Elementary | Middle School / Young Adult Fiction | YA / Adult Nonfiction
Here are books for children, young adults, and adults dealing with police brutality in the United States. This list demonstrates the scarcity of good titles for children and families. Let us know if you have books that you recommend we add to this list.
In addition to the titles below, we recommend reading:
- Oakland Public Library: Evaluating Children’s Books about Police: a toolkit for librarians and other evaluators of children’s literature
- Zinn Education Project: Teach the History of Policing
Additional Titles on Policing Are on the Incarceration Book List.
Titles with reviews on this site are noted with an asterisk(*).
Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers? *
By Junauda Petrus and Kristen Uroda (Illustrator)
A Place Inside of Me: A Poem to Heal the Heart
By Zetta Elliott and Noa Denmon (Illustrator)
Say Their Names
By Caroline Brewer
I Am Alfonso Jones *
By Tony Medina, Stacey Robinson (Illustrator), and John Jennings (Illustrator), foreword by Bryan Stevenson
#Sayhername: Black Women's Stories of Police Violence and Public Silence
Edited by African American Policy Forum, and Kimberlé Crenshaw, foreword by Janelle Monáe
The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago
By Flint Taylor
We Still Here: Pandemic, Policing, Protest, and Possibility *
By Marc Lamont Hill and Frank Barat, with a forward by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
