Shana Corey

Katie Casey, a fictional character, helps start the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which gave women the opportunity to play professional baseball while America was involved in World War II.

Amelia Bloomer, who does not behave the way nineteenth-century society tells her a proper lady should, introduces pantaloons to American women to save them from the discomfort of their heavy, tight dresses.

In very clear and accessible language, newly independent readers can learn how the lessons and love of Obama's mother and grandparents shaped him, and how he turned his sadness from his childhood into a positive, driving force of finding a place in the world and in the history books.