What To Do About Alice?, Anne Hutchinson’s Way and Marie Curie highlight women’s achievements and are good books for kids, especially during Women’s History Month.

Women have been making history in one way or another as long as men have, but for many years school lessons and books focused mostly on men. Fortunately for children and teens today, many appealing books chronicle women in the past, making them perfect for Women’s History Month.

While a woman has yet to serve as president, women and children have occupied parts of the White House. What To Do About Alice? by Barbara Kerley introduces Teddy Roosevelt’s oldest daughter. The book’s subtitle sets the tone: How Alice Roosevelt Broke the Rules, Charmed the World, and Drove Her Father Teddy Crazy! Sweeping, humorous pictures by Edwin Fotheringham convey Alice’s boundless energy and curiosity, showing her sliding down stairs in the White House and traveling the world. Anyone who thinks females were sedate in the past needs to meet Alice Roosevelt.

Going further back in time, Dolley Madison Saves George Washington by Don Brown also combines delightful pictures with a well-told story. During the War of 1812, First Lady Dolley Madison helped save a large portrait of George Washington painted by Rhode Islander Gilbert Stuart. Soon after, the British burned the President’s Mansion, which was replaced by the building known as the White House. This is only one of Brown’s many wonderful books, illustrated with droll watercolors, about women in history. Ruth Law Thrills a Nation tells of a woman who broke a national flying record in 1916, while Alice Ramsey’s Grand Adventure is about the third person to drive across the U.S. in the early days of cars.

Before there was a White House or even a United States, Anne Hutchinson made history here in New England. Anne Hutchinson’s Way by Jeannine Atkins fictionalizes Hutchinson’s story, putting some of the focus on one of her daughters, but follows closely to the facts. Hutchinson and her husband came from England in 1634 to join the Massachusetts Bay Colony, seeking freedom of religion. But when she started to preach in her own home, Hutchinson was banished by the men who ruled the colony. She and her family moved to Rhode Island for some years, then New York. Handsome, aptly subdued paintings by Michael Dooling give readers a sense of the time and place, showing a daily life filled with hard work and difficulties.

What might these three have accomplished if they’d had the same opportunities as men — Alice Roosevelt with her great energy, Dolley Madison with her charm and courage, Anne Hutchinson with her powerful preaching and beliefs? Only unusual circumstances and personality could overcome the barriers women once faced. One such extraordinary woman who outshone even her male counterparts is the subject of Marie Curie by Kathleen Krull. Readers in upper elementary and middle school will enjoy the fascinating details, occasional black-and-white pictures, and amazing story of a scientist who won the Nobel Prize in two categories.

Another biography for the same age group, She Touched the World: Laura Bridgman, Deaf-Blind Pioneer, offers a much different but equally impressive story, this one about a New Englander. Years before Helen Keller lived, Laura Bridgman learned to read and write despite her near total blindness and deafness. Bridgman frequently appeared on stage with her teacher, Samuel Howe, to demonstrate her abilities and became “the biggest tourist attraction in Boston in 1841, 1842 and 1843.” In the final chapter of this fine biography, one of the authors, Sally Hobart Alexander, describes her own life as someone who’s blind and deaf, contrasting modern advantages to Bridgman’s situation.

Most people today are more likely to know about Helen Keller than Laura Bridgman. Bridgman, in fact, taught Keller’s teacher Annie Sullivan to fingerspell, the method of spelling words into the hand that Sullivan used with Keller. Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller by Sarah Elizabeth Miller fictionalizes the first few weeks after Sullivan traveled from Massachusetts to Alabama to teach the incorrigible deaf and blind 6-year-old. This novel for teens vividly portrays the frustrations of teacher and student, and the stunning breakthrough moment when Helen started to understand words.

For some teens, novels like Miss Spitfire teach them as much about history as textbooks do, or more. Red Moon at Sharpsburg by Rosemary Wells transports readers to Civil War Virginia, involving them in the life of India Moody, the daughter of a harness maker. When the war closes the local school, India studies with a neighbor who’s a college student. The adolescent girl proves to have a brilliant aptitude for science but, between the restrictions on women and the devastation of the war, her chances of pursuing studies seem remote. The end holds out hope, but no certainty, that she might attend Oberlin College, the first college to confer degrees upon women.

These books certainly offer readers, both male and female, possible role models and qualities to emulate. But, at least as important, they offer well-written stories about remarkable girls and women that are a pleasure to read.