Social Justice Books

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

One

Reviewed by Rethinking Schools Book Author: An engaging story for very young children based on colors and numbers about “blue, a quiet color,” who gets bullied by “hot head red.” The other colors feel sorry for blue, but never stand up to red. Then “One” comes along. He — would have been nice to have […]

The Deep Past of Haiti

Reviewed by Deborah Menkart Review Source: Teaching for Change Book Author:  We highly recommend the book by fifth and sixth-grade students at Jubilee School called The Deep Past of Haiti. We agree with Edwidge Danticat who said it is a “gorgeous book” and “a stunning gift from the children to the world.” Here is the introduction […]

Pride

Reviewed by Edith Campbell Review Source: Cotton Quilts Book Author: The stunning endpages of Pride set the story by presenting Zuri and Darius facing each other. Each is looking straight ahead, but neither one is looking at the other. You could say they both appear quite prideful. Zuri Benitez and her Haitian-Dominican family live in the Bushwick […]

Mirage

Reviewed by Suzanne Moyer Baazet Review Source: Africa Access Book Author: Mirage is a fictional novel that not only draws the reader into its story and prose, but challenges the reader to observe futurism and science fiction in a unique cultural context where it is not commonly used.  Readers familiar with Moroccan culture find themselves constantly encountering […]

Unpresidented: A Biography of Donald Trump

Reviewed by Debbie Reese Review Source: American Indian’s in Children’s Literature Book Author: I haven’t done a rigorous study of biographies of U.S. presidents. The ones I have looked at over the years are lacking in one way or another. Most leave out Native peoples and nations that presidents interacted with — or the information that […]

They Call Me Güero: A Border Kid’s Poems

Review by Beverly Slapin Review Source: De Colores: The Raza Experience in Books for Children Book Author: Memories from the author’s own childhood experiences—as well as those of his son, his friends, and the young men he worked with as a middle-school teacher—inform this too-slim book of poetry from the perspective of a 12-year-old Chicano border […]