Rebel Girls is a global brand dedicated to inspiring girls all over the world. Rebel Girls publishes a collection of illustrated awesomesauce stories of what I call: Women We Should Know. They feature creative trailblazing women and girls; perfect for children and young adults, especially of color. The latest release is about the talented Madam C.J. Walker. If you don't know about this great black wonder woman, then get settled and read further.

Madam C.J. Walker Builds a Business is just over 100 pages long but very informative. Born Sarah Breedlove in 1867, she was the first member of her family not born into slavery and to go to school. Although being a schoolgirl was short-lived, she still dreamed of possibility. Sarah lost loved ones, worked hard at multiple jobs, became a young widow and struggled with her own hair growth but never gave up the dream.

This book is perfect for any young reader needing inspiration! A surprise was the equal rights element and mention of other historical figures. The illustrations are colorful, beautiful and detailed down to the hair edges carefully tucked into bonnets. The story moves along clearly into a motivating finish with suggested activities designed to help readers brainstorm an exciting new product. There is no better book for young female entrepreneurs than the story of America's first female self-made millionaire.

Happy Early Pub Day! Madam C.J. Walker Builds a Business will be available Tuesday, January 17, 2023.

Disclaimer: An advance copy was received directly from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Opinions are my own and would be the same if I spent my hard-earned coins. ~LiteraryMarie

Just because this has been rebranded, my thoughts would not have changed in two years:-

A heavily fictionalised biography of a woman who made it big from the scurfy hair of her black compatriots in Victorian-era USA. (That's not to say it features anything that's untrue, but the everyday actions and dialogue are right out the novel genre.) It's a reasonable book, but felt rather long for me – the original Rebel Girls compilations had a lot more brevity, and while this is admittedly for a young audience, the story featured very little in the way of downswings. Only the woman's old mentor and Booker T Washington's belligerence were negatives in her relentless upward rise. Still, the background of lynching and inherent racism is accurately portrayed for the target reader.

amazing-women, Black-African American-history, businesswoman, feminist, biographical-novel, rebel-girls, woman-entrepreneur, women-in-history, women-of-color, millionaire, *****

Rebel Girls has a new series!
This time it's fictionalized biographies of women who have made a difference and written for a primarily elementary school audience. Madam C.J. Walker was born in a bad time for everyone in the US, especially Black folk and all women. By the time she died in 1919 she had turned a cottage industry into a major business serving the women with special needs hair and the Beauty Culture industry.
The illustrations by Salini Perera are beautiful, delightful, imaginative, and colorful.
Well suited for reading WITH someone of any age including ESL, and great for gifting to anyone, but especially to a school or public library!
I requested and received a free temporary e-book on Adobe Digital Editions from Rebel Girls via NetGalley. Thank you!

We really enjoyed this book. My 10 year old daughter really liked the book. She said that she liked that she worked hard to get a lot, that she was a tough mom who worked hard to get her daughter in school, and that it made history fun. The illustrations in this book are beautiful. I’m always here for a story about a strong woman especially one that is age appropriate for my daughter to read. A way for her to see all that women can amount to.

Madam C.J. Walker was an African American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and political and social activist. Despite the oppression, Walker founded her own haircare company that helped thousands of African American women gain financial independence! She is recorded as the first female self-made millionaire in America! I didn't know about this amazing rebel before reading this book so I found her story very intriguing!

“I want you to understand that your first duty is to humanity. I want others to look at us and see that we care not just about ourselves but about others.”
- Madam C.J. Walker

A really fascinating story of Madam CJ Walker, the first person in her family to not be born a slave. After working in a multilevel marketing hair care business for a hair care product for black hair, she thought she could make her own better formula. She became what is considered the first self-made black millionaire. Her story is incredible and Rebel Girls always gets it right!

Thanks to netgalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

I received an electronic ARC from Rebel Girls through NetGalley.
Rebel Girls has branched into chapter books on historical figures. Readers learn about Sarah Breedlove Walker's early life and follow her through her rise to be one of the first successful Black business women. Her empire for hair care products grew from her determination to rise above poverty and take care of her daughter. Walker's first husband was lynched and left her as a young widow with a baby. Millner addresses this as part of history and part of the lives of so many. This circles back in Walker's later years when she leads campaigns and protests to make lynching illegal.
The historical information is wrapped throughout this story based on her life. I appreciate the encouragement for readers to develop their own ideas at the end of the book along with the shoutout to ifundwomen.com.

Thank you NetGalley and Rebel Girls for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Sarah Breedlove Walker’s story is really interesting.

She managed to open her own business and she’s known as the first famale self-made millionaire! In 1919 her business was worth $600,000 (equal to $6 million today)!

She had lived as a farmer in the cotton fields and then moved on to being a laundress. Her hard life didn't deny her the chance to dream and have ambitions, as she was denied an education.
So she learned to sell and created her own afro hair product that allowed afro hair to grow.

Thanks to this book I learned of this wonderful woman who managed to emerge in a racist and chauvinist society.

Madam C. J. Walker Builds a Business is a simple and easy to red book with amazing art work.

I also recommend it to an adult audience because despite being a middle grade the story is very fascinating and well written.

A very inspiring and important book. Rebel Girls books are very new to me but I am learning such a lot about women I'd never heard of before and loving every one. An uplifting tale of a woman who came from nothing, believed in herself and didn't let anyone stand in her way. Brilliant!

MADAM C.J. WALKER BUILDS A BUSINESS is a thirteen-chapter middle-grade book with some illustrations.

I was aware of Madam Walker before I read this book, but it wasn’t much. I learned a lot more and I was captivated by the book and felt engaged throughout.

The afterword is a good choice since it explained what happened to Madam Walker and how her contributions are still a part of our culture today.

The illustrations were not as pixelated as the ones in the Ada Lovelace chapter book so it was a matter of style/different illustrators.

Like other Rebel Girls books, there are activities in the back and they are tied to a charity/organization with a mission statement similar to what Madam Walker’s work was about.

Thank you to Rebel Girls for pre-approving me for a copy of this book.

Sarah Breedlove, the last child in a large family, was the first born after the end of slavery and the first child to attend school. But her dreams of education end when Louisiana shuts down the school for Black children after just three months. When Sarah’s parents die unexpectedly, she moves in with her sister and unkind brother-in-law.

Despite hardships, Sarah’s hope for a better future stays within her. She marries a kind man, and they have a daughter together. When white men lynch her husband, Moses, Sarah travels north with her toddler and figures out a way to survive by doing laundry.

Finally, when her daughter Lelia goes away to college, Sarah returns to school and learns all about math, reading, and bookkeeping. She also volunteers at an organization dedicated to helping poor Black people, where she discovers her powers of business and fundraising.

When a saleswoman and entrepreneur, Annie Turnbo, knocks on her door offering to sell her a special shampoo, Sarah feels skeptical. But Annie offers to use the product on Sarah right then and there. For the first time, Sarah experiences a product designed for a person like her—a Black woman with kinky hair. Annie’s product eventually heals Sarah’s scalp and produces soft hair.

Sarah joins Annie’s hair-product business and eventually decides to branch out independently. When she moved to Colorado, Sarah spent hundreds of hours perfecting her own hair-care product and creating a business plan to start her own business. Her dreams and hard work eventually come together to help her build a hair-care empire and make her the first Black woman millionaire.

Why I Loved this Book

Along the way, Sarah faces plenty of adversity—from society, an unkind brother-in-law, a former employer, a President of the United States, and even the famous Booker T. Washington. Readers will cheer for Sarah as she keeps her dignity while fighting against injustices. During her short life, Sarah Breedlove Walker does more to uplift Black women than any other individual during her lifetime.

Girls will enjoy the story of a strong woman who uses her talents to help those around her—even if it means rebelling against societal expectations. Bright illustrations keep readers’ attention, and the back of the book contains resources for budding entrepreneurs.

Librarians, teachers, parents, and grandparents will want to add this book to their collections for younger readers.

I had never heard of Madam C.J. Walker (Sarah Breedlove Walker) before reading this book. She begins her life struggling to be educated as an African American woman, but eventually becomes America's first female self-made millionaire through her hair care products. This is a great educational read for children that does acknowledge the discrimination and harm faced by black people. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital advanced copy!

I opened this book last night to do a quick preview, but quickly found myself captivated by the story. This narrative nonfiction text is perfect for our elementary students, blending the elements of story with a well-researched history of an important icon in Black history. The full-color illustrations are lush and perfect for drawing in our students who may be new or reluctant chapter book readers, while the pacing, length, and chapter divisions make this accessible to those just starting to venture into longer texts. Highly recommend, and cannot wait to explore more titles from this line for our library.

I did not know the story of Madam C.J. Walker and I’m so glad that I do now!
She’s such an inspiring woman! Everyone should know this story!

The colours and artwork in this book were amazing!

This one is liberating to start with!!!!

The first few lines will have you so proud of you being a girl or a woman that you are today. The struggles of the women decades ago have been so beautifully portrayed in this short read. There's this story of the first generation of girls attending school for the first time after the abolition of slavery. And no more cotton picking or child labour. Damn, it felt so good to read about it.

But everything ended so soon for this to be true. And the girls were back to work in the fields.
And this is the story of a girl, Sarah, who had learnt to dream and work her way up inspite of all the hardships she had faced ever since she became an orphan at a young age. In between she had perfected a recipe, dreamed of becoming a barber, perfected her craft and became one of the most influential women fighting for the rights of black women. Later she came to be known as Madam C J Walker.

This story is so good. Simple and easy to read. The art work is so beautiful and descriptive of the content. One of the most powerful reads of the year. Highly recommended for the middle grade age group.

Thank you, Rebel Girls, for the advance reading copy.

Can I just say how excited I am for these longer, more developed Rebel Girls chapter books??? This is amazing!!!

This story covers the life of CJ Walker and how she struggled with being an entrepreneur of hair care products while dealing with not only being a woman in the early 1900s but black and facing serious racism.

This book does get heavy and discusses death, lynching, racism, and political views about people's rights. I believe I saw it recommended for middle school age and think that's perfect. Great age for exposure and discussion to take place.

The story chapters are perfect for taking breaks or stopping for discussion. The illustrations are beautiful. I absolutely love the idea behind his line of chapter books! I'll definitely be adding to my daughter's library when she's a bit older.

Madam C.J Walker was another great story from one of the best series that there are out there, Rebel Girls.

I didn't know who Sarah Breedlove was or what she had accomplished. I didn't know her input in black people's fight for equality or how she was the first black woman to become a self-made millionaire.

All this information and many more facts and details were gathered in this cute, short biography.

Definitely it's worth the read

This new Middle Grade series is one that you will definitely need to watch out for! Rebel Girls have come out with a fantastic new set of chapter books about women from the past who stood up for rights, fought for change and made a difference in their communities. These chapter books are about 100 pages long, and include multiple full and part page illustrations per chapter. The text is a really good size and is well spaced. The language used is relatively easy to comprehend and is written in narrative form rather than using non-fiction text features. In a way, these books are somewhere between a picture book biography and an early chapter book historical fiction. Between the pictures and the narrative text it will be much facilitate comprehension and keep readers interested. They are super cool and I can definitely think of Middle Grade (Grades 3-7) students who would love these books! There are also fun activities at the end of the book meant to empower and inspire readers to dig deeper, ask questions and learn more about the ideas in the story.

In Madam C J Walker Builds a Business, readers will learn about a Black woman who was a pioneer in the field of hair care products for women of colour. The first person in her family not born as a slave, Sarah was caught in a world that was slowly changing but still extremely dangerous for people of colour. Still, she worked extremely hard and was able to build an amazing business that would be worth millions in present day currency. She also led the way for new treatments and beliefs about hair care and helped many Black women gain confidence, self esteem and healthy skin and hair! Her legacy lives on both in the hair and beauty industry and in the entrepreneur and business sector as well. Her estate is still supporting new entrepreneurs to this day! I think that girls who want to learn more about People of Colour and human rights advocates from the past will love to learn more about this trailblazer and the challenges she faced as a Black woman in her time period.

I would highly recommend this book to parents and teachers of Middle Grade readers looking for chapter books that feature inspiring women, teach about history and business and focus on human rights. I will definitely be purchasing this series when it is published so that I can add it to my classroom library! Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me the chance to read and review this book!

*Thank you to NetGalley and Rebel Grils for providing me this arc in exchange for an honest review*

"Forget your own path, and make it your truth"

Sarah Breedlove was the first member of her family who hadn't been born in slavery. She was also the first who was going to school. But after only three months Luisiana forbidded black children to go to school. When her parents died, and Sarah was just eight years old, she went to live with her sister's family. She was doing a lot of chores to help her sister. At age fourteen she was working to earn her living. At the age of 20 after she married Moses and had a baby girl named Lelia, she lost Moses. He was killed by white men because sometimes they did that. This book is a masterpiece. It's about C.J. Walker. the first female self-made millionaire. I loved this book. Please, read it. You won't regret it. I promise you!