12 stories for grades 3 and up spotlight Queen Hatshepsut, Josephine Baker, Mary Shelley, and more remarkable women.

Historian Rebecca Hall begins and ends her graphic novel Wake (S. & S., 2021) with a revolt on an 18th-century slave ship. In between those two points, much of the book is set in the present day, with Hall as the lead character, searching through archives and legal records to uncover the role that women played in leading uprisings of enslaved people.

Graphic novels like Hall’s are a powerful tool for restoring women to their rightful place in history and uplifting the voices and deeds of women who have been forgotten, ignored, or deliberately suppressed. The visual medium allows creators to vividly depict their subjects and their surroundings, providing at a glance what a prose book would take paragraphs to describe. Freed of the necessity to literally spell everything out, graphic novelists can focus on the most compelling aspect of these women: their stories.

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