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. Titles with reviews on this site are noted with an asterisk(*).

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

See more recommended titles on these lists: Civil Rights Teaching, Black History, Reconstruction

Early-Mid Elementary

Almost to Freedom

Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, Colin Bootman

Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky

By Faith Ringgold

Before She Was Harriet*

By Lesa Cline Ransome, James E. Ransome

Brick by Brick

By Charles R. Smith, Jr., Floyd Cooper (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

The Emancipation of Grandpa Sandy Wills

By Cheryl Wills and Randell Pearson (Illustrator)

The Escape of Robert Smalls

By Jehan Jones-Radgowski

Freedom Soup

By Tami Charles

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)

Midnight Teacher: Lilly Ann Granderson and Her Secret School*

By Janet Halfmann, London Ladd

Minty: A Story of Young Harriet Tubman

By Alan Schroeder

Mumbet's Declaration of Independence

By Gretchen Woelfle, Alix Delinois (Illustrator)

Night Boat to Freedom

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

Pink and 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)

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)

So Tall Within: Sojourner Truth's Long Walk Toward Freedom

By Gary Schmidt, Daniel Mintor (Illustrator)

Stitch by Stitch: Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly Sews Her Way to Freedom

By Connie Schofield-Morrison and Elizabeth Zunon (Illustrator)

Tea Cakes for Tosh*

By Kelly Starling Lyons

Under the Freedom Tree

By Susan Vanhecke, London Ladd (Illustrator)

Unspoken: A Story from the Underground Railroad

By Henry Cole and Henry Cole (Illustrator)

When Harriet Met Sojourner

By Catherine Clinton, Shane W. Evans (Illustrator)

Upper Elementary

The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch

By Chris Barton, Don Tate (Illustrator)

Biddy Mason Speaks Up*

By Arisa White, Laura Atkins, Laura Freeman (Illustrator)

BOX: Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom

By Carole Boston Weatherford, Michele Wood (Illustrator)

Calico Girl

By Jerdine Nolen

The Clothesline Code: The Story of Civil War Spies Lucy Ann and Dabney Walker

By Janet Halfmann and Trisha Mason (Illustrator)

Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship & Freedom

By Tim Tingle, Jeanne Rorex Bridges (Illustrator)

Eliza's Freedom Road: An Underground Railroad Diary

By Jerdine Nolen

Fort Mose: And the Story of the Man Who Built the First Free Black Settlement in Colonial America

By Glennette Tilley Turner

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

By Ashley Bryan, Ashley Bryan (Illustrator)

Hammering for Freedom: The William Lewis Story

By Rita Lorraine Hubbard and John Holyfield (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)

Philip Reid Saves the Statue of Freedom

By Steven Sellers Lapham, Eugene Walton, and R. Gregory Christie (Illustrator)

Seven Miles to Freedom: The Robert Smalls Story

By Janet Halfmann, Duane Smith

The Story of Civil War Hero Robert Smalls

By Janet Halfmann and Duane Smith (Illustrator)

To Be a Slave

By Julius Lester, Tom Feelings (Illustrator)

The Women Who Caught The Babies*

By Eloise Greenfield

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

Etched in Clay: The Life of Dave, Enslaved Potter and Poet

By Andrea Cheng (Illustrator)

Forge

By Laurie Halse Anderson

Freewater

By Amina Luqman Dawson

The Glory Field

By Walter Dean Myers

Harriet Tubman, Secret Agent: How Daring Slaves and Free Blacks Spied for the Union During the Civil War

By Thomas B. Allen

Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck*

By Margarita Engle

I Came as a Stranger

By Bryan Prince

In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives

By Kenneth C. Davis

The Journey of Little Charlie

By Christopher Paul Curtis

The Kidnapped Prince: The Life of Olaudah Equiano

By Ann Cameron

The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba's Greatest Abolitionist

By Margarita Engle

My Name Is Henry Bibb: A Story of Slavery and Freedom

By Afua Cooper

Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge: Young Readers Edition*

By Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Kathleen Van Cleve

Nightjohn

By Gary Paulsen

Passenger on the Pearl: The True Story of Emily Edmonson's Flight from Slavery *

By Winifred Conkling

The Surrender Tree /El árbol de la rendición *

By Margarita Engle

Unbound: A Novel in Verse*

By Ann E. Burg

The Underground Abductor: An Abolitionist Tale about Harriet Tubman

By Nathan Hale

Underground Man

By Milton Meltzer

A Wish After Midnight*

By Zetta Elliott

High School Fiction

47

By Walter Mosley

Beloved

By Toni Morrison

Copper Sun

By Sharon M. Draper

Crossing Ebenezer Creek*

By Tonya Bolden

Escape from Texas: A Novel of Slavery and the Texas War of Independence

By James W. Russell

The Resurrection of Nat Turner, Part I: The Witnesses

By Sharon Ewell Foster

The Resurrection of Nat Turner, Part 2: The Testimony

By Sharon Ewell Foster

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)

Maroon Comix: Origins and Destinies

Edited by Quincy Saul, Songe Riddle (Illustrator), Seth Tobocman (Illustrator), and Mac McGill (Illustrator)

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Written by Himself

By Frederick Douglass, Angela Y. Davis

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

By Margarita Engle, Sean Qualls (Illustrator)

Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, a Graphic Novel

By Paul Buhle and David Lester (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)

Routes of Passage: Rethinking the African Diaspora, Part 1

By Ruth Simms Hamilton (Editor)

She Came to Slay

By Erica Armstrong Dunbar

Twelve Years a Slave

By Solomon Northup, Dolen Perkins-Valdez (Introduction by)

Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

By Rebecca Hall and Hugo Martínez (Illustrator)

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."