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Teaching for Change carefully selects the best multicultural and social justice books for children, young adults, and educators. Learn about our criteria for selecting titles. Feedback on these lists and suggestions for additional titles are welcome. Most of the books on these lists are linked for more information or purchase to Powells, an independent, union labor bookstore. Titles with reviews on this site are noted with an asterisk(*).

Carter Reads the Newspaper

By Deborah Hopkinson, Don Tate (Illustrator)

Child of the Civil Rights Movement*

By Paula Young Shelton, Raúl Colón (Illustrator)

Circle Unbroken: A Story of a Basket and Its People

By Margot Theis Raven, E. B. Lewis (Illustrator)

Ellen's Broom*

By Kelly Starling Lyons

Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table

By Jacqueline Briggs Martin, Eric-Shabazz Larkin (Illustrator), Will Allen (Afterword by)

Freedom's School

By Lesa Cline-Ransome, James E. Ransome (Illustrator)

Going Down Home with Daddy

By Kelly Starling Lyons

The Great Migration: Journey to the North*

By Eloise Greenfield, Jan Spivey Gilchrist (Illustrator) 

Harlem's Little Blackbird

By Renee Watson, Christian Robinson (Illustrator)

Hip Hop Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat

By Nikki Giovanni, Alicia Vergel De Dios (Illustrator), Damian Ward (Illustrator)

Little Melba and Her Big Trombone

By Katheryn Russell-Brown

Love to Langston

By Tony Medina, R. Gregory Christie

Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl

By Tonya Bolden

Me and Momma and Big John*

By Mara Rockliff, William Low (Illustrator)

 

Milo's Museum*

By Zetta Elliott

New Shoes

By Susan Lynn Meyer

No Mirrors in My Nana's House

By Ysaye M. Barnwell, Synthia Saint James (Illustrator)

Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down

By Andrea Davis Pinkney, Brian Pinkney (Illustrator)

Someday Is Now: Clara Luper and the 1958 Oklahoma City Sit-ins

By Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, Jade Johnson (Illustrator)

Steamboat School*

By Deborah Hopkinson

Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt

By Deborah Hopkinson

Take a Picture of Me, James Van Der Zee!

By Andrea Loney, Keith Mallett (Illustrator)

Tea Cakes for Tosh*

By Kelly Starling Lyons 

This Is the Rope: A Story from the Great Migration

By Jacqueline Woodson

When the Beat Was Born: DJ Kool Herc and the Creation of Hip Hop*

By Laban Carrick Hill, Theodore Taylor (Illustrator)

 

Zora Hurston and the Chinaberry Tree

By William Miller, Cornelius Van Wright

Bayou Magic

By Jewell Parker Rhodes

Before John Was a Jazz Giant: A Song of John Coltrane

By Carole Boston Weatherford, Sean Qualls (Illustrator)

 

Black Diamond: The Story of the Negro Baseball Leagues

By Patricia C. McKissack, Fredrick McKissack, Jr.

Black & White: The Confrontation Between Reverence Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Eugene "Bull" Connor

By Larry Dane Brimner

Blues Journey

By Christopher Myers

The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth, & Harlem's Greatest Bookstore

By Vaunda Micheaux Nelson

Clemente!

By Willie Perdomo, Bryan Collier (Illustrator)

Dayshaun's Gift

By Zetta Elliott, Alex Portal (Illustrator)

Ellington Was Not a Street

By Ntozake Shange, Kadir Nelson (Illustrator)

Finding Langston*

By Lesa Cline-Ransome

Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins

By Carole Boston Weatherford, Jerome Lagarrigue (Illustrator)

Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their lives and Dreams Brought to Life*

By Ashley Bryan, Ashley Bryan (Illustrator)

Granddaddy's Turn: A Journey to the Ballot Box

By Michael S. Bandy, Eric Stein, James Ransome (Illustrator)

Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad

By Ellen Levine, Kadir Nelson (Illustrator)

Hidden Figures: Young Readers' Edition*

By Margot Lee Shetterly

Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker

By Patricia Hruby Powell

Malcolm X: A Fire Burning Brightly

By Walter Dean Myers, Leonard Jenkins (Illustrator)

Midnight Teacher: Lilly Ann Granderson and Her Secret School*

By Janet Halfmann, London Ladd

Mumbet's Declaration of Independence *

By Gretchen Woelfle, Alix Delinois (Illustrator)

Pink y Say

By Patricia Polacco

 

Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton*

By Don Tate

The Price of Freedom: How One Town Stood Up to Slavery

By Dennis Brindell Fradin, Judith Bloom Fradin, Eric Velasquez (Illustrator)

 

Remember: The Journey to School Integration

By Toni Morrison

 

Richard Wright and the Library Card

By William Miller, R. Gregory Christie

The Road to Memphis

By Mildred D. Taylor

 

Rosa

By Nikki Giovanni, Bryan Collier (Illustrator)

Ruth and the Green Book *

By Calvin A. Ramsey, Floyd Cooper (Illustrator)

 

Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library*

By Carole Boston Weatherford

A Sweet Smell of Roses

By Angela Johnson, Eric Velazquez (Illustrator)

Sweethearts of Rhythm: The Story of the Greatest All-Girl Swing Band in the World

By Marilyn Nelson, Jerry Pinkney (Illustrator)

 

Thunder Rose

By Jerdine Nolen, Kadir Nelson (Illustrator)

Under the Freedom Tree

By Susan Vanhecke, London Ladd (Illustrator)

Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement*

By Carole Boston Weatherford

Bud, Not Buddy

By Christopher Paul Curtis

 

Chains

By Laurie Halse Anderson

Crow

By Barbara Wright

 

Elijah of Buxton

By Christopher Paul Curtis

 

Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule

By Harriette Gillem Robinet

Let the Circle Be Unbroken

By Mildred D. Taylor

The Mighty Miss Malone

By Christopher Paul Curtis

 

Mississippi Bridge

By Mildred D. Taylor

Ninth Ward

By Jewell Parker Rhodes

Old African

By Julius Lester

One Crazy Summer

By Rita Williams-Garcia

 

The Rock and the River

By Kekla Magoon

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

By Mildred D. Taylor

Ship of Souls

By Zetta Elliott

Storm Warriors

By Elisa Carbone

Sugar

By Jewell Parker Rhodes

 

Unbound: A Novel in Verse*

By Ann E. Burg

A Wish After Midnight*

By Zetta Elliott

42 Is Not Just a Number: The Odyssey of Jackie Robinson, American Hero*

By Doreen Rappaport

A Wreath for Emmett Till

By Marilyn Nelson, Philippe Lardy (Illustrator)

Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage

By William Loren Katz

Brown Girl Dreaming

By Jacqueline Woodson

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

By Phillip Hoose

Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty

By Tonya Bolden

Frederick Douglass: From Slavery to Statesman

By Henry Elliot

Freedom's Children

By Ellen S. Levine

 

Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

By Russell Freedman

 

The Girl from the Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement

By Teri Kanefield

 

Many Thousand Gone: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom

By Virginia Hamilton, Leo Dillon (Illustrator), Diane Dillon (Illustrator)

 

March Forward, Girl: From Young Warrior to Little Rock Nine

By Melba Pattillo Beals, Frank Morrison (Illustrator)

Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don't You Grow Weary

By Elizabeth Partridge

 

The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights

By Steve Sheinkin

 

Tell All the Children Our Story: Memories and Mementos of Being Young and Black in America

By Tonya Bolden

Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March

By Lynda Blackmon Lowery

Twelve Days in May: Freedom Ride 1961

By Larry Dane Brimner

Warriors Don't Cry: The Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

By Melba Pattillo Beals

We Are One: The Story of Bayard Rustin

By Larry Dane Brimner

We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball

By Kadir Nelson

We've Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March

By Cynthia Levinson

 

47

By Walter Mosley

Black Boy

By Richard Wright

Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas

By Sam Durant (Editor), Emory Douglas (Illustrator), Bobby Seale (Foreword by)

The Black Panthers: Portraits from an Unfinished Revolution

By Bryan Shih, Yohuru Williams, Peniel E. Joseph (Introduction by)

Crow

By Barbara Wright

Dust Tracks on a Road

By Zora Neale Hurston

Growing Up in Slavery: Stories of Young Slaves as Told by Themselves

By Yuval Taylor (Editor), Kathleen Judge (Illustrator)

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

By Maya Angelou

John Carlos Story

By Dave Zirin, John Wesley Carlos, Cornel West

 

Lighting the Fires of Freedom: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement

By Janet Dewart Bell

Malcolm X for Beginners

By Bernard Aquina Doctor

No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller

By Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, R. Gregory Christie (Illustrator)

 

The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano

By Margarita Engle, Sean Qualls (Illustrator)

 

Selma, Lord, Selma: Girlhood Memories of the Civil Rights Days

By Frank Webb Sikora

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom

By Margarita Engle

Warriors Don't Cry: The Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

By Melba Pattillo Beals

Freedoms Unfinished Revolution: An Inquiry Into the Civil War & Reconstruction

By William Friedheim, Joshua Brown

Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching: A Resource Guide for Classrooms and Communities

By Deborah Menkart (Editor)

Teach Freedom: Education for Liberation in the African American Tradition

Edited by Charles M. Payne and Carol Sills Strickland

Teaching for Black Lives

Edited by Dyan Watson, Jesse Hagopian, Wayne Au

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