Social Justice Books

The best selection of multicultural and social justice books for children, YA, and educators.

Slavery and Resistance

Early-Mid Elementary | Upper Elementary | Middle | HS Fiction | HS Nonfiction | Adult

Below are more than 60 books we recommend for the classroom and as background reading for parents and teachers on the history of slavery and resistance in the United States. Contact us if you have recommended titles to add. We also offer lessons and other resources for teaching about slavery and resistance on our Zinn Education Project website.

Before sharing these books with children, read Considerations for Early Childhood and Early Elementary Educators on Slavery and Resistance. 

Also see the Chicago Tribune article "Slavery in children's books: What works?." 

Read about a grassroots protest by librarians, #BlackLivesMatter activists, journalists, authors, and more of a new, stereotypical children's book about slavery. (Find a compilation of articles about the protest at American Indians in Children's Literature.)

Early-Mid Elementary

Almost to Freedom
Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, Colin Bootman

Brick by Brick
By Charles R. Smith, Jr., Floyd Cooper (Illustrator)

Ellen's Broom
By Kelly Starling Lyons

Freedom's a-Callin Me
By Ntozake Shange, Rod Brown (Illustrator)

Freedom in Congo Square
By Carole Boston Weatherford, R. Gregory Christie (Illustrator)

Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad
By Ellen Levine, Kadir Nelson (Illustrator)

In the Time of the Drums
By Kim L. Siegelson, Brian Pinkney (Illustrator)

 

Love Twelve Miles Long
By Glenda Armand, Colin Bootman (Illustrator)

Mumbet's Declaration of Independence
By Gretchen Woelfle, Alix Delinois (Illustrator) 

The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom
By Bettye Stroud, Erin Susanne Bennett (Illustrator)

Pink and Say
By Patricia Polacco

The Price of Freedom: How One Town Stood Up to Slavery
By Dennis Brindell Fradin, Judith Bloom Fradin, Eric Velasquez (Illustrator)

The Red Comb
Pico, Fernando; Palacios, Argentina; Ordonez, Maria Antonia [Illustrator]

Show Way
By Jacqueline Woodson, Hudson Talbott (Illustrator)

Sojourner Truth's Step-Stomp Stride
By Andrea Davis Pinkney, Brian Pinkney (Illustrator)

Tea Cakes for Tosh*
By Kelly Starling Lyons

Under the Freedom Tree
By Susan Vanhecke, London Ladd (Illustrator)

When Harriet Met Sojourner
By Catherine Clinton, Shane W. Evans (Illustrator)

Upper Elementary

Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their lives and Dreams Brought to Life*
By Ashley Bryan, Ashley Bryan (Illustrator)

I Lay My Stitches Down: Poems of American Slavery
By Cynthia Grady, Michele Wood (Illustrator)

Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters
By Andrea Davis Pinkney, Stephen Alcorn, Stephen Alcorn (Illustrator)

Nettie's Trip South
By Ann Turner, Ronald Himler (Illustrator)

Never Forgotten
By Patricia C. McKissack, Leo Dillon (Illustrator), Diane Dillon (Illustrator)

The Old African
By Julius Lester, Jerry Pinkney (Illustrator)

Only Passing Through: The Story of Sojourner Truth
By Anne Rockwell, R. Gregory Gregory Christie (Illustrator)

The Secret to Freedom
By Marcia Vaughan, Larry Johnson

Seven Miles to Freedom: The Robert Smalls Story
By Janet Halfmann, Duane Smith

To Be a Slave
By Julius Lester, Tom Feelings (Illustrator)

Middle School

Africa Is My Home: A Child of the Amistad
By Monica Edinger, Robert Byrd (Illustrator)

Ashes
By Laurie Halse Anderson

Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage
By William Loren Katz

Chains
By Laurie Halse Anderson

Elijah of Buxton
By Christopher Paul Curtis

High School Fiction

47
By Walter Mosley

Beloved
By Toni Morrison

Copper Sun
By Sharon M. Draper

Crossing Ebenezer Creek*
By Tonya Bolden

High School Nonfiction

The Black History of the White House
By Clarence Lusane

 

Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War
Edited by: Ira Berlin Barbara J. Fields Steven F. Miller Joseph P. Reidy Leslie S. Rowland

Growing Up in Slavery: Stories of Young Slaves as Told by Themselves
By Yuval Taylor (Editor), Kathleen Judge (Illustrator)

The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano
By Margarita Engle, Sean Qualls (Illustrator)

Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk about Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation
By Ira Berlin (Editor), Marc Favreau (Editor), Steven F. Miller (Editor)

Twelve Years a Slave
By Solomon Northup, Dolen Perkins-Valdez (Introduction by)

Adult

There is nothing more important than deepening our own knowledge on this topic before we figure out how to teach and read to children. Edith Campbell said, we need "authors [and teachers and parents] to ask themselves how well they know the information, which has to be 'over-learned' and then distilled for young readers." As the saying goes, you can't teach what you don't know. The titles below are recommended for our "over-learning."
 

Wench
By Dolen Perkins-Valdez