Social Justice Books

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

I Am Jazz

Teaching Idea Reviewed by Paige Pagan Review Source: Teaching for Change Book Author: Jazz is humanized/normalized in this book as a child who enjoys things any other child would enjoy. She plays dress-up and bounces on trampolines with her best friends, Samantha and Casey. But she confides to the readers: “I’m not exactly like Samantha and […]

Vicki and A Summer of Change! ¡Vicki y un verano de cambio!

Reviewed by Paige Pagan Review Source: Teaching for Change Book Author: Vicki and a Summer of Change! ¡Vicki y un verano de cambio! is a bilingual picture book that teaches children a history often unacknowledged. While the 1960s in America marked a time of social movements around civil rights, the efforts and strides achieved by the […]

Hair Twins

Reviewed by Nimarta Narang Reviewed Source: Brown Girl Magazine Book Author:  Growing up, every Sunday morning started the same way for me. My siblings and I would get dressed for the Gurdwara and wander over to our parents’ room, where we would sit and wait for them to finish getting ready. My mom, in her salwar […]

Sharice’s Big Voice: A Native Kid Becomes a Congresswoman

Reviewed by Debbie Reese Review Source: American Indians in Children’s Literature Book Author:  In some books, I find one thing after another that I absolutely adore. Sharice’s Big Voice is one of those books. First example? The back cover. It is a page from inside. It looks like this: On that page, Sharice is studying. A stack of […]

ABC El Salvador

Reviewed by Beverly Slapin Review Source: De Colores: The Raza Experience in Books for Children Book Author: On the front cover, raised lettering in glossy relief — large ABCs on which two Indigenous children climb — invites young readers to touch the painted block letters similar to the wood block letters that El Salvador is […]

We Are a Garden: A Story of How Diversity Took Root in America

Reviewed by Debbie Reese Review Source: American Indians in Children’s Literature Book Author: To understand this critique of We Are A Garden: A Story of How Diversity Took Root in America you must begin with, and hold fast to, the fact that Native peoples were nations of peoples before the U.S. was a nation. Our status as nations […]