Social Justice Books

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

Black Is a Rainbow Color

Reviewed Source: Rethinking Schools Book Author: A tightly woven celebration of Black — identity, history, culture, struggle, activism — this child-narrated “Black is” poem is both accessible and complex. The extensive back matter includes a song list, background for many of the poem’s line references, a timeline of Black ethnonyms, and the full text of […]

Missing Daddy

Reviewed by Rethinking Schools Staff Review Source: Rethinking Schools Book Author: According to author Mariame Kaba, 2.7 million children under the age of 18 have an incarcerated parent. In an author’s note, Kaba says that she wrote Missing Daddy because of her frustration finding materials that can help children deal with the “loss, grief, and trauma” […]

From North to South / Del Norte al Sur

Reviewed by Grace Cornell Review Source: Rethinking Schools Book Author: Hot off the press, From North to South/Del norte al sur addresses issues of family separation and deportation head-on. The story is told from the perspective of José, a young child who travels from San Diego to Tijuana to see his mother, recently deported in a […]

The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rainforest

Reviewed by Jeanne White Review Source: Rethinking Schools Book Author: Author and illustrator Lynne Cherry’s book The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rainforest (Gulliver Green, 1990) focuses on South America’s Amazon rainforest. Cherry visited the rainforest to create sketches and to develop her story. The inside covers of the book include a world map depicting […]

The Day You Begin

Reviewed by Rethinking Schools Review Source: Rethinking Schools Book Author: This powerful, lyrical picture book speaks directly to the children who are its intended readers, describing those familiar moments when a child may be marked as an outsider among their peers because of their home language, or the color of their skin, or the “different” […]

Jazz Owls: A Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots

Reviewed by Rethinking Schools Review Source: Rethinking Schools Book Author: Every 20th-century U.S. history class covers World War II. However, the 1943 attack by white sailors on Mexican Americans, Filipinos, and African Americans in Los Angeles, known as the Zoot Suit Riots, gets little mention. Author Margarita Engle uses free verse to bring this history […]