Social Justice Books

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

Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers?

Reviewed by Kimberly Ellis Review Source: Teaching for Change Book Author:  As Ruth Wilson Gilmore reminds us, “Abolition is not absence; it is presence. What the world will become already exists in fragments and pieces, experiments and possibilities.” Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers?,  written by Junauda Petrus and illustrated by Kristen […]

Contenders: Two Native Baseball Players, One World Series

Reviewed by: Debbie Reese Review Source: American Indians in Children’s Literature Book Author: A few years ago, I would do tweet reviews and sometimes, I’d use a platform (Storify) that would gather the tweets into a single document, and then I’d plop that document in a blog post. People liked that tweet-review-turned-into-blog-post a lot. But […]

Stacey Abrams: Lift Every Voice

  Reviewed by Deborah Menkart Review Source: Teaching for Change Book Author: Stacey Abrams is one of the most strategic, visionary, and dedicated political leaders of this century, so we were delighted to learn that there was a picture book for young children about her life. Sadly, the book fails to do justice to her […]

My Powerful Hair

Reviewed by Elizabeth Blair Review Source: NPR Book Author: My Powerful Hair is a new picture book that turns a painful truth about racism into a celebration of Native culture. When Carole Lindstrom was a little girl growing up in Bellevue, Nebraska, she really wanted long hair. She would put the blanket she had as a baby on […]

How Do You Spell Unfair? MacNolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee

Reviewed by Brad Manker Review Source: Teaching for Change Book Author:  From the award-winning author of dozens of books, including Unspeakable — The Tulsa Race Massacre, Voice of Freedom — Fannie Lou Hamer: Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement, and Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library, comes another inspiring episode in Black history. Weatherford and […]

Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family’s Journey

Reviewed by Josh Davidson Review Source: Teaching for Change Book Author: Zinn Education Project communications associate Josh Davidson highly recommends this book. Historian Dan Berger has called the Black Power Movement “a love story,” and nothing illustrates this point more than his latest book, Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One […]