Social Justice Books

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

We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga

Reviewed by Debbie Reese Review Source: American Indians in Children’s Literature Book Author: I love to see Indigenous languages on book covers! Check out the cover of Traci Sorell’s We Are Grateful/Otsaliheliga. What you see on that cover is the words “We Are Grateful” in English, and then in Cherokee, and also in the Cherokee […]

Dreamers

Reviewed by Debbie Reese Review Source: American Indians in Children’s Literature Book Author: The first library I knew as a child was a cardboard box full of books. You see, I went to a government day school on my reservation. We didn’t have a library. What we had was a librarian from the nearby public […]

nipêhon/I Wait

Reviewed by Alia Jones Review Source: American Indians in Children’s Literature Book Author: nipêhon/I Wait by Caitlin Dale Nicholson and Leona Morin-Neilson is a follow up to their 2008 book Niwechihaw/I Help. This time, instead of a little Cree boy following his grandmother to pick rosehips, we meet a little Cree girl out with her grandmother and mother […]

Bowwow Powwow

Reviewed by Debbie Reese Review Source: American Indians in Children’s Literature Book Author: Due out on May 1, of 2018, is an absolutely terrific book, Bowwow Powwow, written by Brenda J. Child (Red Lake Ojibwe). The story she tells was translated into Ojibwe by Gordon Jourdain (Lac La Croix First Nation), and Jonathan Thunder (Red Lake Ojibwe) did the extraordinary […]

When We Were Alone

Reviewed by Debbie Reese Review Source: American Indians in Children’s Literature Book Author: When We Were Alone is one of those books that brought forth a lot of emotion as I read it. There were sighs of sadness for what Native people experienced at boarding schools, and sighs of—I don’t know, love, maybe—for our perseverance through it […]

Laura Ingalls is Ruining My Life

Reviewed by Allie Jane Bruce Review Source: American Indians in Children’s Literature Book Author: At the outset of Laura Ingalls Is Ruining My Life, twelve-year-old Charlotte makes it clear that she finds her mom’s obsession with Laura Ingalls irritating. Anytime Mom or Rose (Charlotte’s younger sister) reference the Little House books or Laura Ingalls, Charlotte’s reaction is somewhere in […]