Social Justice Books

Critically reviewed selection of multicultural and social justice books for children, young adults, and educators.

Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio

Reviewed by Don Allen Review Source: Teaching for Change Book Author: This outstanding graphic novel fills a huge void in the Kent State literature. While Kent State University’s library has a whole room dedicated to May 4th, 1970 – there is enough reading to last for years – there have been few books for young […]

Greta and the Giants

  Reviewed by Deborah Menkart Review Source: Teaching for Change Book Author: NOT RECOMMENDED: So, we just got another picture book in the mail about Greta Thunberg. (This is at least the 4th children’s book about Greta.) Called Greta and the Giants, it implies that Greta was the first climate activist. The story is that […]

Ways to Make Sunshine

Reviewed by Jazelle Hunt Review Source: Teaching for Change Book Author: With Ways to Make Sunshine, Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award-winning author Renée Watson brings us a confident, bright, aspiring chef named Ryan Hart, an African American girl “with a name that a lot of boys have.” When we meet Ryan she is […]

More to the Story

Reviewed by Ariana Hussain Review Source: Hijabi Librarians Book Author: In a novel inspired by Little Women, thirteen-year-old Pakistani American Jameela Mirza, second oldest of four sisters and an aspiring journalist, lives with her family in Atlanta. This Eid holiday has brought changes: their beloved father is missing Eid for the first time ever to look for […]

My Grandma and Me

Reviewed by Ariana Hussain Review Source: The Horn Book, Inc. Book Author: The unnamed narrator recalls her childhood growing up in Iran (where the author also grew up) with her beloved grandmother, who lives with the family. The child accompanies her grandma on her daily routines (“When she swept, I swept. When she cooked, I cooked. […]

War Girls

    Reviewed by Toyin Falola, Ph.D. Review Source: Africa Access Book Author: War Girls gives a captivating and harrowing sneak peek of the potential future before us in the 2170s: The Earth ravaged by climate change, space colonies forming, human beings turning more machine-like, and the remaining Earth dwellers struggling to survive. Among the struggling Earth […]