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African Icons: Ten People Who Shaped History

Meet ten real-life kings, queens, inventors, scholars, and visionaries who lived in Africa thousands of years ago and changed the world.

Black history is a rich and thrilling collection of stories that begins thousands of years ago with the many cultures and people of the African continent. Through portraits of ten heroic figures, bestselling author Tracey Baptiste takes readers on a journey across Africa to meet some of the great leaders and thinkers whose vision built a continent and shaped the world.

Kirkus

“What Baptiste accomplishes in only 139 pages of narrative is near miraculous....Refreshingly free of generalizations, this impressively researched work was clearly a massive undertaking (as evidenced by the source notes)...The result is empowering, necessary, and required reading for all. Game changing.” — starred review

Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist

“In African Icons, Baptiste engages in the hard work of unveiling the myths about the African continent to young readers . . . This is a great beginner’s guide to pre-colonial Africa.”

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Awards

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Eureka! Non-Fiction Children's Book Award

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New York Public Library Best Book

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School Library Journal Star

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Publisher's Weekly Star

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Kirkus Star
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