Little Mavericks

A thirteen-year-old stands at the top of a giant Olympic ramp, about to drop in. Meet Sky Brown: a kid who taught herself to skate, came back from a frightening fall, and won an Olympic medal at thirteen. The big idea: everybody falls, and that part is not the scary part. The brave part is getting back up. A true story for curious kids, ages 6 and up. Part of Little Mavericks.

Could a person ever really fly? Two brothers who fixed bicycles for a living decided to find out. Meet Wilbur and Orville Wright: the bicycle-shop brothers who asked a smarter question than everyone else and made the first flight in history. The big idea: ask a better question, then test and fail and fix until it flies. A true story for curious kids, ages 6 and up. Part of Little Mavericks.

One woman kneels in the dry, cracked dirt and plants a single tiny tree. Meet Wangari Maathai: a Kenyan scientist who answered a whole country losing its forests by teaching village women to plant trees, one at a time, until there were more than forty million. The big idea: you don't have to fix the whole forest by yourself, you just have to plant your one tree. Be the hummingbird. A true story fo...

High on a tower of scrap metal, a fourteen-year-old touches two wires together and pulls electricity out of the wind. Meet William Kamkwamba: a boy in Malawi who taught himself from library books to build a windmill out of junk and light up his village. The big idea: you don't need money or permission, just a question you can't stop asking and the nerve to build. A true story for curious kids, age...

With the whole world watching, an astronaut refuses to fly until one woman checks the math by hand. Meet Katherine Johnson: the girl who counted everything and grew up to do the math that sent astronauts around the Earth and all the way to the Moon. The big idea: stay curious, and get so good at what you love that they cannot do it without you. A true story for curious kids, ages 6 and up. Part of...

A Lego brick made today still snaps perfectly onto one made more than sixty years ago. Meet Ole Kirk Christiansen: a Danish carpenter who lost his workshop to fire more than once, and lived by one rule, only the best is good enough. The big idea: care enough to make a thing exactly right, and what you build can last for lifetimes. A true story for curious kids, ages 6 and up. Part of Little Maveri...

With the whole world watching and gold on the line, the greatest gymnast alive chooses to stop. Meet Simone Biles: the tiny girl from a hard start who became the most decorated gymnast in history, and showed the world a braver kind of strong. The big idea: sometimes the bravest thing is to stop and take care of yourself. A true story for curious kids, ages 6 and up. Part of Little Mavericks.

A young man is fired from a newspaper for "having no imagination." Meet Walt Disney: the boy who delivered papers in the freezing dark and grew up to gamble everything on a mouse, on sound, and on the first full-length cartoon the world had ever seen. The big idea: imagination, plus the courage to keep going, can outlast you for a hundred years. A true story for curious kids, ages 6 and up. Part o...

A girl your age, alone on a storm-lashed cliff with a small hammer, starts digging a monster out of the rock. Meet Mary Anning: a poor girl in seaside England who taught herself to read the cliffs, pulled giant sea-dragons out of the stone, and helped prove there was a whole lost ancient world. The big idea: you do not have to be rich, or grown up, or anybody's favorite to discover something true....

It's the middle of the night, and a young man has just finished building his very first car, only to find it's too big to fit through the door of his workshop. Meet Henry Ford, a farm boy obsessed with machines who didn't invent the car but figured out how to build one that almost everyone could afford. The big idea: a giant job becomes possible when you break it into small, simple steps. And an i...

Off the coast of Portugal, a wall of water taller than a building comes roaring in, and instead of running, she rides it. Meet Justine Dupont, a girl from the French coast who became one of the best big-wave surfers in the world, in a sport almost everyone said wasn't for women. The big idea: courage isn't the absence of fear. It's the preparation that lets you act anyway. A true story for curious...