African Icons

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

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.

– Menes: Creator of Dynasties
– Merneith: A Queen Erased
– Imhotep: From Peasant to God
– Aesop: The Wisest Man in the Ancient World
– Hannibal Barca: Unparalleled Military Strategist
– Terence: North African Playwright
– Amanirenas: Warrior, Diplomat, Queen
– Tin Hinan: Founding a City on the Dunes
– Mansa Musa: The Richest Man of All Time
– Queen Idia: Kingmaker

Illustrator Hillary D. Wilson’s brilliant portraits accompany each profile, along with vivid, information-filled landscapes, maps, and graphics for readers to pore over and return to again and again. Both an empowering and energetic read and an essential correction to Eurocentric telling’s of history, African Icons will enthral readers of all ages.