Social Justice Books

Critically reviewed selection of multicultural and social justice books for children, young adults, and educators.

My Heart Is On the Ground: The Diary of Nannie Little Rose, a Sioux Girl

Review by Debbie Reese, Beverly Slapin, and more. Review Source: Rethinking Schools Book Author: My Heart Is on the Ground: The Diary of Nannie Little Rose, a Sioux Girl is a new book published by Scholastic as part of its “Dear America” series of historical fiction diaries. Immensely popular, the series is prominent both in bookstores […]

My Night in the Planetarium

Book Review by Lyn Miller Lachman Review Source: Pirate Tree Book Author: Innosanto Nagara, the Indonesian-born graphic artist and acclaimed author/illustrator of A Is for Activist and Counting on Community, tells his own story of facing dictatorship and oppression in My Night in the Planetarium. At the age of seven, he watched his father, a playwright, […]

Rooster Joe and the Bully / El Gallo Joe y el Abusón

Review by Lyn Miller Lachman Review Source: Pirate Tree Book Author: Joe López, a seventh grader who loves to draw, is tired of seeing eighth grade bully Martín Corona push smaller kids around and steal their lunch money. When he disrupts the shakedown of Luis, one of the smaller sixth graders, Martín demands that Joe give […]

The Hate U Give

Reviewed by Lyn Miller Lachman Review Source: Pirate Tree Book Author: The Hate U Give is inspired by THUG LIFE, Tupac Shakur’s famous acronym that stood for “The Hate U Give Little Infants F***ks Everybody.” (Sorry, but this is a family-friendly blog.) It is both a statement that Black lives matter and the story of a […]

The Door at the Crossroads

Reviewed by Lyn Miller Lachman Review Source: Pirate Tree Book Author: The novel from Zetta Elliott’s own imprint, Rosetta Press, begins on September 11, 2001, when 16-year-old Genna Colon witnesses the destruction of the Twin Towers from across the river in Brooklyn while her Jamaican-born boyfriend, Judah, remains in Brooklyn in 1863. Except that Judah is […]

Fred Korematsu Speaks Up

Book Review by Lyn Miller Lachman Review Source: Pirate Tree Book Author: At the time of the bombing, Fred Korematsu helped his Japanese immigrant parents and U.S. born brothers at the family nursery. He had fallen in love with an Italian American woman, and to keep from being sent to the camp and separated from her, […]