Social Justice Books

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

Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers?

Reviewed by Kimberly Ellis Review Source: Teaching for Change Book Author:  As Ruth Wilson Gilmore reminds us, “Abolition is not absence; it is presence. What the world will become already exists in fragments and pieces, experiments and possibilities.” Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers?,  written by Junauda Petrus and illustrated by Kristen […]

Stacey Abrams: Lift Every Voice

  Reviewed by Deborah Menkart Review Source: Teaching for Change Book Author: Stacey Abrams is one of the most strategic, visionary, and dedicated political leaders of this century, so we were delighted to learn that there was a picture book for young children about her life. Sadly, the book fails to do justice to her […]

Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family’s Journey

Reviewed by Josh Davidson Review Source: Teaching for Change Book Author: Zinn Education Project communications associate Josh Davidson highly recommends this book. Historian Dan Berger has called the Black Power Movement “a love story,” and nothing illustrates this point more than his latest book, Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One […]

My Brother Is Away

Reviewed by Keesha Ceran Review Source: Teaching for Change Book Author: Written by Sara Greenwood and illustrated by Luisa Uribe, My Brother is Away is about a young girl whose brother is incarcerated. The story is based on the author’s childhood experience that connects young readers with similar stories all too rarely represented in children’s […]

Jasmín Pictures Home | Jasmín ilustra su hogar

Reviewed by Brad Manker Review Source: Teaching for Change Book Author:  In Jasmín Pictures Home, three immigrant friends help a fourth find beauty, pride, and a sense of identity in her home country’s culture. When she moves to the United States from Honduras, the protagonist and artist Jasmín — feeling like she is “an island in […]

Grandpa Stops a War: A Paul Robeson Story

Reviewed by Brad Manker Review Source: Teaching for Change Book Author:  Grandpa Stops a War is a biographical picture book of the singer and political activist Paul Robeson — written by his granddaughter — about his involvement in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The book provides some background on Robeson’s rise to fame as a respected […]