Elementary | Middle School / YA | Adult

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(*).

Coronavirus: A Book for Children

By Elizabeth Jenner, Kate Wilson & Nia Roberts

The Doctor with an Eye for Eyes: The Story of Dr. Patricia Bath

By Julia Finley Mosca

The Little Doctor / El Doctorcito*

By Juan J. Guerra

Out of Breath: Kendra's Big Secret*

By Destiney, Kairon, and Aderemi of Reach Incorporated

Tiny Stitches: The Life of Medical Pioneer Vivien Thomas

By Gwendolyn Hooks, Colin Bootman (Illustrator)

The Women Who Caught The Babies: A Story of African American Midwives*

By Eloise Greenfield

Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know about Fast Food

By Charles Wilson and Eric Schlosser

Fever 1793

By Laurie Halse Anderson

Mountains Beyond Mountains (Adapted for Young People): The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World

By Tracy Kidder, Michael French

The Omnivore's Dilemma, Young Readers Edition

By Michael Pollan

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets Psychiatric Drugs & the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

By Robert Whitaker

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, 20th-Anniversary Edition

By Randy Shilts

Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination

By Alondra Nelson

Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative

By Priscilla Wald

Deadly Spin

By Wendell Potter

Fevered Measures: Public Health and Race at the Texas-Mexico Border, 1848-1942

By John McKiernan-González

Fit to Be Citizens? 

By Natalia Molina

The Good Doctors: The Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Struggle for Social Justice in Health Care

By John Dittmer

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

By Rebecca Skloot

Infectious Fear

By Samuel Kelton, Jr. Roberts

Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, & the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill

By Robert Whitaker

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

By Harriet A. Washington

The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu

By Mike Davis

The Secret Epidemic: The Story of AIDS and Black America

By Jacob Levenson

Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction

By Jim Downs

The Social Life of DNA

By Alondra Nelson

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