Social Justice Picture Books!
I have been furious and exhausted and sad all week, but I still have to get up and go to my job, because my job lives in my house and can’t pour its own cheerios yet. (It’s kids. My job is my kids.)
I’m channeling some of my fury into helping here and now, into donating and volunteering, but the rest of it I’m pouring into my kids – into raising fierce little feminist killjoys, unrepentant SJWs, the nastiest little women. This is never happening again on my watch.
Here’s our reading list:
A is for Activist – Innosanto Nagara
Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation – Duncan Tonatium
Let’s Talk About Race – Julius Lester
Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Maker’s Strike of 1909 – Michelle Markel
Mama Went to Jail for the Vote – Kathleen Karr
This Day in June – Gayle E Pitman
Sonja Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx – Jonah Winter
I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsberg Makes Her Mark – Debbie Levy
Wangari’s Trees of Peace: A True Story From Africa – Jeannette Winter
The Librarian of Basra: A True Story From Iraq – Jeanette Winter
She Loved Baseball: The Effa Manley Story – Audrey Vernick
I Am Rosa Parks – Brad Meltzer
The Little Black Fish – Samed Beh-Rang
Malala Yousafzai: Warrior With Words – Karen Leggett Abouraya
(This one is breaking my heart a little [a lot] but) Hillary Rodham Clinton: Some Girls Are Born to Lead – Michelle Markel
Gimme your recs. I want books about civil rights, about queer issues, about Latinx heroes.
I want books to show my kids how to change the world, and to prove to them that it needs changing.