told her children to remember how lucky they were.

Other First Mothers had traits they passed on to their famous sons. Ida Stover Eisenhower had brilliant organizing talents, which her son Dwight, the future general and commander-in-chief, inherited. Susanna Boylston Adams had a terrible temper—a flaw her son John shared. Abe Lincoln had two strong mothers: Nancy, his biological mother, who loved to wrestle and insisted he go to school, and Sarah Bush Johnston, his stepmother, who had a house full of books and a great sense of humor. The opinionated Sara Delano Roosevelt scolded her son, Franklin, for not letting her meet Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, who was fighting the Nazis. She wanted to tell Churchill how to run the war. Like mother, like son.

Joe Rhatigan’s White House Kids: The Perks, Pleasures, Problems, and Pratfalls of the President’s Children(2012) points out the pros and cons of being an offspring in the most famous house in America. The downsides include a lack of privacy, extremely busy parents, and the possibility of doing something embarrassing that could end up in the media. The upsides? You get to travel in Air Force One with your dad. Your new home has a movie theater, a basketball court, a bowling alley, a swimming pool, and a tennis court.

Some First Kids had personalities as remarkable as their fathers’. Abraham Lincoln’s boy Tad set up a table and sold refreshments to visitors by the White House entrance. Gerald Ford’s daughter, Susan, held her high school prom in the East Room. Ulysses Grant asked his son Jesse why he often showed up late for breakfast. “When I was your age, I had to get up, feed four or five horses, cut wood for the family, take breakfast, and be off to school by eight o’clock,” the president said. Jesse smiled at his father and replied, “Oh, yes, but you did not have such a papa as I have.” And then there was Alice, Teddy Roosevelt’s beautiful daughter. She attended formal dinners with her pet snake, Emily Spinach, wrapped around her arm.

Emily Spinach wasn’t the only unusual pet that lived on Pennsylvania Avenue, according to Julie Moberg’s Presidential Pets: The Weird, Wacky, Little, Big, Scary, Strange Animals That Have Lived in the White House (2012, both Charlesbridge/Imagine!). Lewis and Clark sent two grizzly bear cubs to Thomas Jefferson, who sometimes walked them on leashes on the lawn. John Quincy Adams kept an alligator in the East Room bathtub for two months.

Andrew Jackson owned a parrot that swore at his guests. The people of Bangkok gave Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes the first Siamese cat in America. William Taft kept a cow because he liked to drink lots of fresh milk, and Calvin Coolidge had a pet raccoon. Imagine the conversations this title will spark among your booktalk audience.

People have always been fascinated by how the heavily guarded White House residents really lived. Here’s a chance to do some snooping. And in a busy election year, these three books, perfect for fourth through eighth graders, will add a welcome human touch to your discussions.