Watch: The House That She Built Featured in Library Story Time
The House That She Built, a children’s book written to break stereotypes about home building and introduce construction trades to a new generation of girls, was recently featured in a story time reading at a public library in North Dakota.
Sara Bender, a member of the Professional Women in Building (PWB) council at the Bismarck-Mandan HBA, and Traci Juhala, Head of Youth Services for the Bismarck Public Library, worked together to present The House That She Built during a recent story time at the library.
“Sara approached us about this great book that came out that the PWB Council wanted to share with the community,” said Juhala. “We were lucky to be able to tie it into a financial literacy exhibit we have going on at the library right now. It was just a perfect fit because we were looking for some real-world examples about kids being aware of money in their lives and it was just this wonderful partnership that developed.”
Bender and Juhala were featured in a segment on local CBS affiliate KX News. Watch the interview.
The Real-World House That She Built Project
NAHB’s PWB Council supports similar councils at state and local HBAs across the country. The PWB Council in Utah decided that they were going to build a house with all women contractors because just three percent of jobsite workers in home building are women.
The building project goal was to illustrate to kids that women can work in the construction industry too.
The House That She Built is a children’s book published by NAHB BuilderBooks featuring the real house. Find out more about The House That She Built and how to add it to a child’s bookshelf at shebuiltbook.com.
You can help support the national and local PWB Councils during PWB Week, Sept. 12-16.
Latest from NAHBNow
Jan 20, 2026
Smart Sourcing, Smarter Basis: How AI Is Changing Land AcquisitionFor decades, the process of screening off-market sites has remained painfully slow. But a shift is happening as top-tier land teams are moving away from manual data aggregation and toward AI-driven workflows to eliminate non-viable sites in minutes.
Jan 16, 2026
Building Material Price Growth Remains Elevated Despite a Sluggish MarketResidential building material price growth continued to climb toward the end of 2025, even as the new home construction market showed signs of slowing.
Latest Economic News
Jan 20, 2026
New Single-Family Home Size Trends: Third Quarter 2025New single-family home size has been generally falling since 2015 as a response to declining affordability conditions. An exception occurred when new home size increased in 2021 as interest rates reached historic lows. However, as interest rates increased in 2022 and 2023, and housing affordability worsened, the demand for home size has trended lower.
Jan 20, 2026
Third Quarter 2025 Multifamily Construction DataAccording to NAHB analysis of quarterly Census data, the count of multifamily, for-rent housing starts increased during the third quarter of 2025. For the quarter, 119,000 multifamily residences started construction. Of this total, 114,000 were built-for-rent.
Jan 19, 2026
Soft Conditions for Single-Family Built-for-RentSingle-family built-for-rent construction fell back in the third quarter of 2025, as a higher cost of financing and increased multifamily supply crowded out development.