PPBF – Grace Lee Boggs: Gardens of Hope

It’s Women’s History Month. A perfect time to share a new Perfect Picture Book about a brave woman who worked to make our world better.

Title: Grace Lee Boggs: Gardens of Hope

Written By: Songju Ma Daemicke

Illustrated By: Lin

Publisher/Date: Albert Whitman & Company/2025

Suitable for Ages: 4-8, and older

Themes/Topics: discrimination, social activism, women’s history, biography, Chinese Americans, teachers, books, gardening

Opening:

Grace could hardly believe it when her teacher gave her a book – to keep! Grace was eight years old and had never owned a book.

Brief Synopsis: The biography of Grace Lee Boggs

Links to Resources:

·      Has anyone ever given you a book? How did you feel? What did you most enjoy about that book? How did it inspire you?

·      Check out the back matter for a time line of Grace’s life, an Author’s Note, and some inspiring quotes by Grace Lee Boggs;

·      Discover some ideas for gardening with kids.

Why I Like this Book:

Grace Lee Boggs: Gardens of Hope is the biography of a fascinating woman who grew up in an era when Chinese Americans faced discrimination, who was active in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and who helped beautify downtown Detroit and jumpstart community change after the demise of the auto industry there. Like a thread, Grace’s love of gardens ties these seemingly disparate parts of her life together.

One of the things I love most about this biography is its beginning. A teacher gifts young Grace a book. But not just any book; she gifts The Secret Garden, in which a lonely girl, with help from a cousin and friend, tends an abandoned garden and brings it back to life. This desire to create and nurture a garden, to use nature to help people and to better the world never leaves Grace, as readers learn. What an impactful gift! And what a nod to the role of teachers in encouraging young people.

Even those who have studied the civil rights movement of the 1960s may be surprised to learn that a woman of Chinese descent was active in that movement. Readers learn that Grace met Malcolm X and helped organize the 1963 Detroit Walk to Freedom where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “gave an early version of his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.”

And while many people might have been content to focus solely on civil rights, years later Grace and her husband Jimmy nurtured youth leadership to revitalize Detroit. And what did Grace and those youth do? Plant gardens, of course!

Lin’s colorful illustrations show how Grace and the young “solutionaries” physically changed Detroit for themselves and future generations.

Whether read at home or in classrooms, I heartily recommend Grace Lee Boggs: Gardens of Hope to learn more about this courageous woman and to inspire social activism.

A Note about Craft:

Much of Grace Lee Boggs: Gardens of Hope occurs when Grace is an adult. So how does Daemicke make this story kid-friendly and kid-relatable? She begins Grace’s story not at birth but on a day when Grace was eight years old and received her first book. Kids certainly can relate to that and will be keen to discover how that gift influenced Grace’s future passions and work.

This Perfect Picture Book entry is being added to Susanna Hill’s Perfect Picture Book list. Check out the other great picture books featured there!