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Alice Piper Speaks Up (Fighting for Justice #3)

Alice Piper Speaks Up (Fighting for Justice #3)

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Author(s)

Co-Authors / Illustrators

Morgan Thompson

Genre(s)

Age Range

Release Date

June 02, 2026

ISBN

978-1597147057

Buy This Book

Alice Piper Speaks Up is a necessary, accessible, and fascinating book that shines bright light on a history and a people that all who call California—and America!—home should know." —Kate Schatz, New York Times–bestselling author of Rad American Women A–Z

Alice Piper just wanted to go to public school. The year was 1923, and Alice, a Native Nuwuvi (Paiute) teenager in California, dreamed about learning from teachers, making new friends, and being respected for who she was. So when the school board refused to let her and six other Native students attend, she decided to speak up, and she sued for her right to an equal education. Alice Piper Speaks Up, the first book dedicated to this major champion of civil rights, features new research into Alice's life and court case. Each chapter begins with lyrical verse and full-color illustrations that invite readers into Alice’s story. Paired with the poems are visually engaging sections filled with keyword definitions, historical context, timelines, primary sources, and questions that help readers relate Alice’s experience to their own lives. The text connects Alice's case to larger themes about education, Native rights, and movements for school desegregation across the United States. The third book in Heyday's widely acclaimed Fighting for Justice series, Alice Piper Speaks Up shows how one teen's action resonates throughout America’s history, even now.

Editor review

1 review

Important book on the right to education for Native students

June 03, 2026 (Updated: June 24, 2026)

Overall rating

4.0

Writing Style

4.0

Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)

4.0

Learning Value

4.0

Born in California in 1908, Alice belonged to the Numu (Paiute) community. Her parents were supportive of her education, so when she wanted to attend the new Big Pine School instead of the Big Pine Indian School, they promised to help her fight to attend. At the time, many Indian Schools, including Alice's focused on teaching students only what they would need to be laborers and servants. Schools were not well supplied, and were inferior to the white schools that the Native children were not allowed to attend. Alongside Alice's story, we get a lot of information about the area in which she lived and the sociopolitical climate of the time, which is helpful in understanding Alice's experiences. Alice's case went before the court, and she and several other Native students were finally allowed to attend the Big Pine School. It wasn't easy, and not everyone welcomed her, but she managed to go on to high school and have a career helping other Native children further their education.

Good Points

The portions of the book that tell Alice's story are in verse, and accompanied by Thompson's vibrant illustrations that show what it was like for Alice to live in her community and fight for her rights. The nonfiction sections have photographs, reproductions of documents and newspaper articles, and helpful sidebars with important vocabulary. There are timelines threaded throughout the book as well, and those help put the events of Alice's life in context with other civil rights issues at the time.

At the end of the book, there are good resources for young activists who need guidance on how to get involved in their community so they can fight injustices in the same way that Alice did. There are also source notes, a bibliography, and a complete index.

Some of the notes include information about other children who fought to go to school, which is a great way to get readers interested in searching for other inspirational cases. Readers might want to pick up Huahn and Chan's Mamie Tape Fights to Go to School, Conkling's Sylvia and Aki, and Aguila's A Sea of Lemon Trees: The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez and Kanefield's 2014 The Girl from the Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement. There two other books in the Fighting For Justice series (about Fred Korematsu and Biddy Mason) that are also great additions to middle grade libraries.