Rad American History A-Z: Movements and Moments That Demonstrate the Power of the People by Kate Schatz and illustrated by Miriam Klein Stahl (Ten Speed Press, March 3) is a bold, beautifully illustrated, highly readable work that pays tribute—in alphabetical order—to visionaries who have had a profound impact on America over the centuries. Contemporary teens will gain an understanding of how they fit into the American democratic tradition of people working to improve society, as well as finding inspiration for their own activism. The author and illustrator chatted over Zoom from California; the conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

The book takes such an inclusive approach to history.

Miriam Klein Stahl: It’s about making unheard, unknown stories visible through Kate’s writing and my art, for both readers and nonreaders.

Kate Schatz: We wanted to show that change doesn’t happen because of one heroic individual, to give this broader historical context to the work for social justice that we’ve been talking about in our other books.

One of our goals is to make history cool—I say this as a writer, as a passionate reader. For a lot of people, looking at a 400-page history book that’s just dense text is really intimidating. We wanted to take these serious, deep, thoroughly researched histories but make [the book] look like something you’d want to pick up.

One of the best pieces of feedback that we’ve gotten [came from] a Zoom visit to a friend’s class in Richmond, California, of mostly low-income students of color. A teenage boy said “You know, this book was really cool. I actually wanted to read it.” And then a young woman said, “I love this book because I’d never really thought about my family and people like me being part of history.”

MKS: Our best hope for accessibility is that people see themselves and see their stories.

KS: And, on the flip side, that White students—the young people who are used to seeing their stories always reflected in books—see that other people are not just a footnote or a sidebar in the history books, but actually a main part of the story.

It must have been incredibly hard to decide which topics to include.

KS: We really leaned on a lot of other people—a virtual focus group with about 90 historians, high school teachers, and college students. Once Miriam and I narrowed down our list for each letter, we shared with this group to get feedback. We wanted to make sure that we were covering a wide swath of history, but it also really came down to compelling stories.

MKS: The most fraught letter for us was B because there were so many that we felt passionate about. Do we do Black Panthers or Black Lives Matter? I love the Biotic Baking Brigade, the people that throw pies in people’s faces. That was hard to give up because I love that kind of agitprop theater and activists being creative and funny.

KS: In the end, the Black Lives Matter story [is the one] I feel most proud of, both for your art, Miriam, and also that at this particular moment we have the story in there. [We have] R is for Riot Grrl, which I really love, but I do kind of wish that R had been for Reconstruction. I talk about Reconstruction in the voting rights story, but I feel that’s one of the most misunderstood and compelling time periods in American history.

The history of activism is rarely taught, meaning teens may not be aware of some of the continuities.

MKS: The Black Lives Matter illustration is based on that whole idea. When Kate interviewed Alicia Garza, she was adamant about saying they didn’t start a movement, they’re part of a movement. She, as an activist, has really consulted with her elders on the movement and sees herself as an extension of work that’s been done. That was important for us—to acknowledge the people that have come before.

KS: I think that youthful push back and rejection of the old ways are essential. Every generation has done that. This book is our way of offering younger activists historical context without doing the finger wagging of “Well, you think you invented it all!” I love that we have Y is for Youth Climate Movement, but E is for Earth First! It’s quite possible that a lot of young climate activists would have no idea who Judi Bari was and would not know about radical environmental activism in the ’60s and ’70s movement.

The art is so striking and shows a diverse range of people without resorting to the visual shorthand of stereotypes we unfortunately too often see.

KS: I wanted women’s history to be visually exciting and the illustrations to reflect these powerful women. I didn’t want them to be whimsical or children’s book–y.

MKS: Kate and I have talked about not always showing feminists as serious and angry. To try to capture the expressive quality of people and their personalities means sometimes I have to watch a lot of videos. I also try to capture subcultural elements that make up a person, like how they choose to dress and present themselves, so they’re not just one-dimensional. I’m very much drawn to high-contrast imagery. I like to see that contrast and then simplify it by using [cut] paper. There’s only so much detail that you can get, so you have to pull out the things that are most important. I got tired of just adding in the digital color that we did in the other books, so [for this one] I wanted to try to create my own color. That was a big stretch, but I’m really happy with how it turned out.

This book is about the past, but really it’s about the present teen readers inhabit and the futures they would like to live in.

KS: Every story in the book is about people who had a particular vision for America. When you have a vision, it’s an ideal, right? It’s something that we dream. I feel very inspired both as a writer but also as an activist in listening to people like Alicia Garza, whom we write about in the Black Lives Matter story, whose focus is very much on envisioning the radical future that we want. This book is about American history, but it’s also very rooted in how we need to know those histories so that we can have those visions for the future that we want.

MKS: It’s very much standing on the shoulders of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which is the kind of book we wanted to make for a younger group of people. Kate and I were both really inspired by that book. That is what America is about for us and the communities that we come from: It’s about people getting together to make change, and it’s a real counternarrative to what is being told to us by the federal government right now.

Laura Simeon is a young readers’ editor.