09/06/2026
Education is crucial to our continued growth. Here is additional info from the UUA that may interest you.
https://www.uua.org/lifespan/curricula/ethics/workshop7/191955.shtml
A Mighty Girl's Pick of the Day is in honor of Jane Addams' birthday: "The House That Jane Built" by Tanya Lee Stone. As a young girl, walking with her father through a poor neighborhood near her family's flour mill in rural Illinois, Jane Addams looked at the tumbledown houses around them and told him that when she grew up, she would live in a big house right in the middle of a place like this so she could help. Jane grew up and remembered her promise.
In 1888 she traveled to London and visited a house called Toynbee Hall, where educated young men had chosen to move into a poor neighborhood and offer their neighbors classes, meals, and a place to gather. A year later, she came home to Chicago and did the same thing: she rented a run-down mansion called Hull House in one of the roughest, poorest neighborhoods in the city, moved in, and got to work.
The neighborhood was home to thousands of newly arrived immigrants -- Italian, Greek, Russian, Czech, and Irish -- and Hull House became a place where they could find work, learn English, and build community together. By 1907, Hull House had grown to thirteen buildings, offering the neighborhood one of the country's first public playgrounds, a kindergarten, a public bath, after-school programs, evening classes, and job placement help. By the 1920s, nine thousand people passed through its doors every week.
Author Tanya Lee Stone and illustrator Kathryn Brown, whose warm watercolor and pen-and-ink illustrations bring turn-of-the-century Chicago to gentle life, tell the story of a young woman who saw need and answered it -- and who went on to become the first American woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a founding member of both the NAACP and the ACLU, and one of the most important social reformers in American history. Highly recommended for ages 6 to 9.
"The House That Jane Built" is available at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9780805090499 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/3TgcoAA (Amazon)
For tweens and teens, Jane Addams is one of the courageous changemakers profiled in "She Did It! 21 Women Who Changed the Way We Think" for ages 10 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/she-did-it) and in "She Takes A Stand: 16 Fearless Activists Who Have Changed the World" for ages 12 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/she-takes-a-stand)
Adult readers can experience Addams's story in her own words in her 1910 classic about the founding and early years of Hull House, "Twenty Years at Hull-House," available at http://amzn.to/1wcTHrG
Two excellent adult biographies bring her fuller story to life: Louise Knight's introductory portrait, "Jane Addams: Spirit in Action" (https://www.amightygirl.com/jane-addams-spirit-in-action), and her earlier, more scholarly work, "Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy" (https://www.amightygirl.com/citizen)
To inspire children and teens with more stories of real-life girls and women who fought for change and stood up for justice, visit our blog post, "50 Books About Women Who Fought for Change," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=14364
