Elementary | Upper Elementary | Middle School | HS Fiction | HS Nonfiction 

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(*).

Aani & the Tree Huggers

By Jeannine Atkins

Abuela's Weave

By Omar S. Casteneda, Enrique O. Sanchez (Illustrator)

Alfombras de Aserrin: Sawdust Carpets, Spanish-Language Edition

By Amelia Lau Carling (Illustrator)

Alicia Alonso: Prima Ballerina

By Carmen Bernier-Grand

 

Amelia to Zora: Twenty-Six Women Who Changed the World

By Cynthia Chin-Lee, Megan Halsey (Illustrator), Sean Addy (Illustrator)

Art from Her Heart: Folk Artist Clementine Hunter

By Kathy Whitehead, Shane Evans (Illustrator)

Beautiful Warrior

By Emily Arnold McCully

The Bobbin Girl

Emily Arnold McCully; Illustrator-Emily Arnold McCully

Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers' Strike of 1909

By Michelle Markel, Melissa Sweet (Illustrator)

Buffalo Bird Girl: A Hidatsa Story

By S. D. Nelson

Catching the Moon: The Story of a Young Girl's Baseball Dream

By Crystal Hubbard, Randy Duburck

Cinder Edna

By Ellen Jackson, Kevin O'Malley (Illustrator)

Dancing in the Wings

By Debbie Allen, Kadir Nelson (Illustrator)

Danza! Amalia Hernández and Mexico's Folkloric Ballet

By Duncan Tonatiuh

Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl's Courage Changed Music*

By Margarita Engle, Rafael Lopez (Illustrator)

Elizabeth Started All the Trouble

By Doreen Rappaport

The Girl Who Thought in Pictures

By Julia Finley Mosca, Daniel Rieley

Grace for President*

By Kelly S. Dipucchio, LeUyen Pham (Illustrator)

Grandma's Purple Flowers

By Adjoa J. Burrowes

Happy Like Soccer

By Maribeth Boelts, Lauren Castillo (Illustrator)

Heart on Fire: Susan B. Anthony Votes for President

By Ann Malaspina, Steve James (Illustrator)

Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales

By Virginia Hamilton

Harlem's Little Blackbird

By Renee Watson, Christian Robinson (Illustrator)

Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth Be Told

By Walter Dean Myers, Bonnie Christensen (Illustrator)

Just a Minute!: A Trickster Tale and Counting Book

By Yuyi Morales

Keep Climbing, Girls

By Beah E. Richards, Lisagay Hamilton (Introduction by), R. Gregory Christie (Illustrator)

Little Melba and Her Big Trombone

By Katheryn Russell-Brown, Frank Morrison (Illustrator)

The Little Piano Girl: The Story of Mary Lou Williams, Jazz Legend

By Ann Ingalls, Maryann Macdonald, and Giselle Potter

Mina vs. the Monsoon

By Rukhsanna Guidroz, Debasmita Dasgupta

Miss Mary Reporting: The True Story of Sportswriter Mary Garber

By Sue Macy, C. F. Payne (Illustrator)

My Abuelita

By Tony Johnston, Yuyi Morales (Illustrator)

Me Llamo Celia/My Name Is Celia: La Vida de Celia Cruz/The Life Of Celia Cruz

By Monica Brown, Rafael Lopez (Illustrator)

My Name Is Gabriela/Me Llamo Gabriela: The Life of Gabriela Mistral/La Vida de Gabriela Mistral

By Monica Brown

Nasreen's Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan

By Jeanette Winter, Jeanette Winter (Illustrator)

Only Passing Through: The Story of Sojourner Truth

By Anne Rockwell, R. Gregory Gregory Christie (Illustrator)

Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai

By Claire A. Nivola, Claire A. Nivola (Illustrator)

Pies from Nowhere

How Georgia Gilmore Sustained the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Rachel Carson: Preserving a Sense of Wonder (Images of Conservationists)

By Joseph Bruchac, Thomas Locker

Rosa

By Nikki Giovanni, Bryan Collier (Illustrator)

Ruth and the Green Book

By Calvin A. Ramsey, Floyd Cooper (Illustrator)

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The Case of R.B.G. vs. Inequality

By Jonah Winter, Stacy Innerst (Illustrator)

Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family's Fight for Desegregation*

By Duncan Tonatiuh

She Stood for Freedom: The Untold Story of a Civil Rights Hero, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland

By Loki Mulholland, Angela Fairwell, Charlotta Janssen (Illustrator)

Side by Side / Lado a Lado*

By Monica Brown, Joe Cepeda (Illustrator)

Sofie and the City

By Karima Grant, Janet Montecalvo (Illustrator)

Sojourner Truth's Step-Stomp Stride

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)

The Story of Ruby Bridges: Special Anniversary Edition

By Robert Coles, George Ford (Illustrator)

The Storyteller's Candle / La velita de los cuentos

By Lucia Gonzalez, Lulu Delacre

That Book Woman

By Heather Henson, David Small (Illustrator)

That's Not Fair!/No Es Justo!: Emma Tenayuca's Struggle for Justice/La Lucha de Emma Tenayuca Por La Justicia

By Carmen Tafolla, Sharyll Teneyuca, Terry Ybanez (Illustrator)

Thunder Rose

By Jerdine Nolen, Kadir Nelson (Illustrator)

Viola Desmond Won't Be Budged!

By Jody Nyasha Warner, Richard Rudnicki (Illustrator)

Wangari Maathai: The Woman Who Planted a Million Trees

By Franck Prevot, Aurelia Fronty (Illustrator)

Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World's Fastest Woman

By Kathleen Krull, David Diaz (Illustrator)

Women of The Harlem Resistance

By Lisa Beringer Mckissack

Annie Shapiro and the Clothing Workers' Strike

By Marlene Targ Brill

Ballots for Belva: The True Story of a Woman's Race for the Presidency

By Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen

Fannie Never Flinched: One Woman's Courage in the Struggle for American Labor Union Rights*

By Mary Cronk Farrell

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

By Teri Kanefield

Helen Keller: Rebellious Spirit

By Laurie Lawlor

Hidden Figures: Young Readers' Edition*

By Margot Lee Shetterly

Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker

By Patricia Hruby Powell

Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters

By Andrea Davis Pinkney, Stephen Alcorn, Stephen Alcorn (Illustrator)

Lyddie

By Katherine Paterson

Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl

By Tonya Bolden

Mother Jones: Labor Leader

By Connie Colwell Miller, Steve Erwin (Illustrator), Charles Barnett III (Illustrator)

Mumbet's Declaration of Independence

By Gretchen Woelfle, Alix Delinois (Illustrator)

Rachel: The Story of Rachel Carson

By Amy Ehrlich, Wendell Minor (Illustrator)

She Stood for Freedom: The Untold Story of a Civil Rights Hero, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland

By Loki Mulholland, Charlotta Janssen (Illustrator)

Sonia Sotomayor: Supreme Court Justice

By Carmen T. Bernier-Grand, Thomas Gonzalez (Illustrator)

Step Up to the Plate, Maria Singh*

By Uma Krishnaswami

A Strong Right Arm: The Story of Mamie "Peanut" Johnson

By Michelle Y. Green, Kadir Nelson (Illustrator)

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

By Carole Boston Weatherford

Betty Before X

By Ilyasah Shabazz and Renee Watson

Bread and Roses, Too

By Katherine Paterson

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

By Phillip Hoose

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

By Winifred Conkling

Rad American Women A-Z: Rebels, Trailblazers, and Visionaries Who Shaped Our History . . . and Our Future!

By Kate Schatz, Miriam Klein Stahl (Illustrator)

Rad Girls Can: Stories of Bold, Brave, and Brilliant Young Women

By Kate Schatz, Miriam Klein Stahl (Illustrator)

Rad Women Worldwide: Artists and Athletes, Pirates and Punks, and Other Revolutionaries Who Shaped History*

By Kate Schatz, Miriam Klein Stahl (Illustrator)

She Takes a Stand: 16 Fearless Activists Who Have Changed the World

By Michael Elsohn Ross

The Silent Sentinels

By Jason Nord

Sugar

By Jewell Parker Rhodes

Sylvia & Aki*

By Winifred Conkling

Take a Seat — Make a Stand: A Hero in the Family: The Story of Sarah Key Evans, a Civil Rights Hero Who Would Not Be Moved

By Amy Nathan, Sarah K. Evans (With)

Zora and Me

By Victoria Bond, T. R. Simon

The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba's Greatest Abolitionist

By Margarita Engle

The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano

By Sonia Manzano

The Surrender Tree / El Arbol de La Rendicion

By Margarita Engle

500 Years of Chicana Women's History/500 Anos de La Mujer Chicana

By Elizabeth Martinez

The Autobiography of Maria Elena Moyano: The Life and Death of a Peruvian Activist

By Diana M. Tupac (Editor), Patricia Taylor Edmisten (Translator)

At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Pow

By Danielle L. McGuire

Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream

By Bruce Watson

Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine

By Lisa Jervis (Editor), Andi Zeisler (Editor)

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

By Phillip Hoose

Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism

By Daisy Hernandez (Editor), Bushra Rehman (Editor), Cherrie Moraga (Foreword by)

Farewell to Manzanar

By Jeanne Houston, James D. Houston

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

By Bell Hooks

Fight Like a Girl: 50 Feminists Who Changed the World

By Laura Barcella

From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism

By Patricia Hill Collins

Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution

By Sara Marcus

Girls Write Now: Two Decades of True Stories from Young Female Voices

By Girls Write Now

Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC

By Faith S. Holsaert (Editor), Martha Prescod Norman Noonan (Editor), Judy Richardson (Editor)

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

By Margot Lee Shetterly

I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World

By Malala Yousafzai, Patricia McCormick (With)

I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala

By Rigoberta Menchu, Elisabeth Burgos-Debray (Editor), Ann Wright (Translator)

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

By Janet Dewart Bell

The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science

By Julie Des Jardins

Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future

By Jennifer Baumgardner, Amy Richards

Mary McLeod Bethune in Washington, D.C.: Activism and Education in Logan Circle

By Ida E. Jones, Elizabeth Clark-Lewis (Foreword by)

Memoir of a Visionary: Antonia Pantoja

By Antonia Pantoja, Henry A. J. Ramos (Foreword by)

Men and Feminism

By Shira Tarrant

#NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women*

 Edited by Lisa Charleyboy and Mary Beth Leatherdale

Rosa Parks: My Story

By Rosa Parks, Jim Haskins

Tell Me a Riddle, Requa I, and Other Works

By Tillie Olsen, Laurie Olsen (Foreword by), Rebekah Edwards (Introduction by)

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

By Lynda Blackmon Lowery

The Underground Abductor: An Abolitionist Tale about Harriet Tubman

By Nathan Hale

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

By Melba Pattillo Beals

We Don't Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists

By Melody Berger (Editor)

What Do You Do with a Voice Like That? The Story of Extraordinary Congresswoman Barbara Jordan

By Chris Barton, Ekua Holmes (Illustrator)

A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice

By Malalai Joya

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

By Maxine Hong Kingston

---

If you value this book list, please help us promote it and create more book lists.

Donate Today