Social Justice Books

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

Two Degrees

Reviewed by Rethinking Schools Book Author: The main characters in this novel are middle school students, threatened and harmed by very different climate events, including the warming tundra, hurricanes, and forest fires. The book’s narrative rotates among the characters, weaving in facts about climate change as the youngsters’ lives become more precarious. The fast-paced plot will […]

Door of No Return

Reviewed by Elizabeth Abena Osei Reviewed Source: Africa Access Book Author: When I was eight years old, my mother introduced me to slave narratives with Meet Addy, the story of the Black enslaved girl in the American Girl Book Collection. It was one of the first times I read about slavery from the perspective of a […]

Just Jerry: How Drawing Shaped My Life

Reviewed by Edi Campbell Review Source: Edi Cotton Quilts Book Author:  Let’s start with the cover. Pinkney’s books are highlighted in each letter of this middle grade memoir, serving to highlight some of his remarkable work. Just below them is a drawing of Pinkney as a child, glancing at one of his sketchbooks with a look […]

Drama: A Graphic Novel

Reviewed by Michelle Ann Abate Review Source:  Children’s Literature in Education Book Author: “Springtime in the South is Like a Song in My Heart”: Raina Telgemeier’s Drama, the Romanticization of the Plantation South, and the Romance Plot Abstract This essay explores the complex relationship that exists between the romance plot and the romanticization of the antebellum […]

Forever Cousins

Reviewed by Debbie Reese Review Source: American Indians in Children’s Literature Book Author: As I turned the pages of Forever Cousins, I thought back to the early 1990s when we left Nambé’s reservation to go to graduate school in Illinois. Our daughter was three years old. She and her cousins were in tears. The always-present playing options […]

Evicted! The Struggle for the Right to Vote

Reviewed by Rethinking Schools Book Author: African American sharecroppers in Fayette County, Tennessee, tried to exercise their legal right to register to vote in the late 1950s. A key motivation was to break the practice of all-white juries which denied African Americans a fair trial. The white backlash was brutal. Black people who attempted to register […]