African Queens: Incredible stories of Africa’s Legendary Women Leaders

About this book

A fantastic illustrated factual book looking at the lives and achievements of 12 African women leaders. As the author and illustrator Onyinye Iwu writes in her introduction, at school we may learn about ancient Egypt, African American history, slavery and the civil rights movement but what about what was going on in Africa itself? This is a great introduction to a rich history through the lives of 12 African Queens across 2000 years. Female leaders who won battles against Roman legions, made peace and ruled their nationals wisely and long. 

 The book moves forward in time, and each leader gets a highly illustrated double page with a great, easy to read summary of their reign and lots of inviting pictures. We start with Queen Hatshepsut, the Pharaoh Queen, probably one of the most well-known leaders in the book, famed for trading rather than warring in making Egypt very rich. We find out about  

Queen Amanirenas who took on the Romans and won! And Queen Arawelo who is called the ‘feminist queen’ – she asked wives to stop doing housework and childcare in 15CE, basically to go on strike, so men could appreciate the work they did. It’s a fascinating, thought-provoking, easy-to-read book that can be read in bite sized chunks. Recommended for primary school and classroom libraries as well as family bookshelves.