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We provide LGBTQ-inclusive books to Pre-K through 3rd grade classrooms to help students and teachers “Read out loud, read out proud!”

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We developed the following guides to help teachers start conversations with their students for each of the books that Pride and Less Prejudice donates to them. Clicking on each link will let you preview the guide and easily download it. If you would like download all of the guides, you can download our Box Folder.

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We developed the following guides to help teachers start conversations with their students for each of the books that Pride and Less Prejudice donates to them. Clicking on each link will let you preview the guide and easily download it. If you would like download all of the guides, you can download our Box Folder.

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books about gender diversity for all ages

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Teaching for Change carefully selects the best multicultural and social justice books for children, young adults, and educators.

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A 2022 NCSS-CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Book Pick

" Gives transgender youth a superhero. Illustrations by Kayla Herren are full of bright, vivid pastels, showing a joyful Calvin and a diverse group of classmates. An intentional, inclusive book." - The Boston Globe

★ " This is one happy book that reflects an idealized world, a way we all wish it could be, and that's all right. Illustrator Harren's softly colored, realistic pictures capture that world and Calvin's look perfectly-he's cute as the proverbial button. Finally, the coauthors write with gentle insight, for, as they share in an endnote, they have a trans child themselves." - Booklist, starred review

"This transition story depicts a community cultivating an affirming environment in which a child can flourish. . . Harren's warm, expressive illustrations communicate much of the emotion in the story and are populated with diverse background characters who have various body sizes, skin colors, hair textures, and disabilities. A valuable model of intentional, compassionate response to gender expansive kids and their needs." - Kirkus Reviews

"The bright and engaging illustrations capture Calvin's emotional journey very effectively and feature a diverse community. The author's note is affirming and acknowledges the experiences of the authors who are parents of two children, one of whom identifies as transgender. . . Calvin is a hero for young people who need support in voicing their essential selves, and also for those children who need to see how easy it is to be an ally to others. This addition to the growing list of titles that feature transgender characters is most welcome!" - School Library Journal

"Harren's ... soft, retro palette and colored pencil-esque linework are reminiscent of Leo and Diane Dillon . . . [and] gives the book a cheerful energy; Calvin is impossibly adorable, with a button nose, dimpled cheeks, and wildly curly hair, and his multi-racial family would fit perfectly in the work of a modern Norman Rockwell. The intentionally diverse cast includes various body types, physical disabilities, and even freckles and vitiligo, making this an excellent addition alongside Kyle Lukoff's When Aiden Became a Brother to bring more inclusivity to Trans Day of Visibility and Pride displays." - The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

" Calvin is a perfect book to help readers understand and comprehend the perspective of a transgender child. It's heartwarming, honest, filled with beautiful illustrations and provides a comforting tool for any child who may be nervous about presenting their true selves to the world that surrounds them." - Jeanette Jennings, "I am Jazz" TV series and President of the Transkids Purple Rainbow Foundation

" Calvin is an absolute delight. I couldn't even get through the first few pages without crying happy tears. What a heartfelt, beautiful book-one that I hope every kid, parent, and educator reads. Chances are there's a Calvin somewhere in your life, and I hope you take the time to hear their story." - Robbie Couch, author of The Sky Blues

"Calvin is the heartwarming and affirming story all trans children deserve. Everyone can learn what acceptance looks like from this book." - Amanda Jetté Knox, author of Love Lives Here and LGBTQ advocate

"With pitch-perfect text and beautiful artwork, Calvin hits all the right notes. This informative, inclusive and affirmative story will have you rooting for Calvin all the way through. Bravo Calvin!" - Jason Chin, author, illustrator, Caldecott winner

"Calvin's story-of finding his identity and seeking love and support from the people in his life-is timeless, but it's especially important in this moment when the rights of trans youth are under attack. The story of Calvin is charming and engaging, with beautiful illustrations, and is the perfect addition to any family's home or school's library." - Rebecca Kling, transgender educator and activist

And go from well-read to best read with book recs, deals and more in your inbox every week.

And go from well-read to best read with book recs, deals and more in your inbox every week.

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Calvin by JR Ford, Vanessa Ford: 9780593108673 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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A 2022 NCSS-CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Book Pick " Gives transgender youth a superhero. Illustrations by Kayla Herren are full of bright, vivid pastels, showing a joyful Calvin and a diverse group of classmates. An intentional, inclusive book."

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Today we're pleased to welcome Mark Oshiro to the WNDB blog to discuss The Insiders, out now. We previously revealed the cover for The Insiders here. Could you tell the readers of We Need Diverse Books what they can expect from The Insiders?
The Insiders is a huge departure from my YA books, first of all. It's deliberately funnier, lighter in tone, and way more chaotic. I didn't want to start writing middle grade until I had to craft skills and ideas for stories that felt very, very different from my young adult voice. So you can expect a lot more jokes and the beautiful chaos magic of The Room. However, it's still a Mark Oshiro book, so I'm definitely going to punch you in your heart a few times.
Where did you find inspiration to write this story in particular?
True story: it's actually taken from the very first book I ever wrote when I was 19-20 years old. It was rejected by everyone I ever sent it to, but I held on to it all these years. One thing all that time granted me was the wisdom to read the manuscript with a new perspective, and I realized that the story needed to be tweaked and the main character had to be much younger! The initial inspiration for it was pretty simple: I wanted to write a story featuring a gay Latinx character that dealt with the idea of a magical "closet."
This story mostly takes place in California. However, the characters also travel to South Carolina and Arizona. Why did you choose these places in particular?
I lived in the Bay Area for five years and have traveled out to the central valley multiple times, and there's a mistaken idea that all of California is identical to every other part, and that's definitely not the case. This book allowed me to explore some cultural differences (and similarities!) between Orangevale and San Francisco. I've got family in Arizona, and Charleston is one of my favorite cities to visit.
Each of the characters in The Insiders In The Insiders , there are multiple queer characters. What advice would you give to students trying to navigate middle school while also trying to navigate their identities? face different real-world problems. We know it is so important that there is representation and visibility in the texts teens are reading. What do you hope teens take away from this book? The Insiders has many instances of Spanish words and conversations inserted into the narrative and dialog. How did you decide where and how to use Spanish? Did you have to do any research for this book? If so, what was the most interesting thing you found out about?
I hope readers appreciate the balance between levity and intensity. While this book really feels different from my previous work, I still wanted to dig in on a few difficult topics. My main intent was to give kids hope, to show that even in the darkness, there is a way out. It's a cliché, sure, but I was absolutely thinking of some very challenging things I went through in middle school. I was bullied by a counselor because she perceived me to be gay and blamed how I was being treated by other students on my "behavior." So, having an adult figure in the novel disbelieve Héctor was always intentional. I wanted readers to understand that no matter how young you are, you should feel empowered to stand up to people mistreating you, even if they are adults.
When you write, what is your favorite part of the writing process? Why?
It's hard to answer this because my middle school environment was even more harsh than Héctor's. I didn't have other queer people to look up to or ask for guidance. But I also know that there are currently places around the world much like Héctor's school, and I hope that my book can provide some support in that sense. So: look for the people in your life who will be that support for you. It can be friends, teachers, counselors, librarians, parents, cousins... there is someone in your life who loves you for who you are. Also, Sal's narrative is constructed for people who don't know how they want to identify! You should never feel pressure to "figure out" everything. You have your whole life to do that.
What advice would you give to other young adult authors who want to write about characters with diverse lives and identities? Do you have any recommendations for published/forthcoming books or voices we should be reading?
Wherever it felt natural! I thought about which phrases would make more sense in Spanish based on who was saying them, and I also like to leave context clues so a non-Spanish-speaker can figure out what is being said.

I did research on only two things: the city of Orangevale and horchata recipes! While I'd been to Orangevale a few times in my life (mainly when I was in a band), I still wanted to give a vague sense of realism, so I consulted a map when talking about any directional stuff. There are real places in the book. And the horchata thing... see, I was used to the kind of horchata that ISN'T made with milk, and I got into an argument with a friend who insisted it is ALWAYS made with milk. That's how I found out that there are way more types than I knew. I stuck with the non-milk kind for the book, but that was a fun thing to discover.
What question do you wish you were asked more often (and the answer)?
Editing. Easily. I'm a fast but very messy drafter, and I feel like editing is where I truly "write" the book. Editing is much more difficult and usually takes me longer, but I get a thrill from making the story what it was in my head. Or, in some cases, I'm pushed by my editor to consider taking the story in a direction I hadn't even considered! There is an early version of The Insiders that is very different from the final draft, and I'm happy my editor (Stephanie Stein) pushed me as she did.

If you are writing about yourself and your experience: be honest. Even if your experience is out of the norm or different, that honesty is what's going to keep you going through some of the more difficult parts of writing. I've learned that there is no way to represent every person within a community; do your best to represent what you know!

For those writing about those outside their community and experience: research, talk to others, and do all of this with humility. I find that this is the quickest way folks (and I'm including myself in this!) trip themselves up when trying to represent the world in good faith: they assume they know everything or they assume they can't make mistakes. In one sense, it helps to treat this like you do the rest of the writing process. Do what you can with the wisdom and knowledge you have, and then seek out experts and trusted people to help guide you to a better place.

I am ridiculously behind on my reading because I've written three books in 2021 and have a fourth one due in November. (Please help me, lmao.) However, this year I've enjoyed:

Beasts of Prey by Ayana Gray
The Ivory Key by Akshaya Raman
Torment: A Novella by H.D. Hunter
Between Perfect and Real by Ray Stoeve
Nothing Burns as Bright as You by Ashley Woodfolk
White Smoke by Tiffany Jackson

What were you listening to while writing The Insiders? I'm a HUGE music geek, and I have to write/edit to music, so I'm always eager to talk about music. That being said, I'm already making this hard to answer because I listen to SO MUCH music. However, I wrote the first draft of The Insiders in early 2020, and I remember listening to a lot of Poppy, Propagandhi, Bastille, Florence + The Machine, Robyn (especially that EP with Röyksopp!), and SiR.

******

Mark Oshiro is the Schneider Award-winning author of the YA books Anger Is a Gift and Each of Us a Desert. When they are not writing, they are busy trying to fulfill their lifelong goal: to pet every dog in the world. The Insiders is their middle grade debut. Visit them online at markoshiro.com

******

Olivia Mules is currently pursuing her master's degree in library and information science. Olivia's goal is to work in academic librarianship and reference services with a focus on information literacy. Before starting her degree program, she was a special education teacher and taught math and science. Her favorite literary heroines are Elizabeth Bennet, Gemma Doyle, and Arya Dröttning. When Olivia is not doing schoolwork, she enjoys cooking, music, hikes with her wife and daughter, and drinking an inordinate amount of iced coffee.

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Today we're pleased to welcome Mark Oshiro to the WNDB blog to discuss The Insiders, out now. We previously revealed the cover for The Insiders here. Could you tell the readers of We Need Diverse Books what they can expect from The Insiders? The Insiders is a huge departure from my YA books, first of all.

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The Morales cousins scramble to save their grandfather's taco shop - and pursue their own dreams - as gentrification shakes up their LA neighborhood. Watch trailers & learn more.

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Watch Ginny & Georgia | Netflix Official Site

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Free-spirited Georgia and her two kids, Ginny and Austin, move north in search of a fresh start but find that the road to new beginnings can be bumpy. Watch trailers & learn more.

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Dear White People | Netflix Official Site

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Rivalries, romance, identity crises: College was already full of drama. Now this elite school is in for a real wake-up call. Watch trailers & learn more.

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Watch Amend: The Fight for America | Netflix Official Site

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Will Smith hosts this look at the evolving, often lethal, fight for equal rights in America through the lens of the US Constitution's 14th Amendment. Watch trailers & learn more.

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Watch When They See Us | Netflix Official Site

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Five teens from Harlem become trapped in a nightmare when they're falsely accused of a brutal attack in Central Park. Based on the true story. Watch trailers & learn more.

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Welcome to the Leading Equity Podcast

The Leading Equity Podcast focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their school. On this podcast, listeners can expect to hear interviews and stories from voices of equity in education today. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and Spotify!

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The Leading Equity Podcast focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their school. On this podcast, listeners can expect to hear interviews and stories from voices of equity in education today. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and Spotify!

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Watch Spirit Rangers | Netflix Official Site

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Native American siblings Kodi, Summer and Eddy have a secret: They're "Spirit Rangers" who help protect the national park they call home! Watch trailers & learn more.

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Lies Your Teacher Taught You: The Truth About Thanksgiving

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Listen to this episode from All My Relations Podcast on Spotify. "The Truth about Thanksgiving" is the first installment of a series we're calling "Lies your teacher taught you". In this episode we sit down with Matika and her 13-year-old nephew to teach about the true history of European and Native contact.

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We lead with the heart and courageously work to address racial injustice in education, embodying Black joy, confronting anti-Blackness, and building authentic partnerships with all who support creating equitable school communities across the nation.

​In September 2016, DeShawn Jackson, along with Black Men Uniting to Change The Narrative, planned a day of encouragement. The previous school year, another local elementary school had more than 200 Black men show up to greet students as they arrived at school. The men wore their uniforms, regalia, and Sunday best in hopes of disrupting the inaccurate imagery students have of Black men. Black men make up only 3% of teachers in k-12 education.​

DeShawn had taught at the school for six years and even attended the elementary school as a child. He wanted students to see Black men in a positive light, not like they often are portrayed in media. A bomb threat was called into the school on the day of the event, so school leadership officially canceled it. Yet, after the threat was investigated, nothing was found, and the school remained open. So, DeShawn personally greeted students and about fifty others joined him.

When students arrived at John Muir Elementary School, they were greeted with cheers and high-fives while drums played in the background. Black men showed up because they wanted to counter the perception students have about education and race. Inside the school, staff wore shirts that said "Black Lives Matter We Stand Together."Julie Trout, the art teacher, designed the shirts. Teachers' lessons for the day were focused on racial justice.

​Social Equality Educators (SEE), a group within the Seattle teachers union, decided October 19th would be "Black Lives Matter At School Day." They'd wear Black Lives Matter shirts to school, created a second design with "#Say Her Name," and educators picked from several options. Parent Teacher Associations made buttons and stickers for teachers and students to wear. This attracted national news, which spread to Philadelphia, where the Racial Justice & Organizing Committee of the Caucus of Working Educators was inspired to plan a similar action.

We envision a nation in which we live in authentic and conscious relationship with ourselves, each other, and the lands we occupy with the least amount of harm and violence, in which we are unapologetically Black and collectively love and care for one another as extended intergenerational families. To achieve safety, equity, and liberation for all Black lives, we attend to systems and networks of care to make the domination, erasure, and dehumanization of Black life obsolete. ​

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National coalition organizing for racial justice in education.

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Hulu's six-part 1619 Docuseries is an expansion of "The 1619 Project" created by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times Magazine.

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Gentrification sucks . . . yet change is inevitable. We're joined today by Young Adult author, Jade Adia, whose first novel, There Goes The Neighborhood takes place in a fictional neighborhood in South LA being wracked by gentrification. We discuss Jade's personal story and how it led to her writing this novel, and we discuss ways of getting involved and finding connection in our neighborhoods.

John Blake has been writing about race and religion as a reporter for over 25 years, and over those years he has come to discover that facts don't change people, relationships do. His relationship with his mother and her sister, his father's relationships on the decks of a Merchant Marine ship, the multi-racial community he formed through church - these relationships across difference are what led to changes in racial attitudes for his relatives and for himself. He chronicles it all in his memoir, More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew, and he joins us to talk about it.

As we launch season 10, we are focusing on 4 themes: The importance of public schools, the power of storytelling, the importance of being in community, and stamina. We talk about why these themes feel important now, and update listeners on the start of the school year.

Andrew is a White dad from Denver, and the father of a 6th grader and 3rd grader. He believe that #ThurgoodWasRight - unless our kids learn together, there is little hope we will learn to live together and understand each other.

Val Brown is a Black mom from North Carolina. She believes that education is a vehicle for social change, and encourages parents, caregivers, and educators to engage in public discourse about critical topics because it allows them to learn with and from others.

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Gentrification sucks . . . yet change is inevitable. We're joined today by Young Adult author, Jade Adia, whose first novel, There Goes The Neighborhood takes place in a fictional neighborhood in South LA being wracked by gentrification.

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Teaching While White: Where Whiteness Intersects with Antiracist Teaching & Learning

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Teaching While White: Where Whiteness Intersects with Antiracist Teaching & Learning

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Teaching While White (TWW) seeks to move the conversation forward on how to be consciously, intentionally, anti-racist in the classroom.

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Jenna Sits down with our new co-host Liza Talusan to discuss principled partnerships across race.

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In this episode, Elizabeth sits down with Elena Aguilar to talk about how race shows up in coaching relationships.

Read More

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Teaching Hard History - Learning for Justice

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Teaching Hard History - Learning for Justice

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Congressman Hakeem Jeffries represents New York's 8th congressional district. Our final episode this season takes us to the U.S. House of Representatives for a conversation between Rep. Jeffries and his brother, our host, Dr. Hasan Jeffries, to discuss the lingering effects of the Jim Crow era-including voter access, prison and policing reform, and other enduring injustices-and to discuss the continued relevance of teaching "hard history" as it relates to public policy today.

After emancipation, aspects of the legal system were reshaped to maintain control of Black lives and labor. Historian Robert T. Chase outlines the evolution of convict leasing in the prison system. And Historian Brandon T. Jett explores the commercial factors behind the transition from extra-legal lynchings to police enforcement of the color line. We examine the connections between these early practices and the more familiar apparatuses of today's justice system-from policing to penitentiaries.

From concertos to operas, Black composers captured the changes and challenges facing African Americans during Jim Crow. Renowned classical pianist Lara Downes is bringing new appreciation to the works of artists like Florence Price and Scott Joplin. In our final installment of Music Reconstructed, Downes discusses how we can hear the complicated history of this era with historian Charles L. Hughes.

When we consider the trauma of white supremacy during the Jim Crow era-what writer Ralph Ellison describes as "the brutal experience"-it's important to understand the resilience and joy that sustained Black communities. We can experience that all through the "near-comic, near-tragic lyricism" of the blues. In part 3 of this series, acclaimed musician, songwriter and poet Adia Victoria talks with Charles L. Hughes about how the bittersweet nature of blues does "the very emotionally mature work of acknowledging" this complex history.

Black political ideologies in the early 20th century evolved against a backdrop of derogatory stereotypes and racial terrorism. Starting with Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Agency, historian Minkah Makalani contextualizes an era of Black intellectualism. From common goals of racial unity to fierce debates over methods, he shows how movements of the 1920s and 1930s fed into what became the civil rights and Black Power movement.

From ranches to railroads, learn about the often unrecognized role that African Americans played in the range cattle industry, as Pullman porters and in law enforcement. In part two of this special series, Grammy Award-winner Dom Flemons takes us on a musical exploration of the American West after emancipation. "The American Songster" joins historian Charles L. Hughes to discuss the complexity of the sounds, songs and stories about the Jim Crow era.

This nation has a long history of exploiting Black Americans in the name of medicine. A practice which began with the Founding Fathers using individual enslaved persons for gruesome experimentation evolved into state-sanctioned injustices such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, among others. Award-winning historian Dr. Deirdre Cooper-Owens details a chronology of medical malpractice and racist misconceptions about health while highlighting lesser-known stories of medical innovations by African Americans.

This is a special four-part series where historian Charles L. Hughes introduces us to musicians who are exploring the sounds, songs and stories of the Jim Crow era. In this installment, Jazz pianist Jason Moran discusses his acclaimed musical celebration of a man he calls "Big Bang of Jazz," bandleader, arranger and composer James Reese Europe. During World War I, Europe fought as a Lieutenant with the fabled "Harlem Hellfighters" 369th U.S. Infantry and directed the regiment's renowned band.

During the Harlem Renaissance, more Black artists than ever before were asking key questions about the role of art in society. Oftentimes the Harlem Renaissance is misconstrued as a discrete moment in American history-not as the next iteration of a thriving Black artistic tradition that it was. Literature scholar Julie Buckner Armstrong urges educators to look deeper into the texts left to us by these artists and come to a fuller understanding of this stage in a long chronology of Black artistic expression.

In the United States, Black athletes have had to contend with two sets of rules: those of the game and those of a racist society. While they dealt with 20th century realities of breaking the color line and the politics of respectability, Black fans, educational institutions, and the Black press were building sporting congregations with their own wealth and energy. Historians Derrick White and Louis Moore trace how these great men and women worked to create a more just future on the field and off.

Opportunities created by the New Deal were often denied to African Americans. And that legacy of exclusion to jobs, loans and services can be seen today in federal programs and policies as well as systemic inequities in housing, education, health and the accumulation of wealth. Historian Jill Watts examines the complicated history of the New Deal, beginning with the growing political influence of Black voters in the 1930s, the election of FDR and the creation of the Black Cabinet.

U.S. involvement in world wars and the domestic Black freedom struggle shaped one another. By emphasizing the diverse stories of servicemen and women, historian Adriane Lentz-Smith situates Black soldiers as agents of American empire who were simultaneously building their own institutions at home. While white elected officials worked to systemically embed segregation into government, African Americans attempted to bolster their citizenship and freedom rights through soldiering.

Historian Tera Hunter describes Black institution-building post-slavery and throughout the Jim Crow era, illustrating how Black workers reorganized labor to their advantage, despite virulent white resistance. During the same period, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) produced future leaders while cultivating resistance to white supremacy-and continue to do so. Educator Jelani Favors explains the evolution of these institutions, noting their legacies of social activism and student advocacy.

Naming the 1921 Tulsa massacre a "race riot" is inaccurate. Historian David Krugler urges listeners to call this and other violent attacks what they were: premeditated attempts at ethnic cleansing. Decades before, African Americans moved North in record numbers during the Great Migration. Krugler delves into connections between diaspora and violence and highlights the strength of Black communities in resistance to white supremacist terrorism.

Black American experiences during Jim Crow were deeply affected by the ever-present threat of lynching and other forms of racist violence. Historian Kidada Williams amplifies perspectives from Black families, telling stories of lynching victims obscured by white newspapers. She and Kellie Carter Jackson urge educators to confront the role of this violence in American history, how major institutions stood idly by and how Black Americans fought for justice.

The Lost Cause narrative would have us believe that Confederate monuments have always been celebrated, but people have protested them since they started going up. Historian Karen Cox unpacks how the United Daughters of the Confederacy used propaganda to dominate generations of teachings about the Civil War through textbooks, legislation, and popular culture-and how, after the war, the South and the North prized white reconciliation over justice for all.

Just months after the Civil War ended, former Confederates had regained political footholds in Washington, D.C. In her overview of Reconstruction, Kate Masur notes how-in the face of evolving, post-slavery white supremacy-Black people claimed their citizenship and began building institutions of their own. Ahmad Ward then takes us to 1860s Mitchelville, South Carolina, where Black policing power, land ownership and more self-governance were the norm.

Historian Ed Baptist provides context on the creation and enforcement of a U.S. racial binary that endures today, as well as Black resistance as a force for political change. And Aisha White urges educators to ask themselves, "What did you learn about race when you were younger?" before they engage with children. She argues that self-reflection and ongoing education are vital tools to combat the fallacy of ignoring students' racialized experiences.

People from all corners of public life are telling teachers to stop discussions about race and racism in the classroom, but keeping the truth of the world from students simply doesn't work. English teacher Matthew Kay urges educators to create brave spaces instead. He provides examples of classroom strategies for engaging with students at the intersections of race, literature and lived experience. Hint: it involves vulnerability, accountability and quality affirmations.

This season, we're examining the century between the Civil War and the modern civil rights movement to understand how systemic racism and slavery persisted and evolved after emancipation-and how Black Americans still developed strong institutions during this time. Co-hosts Hasan Kwame Jeffries and Bethany Jay discuss how students need to grasp this history to understand injustices many of them face today, from voter suppression to mass incarceration.

In 2015, Coach Steve Bandura loaded the Anderson Monarchs, a Little League baseball team from Philadelphia, onto a 1947 Flxible Clipper Bus for a barnstorming tour back in time. Bandura and the players recount lessons learned while visiting historic civil rights sites, meeting veteran activists and playing baseball along the way. And historian Derrick E. White, co-host of The Black Athlete podcast, explores the intersection of sports and civil rights history.

The civil rights movement offers critical context for understanding the systemic police violence, voter suppression efforts, 'law and order' rhetoric and criminalization of activism we see today. It also helps us understand the strategies activists use to fight these injustices. Historians Shannon King and Nishani Frazier explain how they use 21st-century Black activism to teach the movement's history-and how they use the movement to help students better understand the contemporary Black freedom struggle.

The history of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense can help us understand the transition from civil rights to Black Power and contemporary issues like mass incarceration. From the Ten-Point Platform to survival programs, historian Robyn C. Spencer outlines key aspects of the party's revolutionary ideology, grassroots activism and community service. And historian Jakobi Williams joins to share valuable classroom insights.

Historian Clarence Lang joins us for a conversation about Malcolm X. We discuss his commitment to Black pride and self-determination and his rejection of the white gaze and the myth of American exceptionalism. Learn how teaching about the life and works of Malcolm X can illuminate the universe of possibilities of the civil rights movement-and the diversity of ideology, strategy and political thought within the Black freedom struggle.

In this episode, we talk with movement veteran Courtland Cox about lessons from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and his own development as a young organizer of the Emmett Till generation. We join Karlyn Forner and John B. Gartrell to tour the resources available through SNCC Digital Gateway. And we hear from student organizer Kaia Woodford about the lessons from the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements that inform her activism today.

Oral histories, historic sites, archives and museums expand students' understanding of the past. They fill in gaps in our textbooks-complementing what's included and capturing what's not. This episode highlights online oral history collections including the Civil Rights History Project. It offers recommendations for students conducting their own oral histories. And it explores resources from the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

Teaching civil rights history to young learners creates both opportunities and challenges. The 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project and the subsequent Freedom Schools offer important lessons for helping elementary students to understand the civil rights movement. In this episode, we explore community-based strategies and activities for bringing the Black freedom struggle into your classroom.

If you're finding this podcast useful, please support us by taking our 10 question Listener Survey. And stay tuned! More episodes are on the way. In the meantime, if you're looking for ways to talk with students about the relationship between the hard history of white supremacy and the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Learning for Justice resources can help you lead student-responsive, historically grounded discussions about the recent violence.

From the hard work of organizing to the reality of everyday life under Jim Crow, films and literature can bring historical context to life for students. In this episode, we recommend several "must use" films, books, poems and plays for teaching the civil rights movement. We also discuss strategies for incorporating these works across the curricula and for turning even problematic texts into grist for meaningful critical discussions.

Everyone thinks they know the story, but the real history of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott is even better. This episode details the events that set the stage for Ms. Parks' civil disobedience. You'll meet the leaders and organizations who transformed a moment of activism into a 13-month campaign. And you'll learn about the community that held fast in the face of legal and political attacks, economic coercion, intimidation and violence.

To fully understand the United States today, we have to comprehend the central role that slavery played in our nation's past. That legacy is also the foundation for understanding the civil rights movement and its place within the history of the Black freedom struggle. This episode is a special look back at our first season. It explores and expands on the 10 Key Concepts that ground Learning for Justice's K-12 frameworks for teaching the hard history of American slavery.

You cannot teach the civil rights movement without talking about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But it's critical that students deconstruct the mythology surrounding the movement's most iconic figure to learn about the man, not just the hero. The real Dr. King held beliefs that evolved over time. A complex man, he was part of a much larger movement-one that shaped him as much as he shaped it.

The civil rights movement was never strictly a Southern phenomenon. To better understand the Jim Crow North, we explore discrimination and Black protest in places like Milwaukee, Omaha, Cleveland and New York. To examine the Black Freedom Movement beyond the South, we examine the Black-led fights to gain access to decent housing, secure quality education and end police brutality in these cities.

Armed resistance and nonviolent direct action co-existed throughout the civil rights era. In this episode, three historians confront some comfortable assumptions about nonviolence and self-defense. Wesley Hogan examines the evolution, value and limitations of nonviolence in the movement. Christopher Strain offers a three-part strategy for rethinking this false dichotomy in the classroom. And Akinyele Umoja offers insights about armed resistance from his research in Mississippi.

Alice Qannik Glenn is the host of Coffee and Quaq and assistant producer of The Forgotten Slavery of our Ancestors. This short, classroom-ready film offers an introduction to the history of Indigenous enslavement on land that is currently the United States. This new resource from Learning for Justice features an extensive group of experts, many of whom will be familiar to listeners from Season 2.

Jim Crow was more than signs and separation. It was a system of terror and violence created to control the labor and regulate the behavior of Black people. In this episode, historian Stephen Berrey unpacks the mechanics of racial oppression, the actions white people took-in and beyond the South-to maintain white supremacy, and the everyday ways Black people fought back. And the directors of the film An Outrage join ELA-teacher Ahmariah Jackson to discuss teaching the racial terror of lynching.

Music chronicles the history of the civil rights struggle: The events, tactics and emotions of the movement are documented in songs of the era. From The Freedom Singers to Sam Cooke, historian Charles L. Hughes explains how your students can use music for both historical insight and evidence in the classroom.

Students don't enter our classrooms as blank slates. When it comes to the civil rights movement, we often have to help our students unlearn what they think they know while we're teaching them what actually happened. The people were more complex, the strategies more complicated and the stakes more dangerous than we like to remember. In this episode, historian Nishani Frazier and social studies teacher Adam Sanchez demonstrate the value of teaching the movement from the grassroots up.

Teaching the civil rights movement accurately and effectively requires deconstructing the myths and misconceptions around it. Most people are familiar with a very specific version of the movement that exaggerates government support and denies the existence and persistence of racism outside the South. Julian Bond called this the "Master Narrative." It celebrates sanitized icons and downplays grassroots organizing. And it overhypes nonviolence while disparaging self-defense and Black Power. In this episode, we talk with historian Nishani Frazier and social studies teacher Adam Sanchez about how to separate fact from fiction in your civil rights teaching.

The systems that enabled and perpetuated African and Indigenous enslavement in what is now the U.S. have much in common, and their histories tell us a great deal about the present. Professors Bethany Jay and Steven Oliver join us to talk about connections between the first two seasons and how to teach them, and we preview what's to come in season three.

In this special call-in episode, listeners share their stories and questions from throughout season 2-including teaching remotely, working with families and stakeholders, and incorporating social justice into subjects like math and science. As educators, we're strongest when we support each other. And you'll hear great suggestions from fellow teachers, like these resources we discuss from Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia.

It's time for our first call-in show! We know things are chaotic for you and every other educator right now. We feel it too, so this seems like the perfect time to talk. Pick up the phone and dial 888-59-STORY (888-597-8679). Our lines are open until Sunday night, April 19. Teaching hard history is even harder right now, so let's talk about resources you can use if you're teaching virtually. Ask us your questions; tell us your stories. And let us know how you're doing.

Indian Removal was a brutal and complicated effort that textbooks often simplify. It is also inseparably related to slavery. Enslavers seeking profit drove demand for Indigenous lands, displacing hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people. Some of these Indigenous people participated in chattel slavery. Focusing on the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations, this episode pulls the lens back to show how Removal and enslavement must be taught together. This story must be told if we're going to understand the full hard history of American enslavement.

The Americas were built on the lands, labor and lives of Indigenous peoples. Despite being erased from history textbooks after the so-called first Thanksgiving, Indigenous peoples did not disappear. Colonial settlers relied on the cooperation, exploitation and forced labor of their Native neighbors to survive and thrive in what became North America. Focusing on New England, historian Margaret Newell introduces us to the Charter Generation of systematically enslaved people across this continent.

From 1936 to 1938, the Federal Writers' Project collected stories from people who had been enslaved. The WPA Slave Narrative Collection at the Library of Congress is a valuable resource; these oral histories are also problematic. Interpreting these narratives within literary and historical context, students can develop primary source literacy. Historian Cynthia Lynn Lyerly outlines unique insights these texts can add to your curriculum.

To better understand the United States' past and present, we need to better understand Indigenous identities-and classrooms play a huge role. This starts with examining what's missing from our social studies, history, civics and government curricula. Throughout this episode, we reference the K-5 Framework for Teaching Hard History as we shed light on key topics like sovereignty, land and erasure.

Educators can no longer ignore our country's history of Indigenous enslavement. Our students need a fuller understanding of the pivotal history of slavery to comprehend the present and develop a vision for our nation's future. In this mid-season recap, we highlight key lessons about this consequential part of American history-along with teaching strategies and resources-through the voices of leading scholars and educators featured so far.

Throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the forced labor and bondage of Indigenous peoples was integral to the economic and political history of what became the Southwestern United States. Historian and author Andrés Reséndez outlines the significance of silver mining, Indigenous enslavement and resistance in the history of New Mexico and Latin America. We examine how, as white settlers moved west, so-called "free soil" states like California continued to institutionalize coerced labor.
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A hundred years before the first ship carrying enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia, Europeans introduced the commercial practice of enslavement in "The New World." And for the next 400 years, millions of Indigenous people throughout the Americas were enslaved through several forms of forced labor and bondage. Historian and author Andrés Reséndez calls this "The Other Slavery," and his work is changing our understanding of the transatlantic slave trade.
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Andrés Reséndez is the author of The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. His work has changed conventional wisdom about the institution of slavery in the Atlantic world. Over the next two episodes, host Hasan Kwame Jeffries and Reséndez will discuss key turning points in this history-exploring how it expands our understanding of the transatlantic slave trade and the lasting legacy of colonialism, which continues to reverberate in our communities. Be sure to join us.
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Each autumn, Thanksgiving brings a disturbing amount of inaccurate information and troubling myths into classrooms across the United States. Most students don't learn much about the history of Native nations-and even less about Indigenous peoples today. Dr. Debbie Reese explains what to look for and what to avoid (or teach with a critical lens) when selecting children's books by and about Indigenous people. She also recommends specific books to counter common misconceptions in your classroom.
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Children's books are often the primary way young students are exposed to the history of American slavery. But many books about slavery sugarcoat oppression. Professor Ebony Elizabeth Thomas examines what we should consider when it comes to how children's books portray African Americans and Indigenous people, their cultures and the effects of enslavement. She also explains why it's crucial to create "a balance of narratives" when selecting books about marginalized and underrepresented communities.
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For elementary teachers approaching the topic of slavery, it can be tempting to focus only on heroes and avoid explaining oppression. But teachers' omissions speak as loudly as what they choose to include. And what children learn in the early grades has broad consequences for the rest of their education. Dr. Kate Shuster guides us through the new Teaching Hard History K-5 framework from Learning for Justice. We also learn how four elementary teachers are beginning to use it in their classrooms.
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Understanding Indigenous enslavement expands our conception of slavery in what is now the United States. It spread across the entire continent and affected millions of people of different backgrounds. If we define slavery too narrowly, we can fail to see its persistence over time and even its modern-day permutations. Historian Christina Snyder examines the Civil War, Lincoln and emancipation with Indigenous people in mind.
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Millions of Indigenous people lived in North America before European colonial powers invaded. Along with an insatiable desire for free labor, Europeans brought a system of slavery that significantly differed from the historical practices of enslavement among Native nations. Historian Christina Snyder tells the story of what happened when these worlds collided. European concepts of bondage transformed the way Native nations interacted with each other, resulted in the enslavement and death of millions of Indigenous people, and sparked widespread resistance by Native nations.
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The Smithsonian's Eduardo Díaz and Renée Gokey discuss the importance of learning about Indigenous enslavement. And former Teaching Tolerance Director Maureen Costello explains all of the program's classroom resources available for teaching this history, including a first-of-its-kind K-5 framework.
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We're turning our attention to the enslavement of Indigenous people, spending more time with teachers in the classroom and adding support for K-5 educators. Tune in next week for more advice about teaching the history and long legacy of American slavery.
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Download the transcript for all of season 1 here.

Historian Bethany Jay returns - answering questions from educators across the country. Host Hasan Kwame Jeffries and the co-editor of Understanding and Teaching American Slavery confront teacher anxieties and counter misconceptions in our season finale.
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From elementary to high school, YA literature can introduce fundamental themes and information about slavery, especially when paired with primary sources. John H. Bickford shows how to capitalize on the strengths and weaknesses of trade books about slavery.
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Using the present to explore the past. Tamara Spears and Jordan Lanfair suggest a Social Studies unit about Resistance & Kanye West, and a set of English Language Arts lessons examining holidays to understand the legacy of American slavery.
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How it's done. Tamara Spears teaches middle school Social Studies in New York and Jordan Lanfair is a high school English Language Arts teacher in Chicago. Each has been developing additional lessons about slavery for years. They share their experiences.
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Over the next few episodes, we're bringing Season One to a close. Tune in for stories from the classroom, guidance for elementary teachers and language arts classes. And answers to questions from listeners like you.
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Enslavement didn't end with Emancipation. Historian James Brewer Stewart discusses modern-day slavery happening across the world-and right here in the U.S.-showing educators how to connect the past with the present.
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A listener's question leads to a meaningful moment. And now we want more! Take a listen, then email us to tell us your story about teaching hard history for an upcoming, special episode.
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At James Madison's Montpelier, the legacy of enslaved people isn't silenced-and their descendants have a voice. Christian Cotz, Price Thomas and Dr. Patrice Preston Grimes explain how that happened, and why it's important.
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In the United States, justice was never blind. Historian Paul Finkelman goes beyond legal jargon to illustrate how slavery was entangled with the opinions of the Court-and encoded into the Constitution itself.
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Constitutional historian Paul Finkelman explains the deeply racist bargains the founding fathers struck in order to unify the country under one document and discusses what students need to know about how slavery defined America after the Revolution.
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Film historian Ron Briley returns with more documentary, feature film and miniseries suggestions for history and English instructors. From Ken Burns to Black Panther, this episode offers background and strategies for incorporating pop culture into classroom lessons.
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Film has long shaped our nation's historical memory, for good and bad. Film historian Ron Briley offers ways to responsibly use films in the classroom to reframe the typical narrative of American slavery and Reconstruction.
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Most students leave school thinking enslaved people lived like characters in Gone With the Wind. Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens reveals the remarkable diversity of lived experiences within slavery and explains the gap between what scholars and students know.
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To see a more complete picture of the experience of enslaved people, you have to redefine resistance. Dr. Kenneth S. Greenberg offers teachers a lens to help students see the ways in which enslaved people fought back against the brutality of slavery.
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Students learning about slavery often ask, "Why didn't enslaved people just run away or revolt?" Lindsay Anne Randall offers a lesson in "Process Drama"-a method teachers can use to answer this question, build empathy and offer perspective.
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In many ways, the U.S. has fallen short of its ideals. How can we explain this to students-particularly in the context of discussing slavery? Professor Steven Thurston Oliver has this advice for teachers: Face your fears.
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Follow the money. Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara explains why American slavery couldn't have existed without a national commercial infrastructure that supported and benefited from the labor of enslaved people.
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Dr. Bethany Jay is back to talk about teaching the end of the Civil War, and how enslaved people's participation in the war helped subvert the institution of slavery.
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What really caused the Civil War? In this episode, Salem State University Professor Bethany Jay offers tips for teaching lesser-known history that clarifies this question and cuts through our cloudy national understanding of the Confederacy.
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What we don't know about American history hurts us all. Teaching Hard History begins with the long and brutal legacy of chattel slavery and reaches through the victories of and violent responses to the civil rights movement to the present day.

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to challenge the traditional canon in order to create a more inclusive, representative, and equitable language arts curriculum that our students deserve.

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#Disrupt Texts: Crowdsourced, Grass Roots Effort By Teachers 4 Teachers

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#Disrupt Texts: Crowdsourced, Grass Roots Effort By Teachers 4 Teachers

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Rom-coms and historical fiction and sci-fi and graphic novels-these Asian YA authors have got all of your queer reading needs covered! This list includes recent and upcoming LGBTQIAP+ young adult books written by Asian writers, so get your wallets and library cards ready!

Available Now:

When Dimple Met Rishi meets Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda in this rom com about two teen girls with rival henna businesses.

When Nishat comes out to her parents, they say she can be anyone she wants-as long as she isn't herself. Because Muslim girls aren't lesbians. Nishat doesn't want to hide who she is, but she also doesn't want to lose her relationship with her family. And her life only gets harder once a childhood friend walks back into her life.

Flávia is beautiful and charismatic and Nishat falls for her instantly. But when a school competition invites students to create their own businesses, both Flávia and Nishat choose to do henna, even though Flávia is appropriating Nishat's culture. Amidst sabotage and school stress, their lives get more tangled-but Nishat can't quite get rid of her crush on Flávia, and realizes there might be more to her than she realized.

Felix Ever After meets Becky Albertalli in this swoon-worthy, heartfelt rom-com about how a transgender teen's first love challenges his ideas about perfect relationships.

Noah Ramirez thinks he's an expert on romance. He has to be for his popular blog, the Meet Cute Diary, a collection of trans happily ever afters. There's just one problem-all the stories are fake. What started as the fantasies of a trans boy afraid to step out of the closet has grown into a beacon of hope for trans readers across the globe.

When a troll exposes the blog as fiction, Noah's world unravels. The only way to save the Diary is to convince everyone that the stories are true, but he doesn't have any proof. Then Drew walks into Noah's life, and the pieces fall into place: Drew is willing to fake-date Noah to save the Diary. But when Noah's feelings grow beyond their staged romance, he realizes that dating in real life isn't quite the same as finding love on the page.

In this charming novel by Emery Lee, Noah will have to choose between following his own rules for love or discovering that the most romantic endings are the ones that go off script.

Acclaimed author of Ash Malinda Lo returns with her most personal and ambitious novel yet, a gripping story of love and duty set in San Francisco's Chinatown during the Red Scare.

"That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other." And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: "Have you ever heard of such a thing?"

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.

America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father-despite his hard-won citizenship-Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

Maren and her girlfriend Kaia set out to rescue Sev and free the dragons from the corrupt emperor in the explosive finale to the journey that began with the thrilling Shatter the Sky.

Let them burn.

Maren's world was shattered when her girlfriend, Kaia, was abducted by the Aurati. After a daring rescue, they've finally been reunited, but Maren's life is still in pieces: Kaia seems more like a stranger than the lover Maren knew back home; Naava, the mother of all dragons, has retreated into seclusion to recover from her wounds, leaving Maren at a loss on how to set the rest of the dragons free; and worst of all, her friend Sev has been captured by the emperor's Talons.

As a prisoner of Zefed, Sev finds himself entangled in a treacherous game of court politics. With more people joining the rebellion, whispers of a rogue dragon mistress spreading, and escape seeming less likely with each passing day, Sev knows that it won't be long before the emperor decides to make an example of him. If he's to survive, he'll have to strike first-or hope Maren reaches him in time.

With the final battle for Zefed looming, Maren must set aside her fears, draw upon all she's learned about her dragon-touched abilities, and face her destiny once and for all. But when the fighting is over and the smoke clears, who will be left standing?

The world of K-Pop has never met a star like this. Debut author Lyla Lee delivers a deliciously fun, thoughtful rom-com celebrating confidence and body positivity-perfect for fans of Jenny Han and Julie Murphy.

Skye Shin has heard it all. Fat girls shouldn't dance. Wear bright colors. Shouldn't call attention to themselves. But Skye dreams of joining the glittering world of K-Pop, and to do that, she's about to break all the rules that society, the media, and even her own mother, have set for girls like her.

She'll challenge thousands of other performers in an internationally televised competition looking for the next K-pop star, and she'll do it better than anyone else.

When Skye nails her audition, she's immediately swept into a whirlwind of countless practices, shocking performances, and the drama that comes with reality TV. What she doesn't count on are the highly fat-phobic beauty standards of the Korean pop entertainment industry, her sudden media fame and scrutiny, or the sparks that soon fly with her fellow competitor, Henry Cho.

But Skye has her sights on becoming the world's first plus-sized K-pop star, and that means winning the competition-without losing herself.

Tiến loves his family and his friends...but Tiến has a secret he's been keeping from them, and it might change everything. An amazing YA graphic novel that deals with the complexity of family and how stories can bring us together.

Real life isn't a fairytale.

But Tiến still enjoys reading his favorite stories with his parents from the books he borrows from the local library. It's hard enough trying to communicate with your parents as a kid, but for Tiến, he doesn't even have the right words because his parents are struggling with their English. Is there a Vietnamese word for what he's going through?

Is there a way to tell them he's gay?

A beautifully illustrated story by Trung Le Nguyen that follows a young boy as he tries to navigate life through fairytales, an instant classic that shows us how we are all connected. The Magic Fish tackles tough subjects in a way that accessible with readers of all ages, and teaches us that no matter what-we can all have our own happy endings.

A desperate orphan turned pirate and a rebellious imperial daughter find a connection on the high seas in a world divided by colonialism and threaded with magic.

Aboard the pirate ship Dove, Flora the girl takes on the identity of Florian the man to earn the respect and protection of the crew. For Flora, former starving urchin, the brutal life of a pirate is about survival: don't trust, don't stick out, and don't feel. But on this voyage, as the pirates prepare to sell their unsuspecting passengers into slavery, Flora is drawn to the Lady Evelyn Hasegawa, who is en route to a dreaded arranged marriage with her own casket in tow. Flora doesn't expect to be taken under Evelyn's wing, and Evelyn doesn't expect to find such a deep bond with the pirate Florian.

Soon the unlikely pair set in motion a wild escape that will free a captured mermaid (coveted for her blood, which causes men to have visions and lose memories) and involve the mysterious Pirate Supreme, an opportunistic witch, and the all-encompassing Sea itself.
In this companion to the award-winning Darius the Great Is Not Okay, Darius suddenly has it all: a boyfriend, an internship, a spot on the soccer team. It's everything he's ever wanted-but what if he deserves better?
Darius Kellner is having a bit of a year. Since his trip to Iran this past spring, a lot has changed. He's getting along with his dad, and his best friend Sohrab is only a Skype call away. Between his first boyfriend, Landon, his varsity soccer practices, and his internship at his favorite tea shop, Darius is feeling pretty okay. Like he finally knows what it means to be Darius Kellner.

Then, of course, everything changes. Darius's grandmothers are in town for a long visit while his dad is gone on business, and Darius isn't sure whether they even like him. The internship isn't what Darius thought it would be, and now he doesn't know about turning tea into his career. He was sure he liked Landon, but when he starts hanging out with Chip-soccer teammate and best friend of Trent Bolger, epic bully-well, he's just not so sure about Landon anymore, either.

Darius thought he knew exactly who he was and what he wanted, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe he deserves better.

It's 1989 in New York City, and for three teens, the world is changing.

Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. He's terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows he's gay, but all he knows of gay life are the media's images of men dying of AIDS.

Judy is an aspiring fashion designer who worships her uncle Stephen, a gay man with AIDS who devotes his time to activism as a member of ACT UP. Judy has never imagined finding romance...until she falls for Reza and they start dating.

Art is Judy's best friend, their school's only out and proud teen. He'll never be who his conservative parents want him to be, so he rebels by documenting the AIDS crisis through his photographs.

As Reza and Art grow closer, Reza struggles to find a way out of his deception that won't break Judy's heart-and destroy the most meaningful friendship he's ever known.

Everyone likes Humaira "Hani" Khan-she's easy going and one of the most popular girls at school. But when she comes out to her friends as bisexual, they invalidate her identity, saying she can't be bi if she's only dated guys. Panicked, Hani blurts out that she's in a relationship...with a girl her friends absolutely hate-Ishita "Ishu" Dey. Ishu is the complete opposite of Hani. She's an academic overachiever who hopes that becoming head girl will set her on the right track for college. But Ishita agrees to help Hani, if Hani will help her become more popular so that she stands a chance of being elected head girl.

Despite their mutually beneficial pact, they start developing real feelings for each other. But relationships are complicated, and some people will do anything to stop two Bengali girls from achieving happily ever after.

When Nozomi Nagai pictured the ideal summer romance, a fake one wasn't what she had in mind.

That was before she met the perfect girl. Willow is gorgeous, glamorous, and...heartbroken? And when she enlists Nozomi to pose as her new girlfriend to make her ex jealous, Nozomi is a willing volunteer.

Because Nozomi has a master plan of her own: one to show Willow she's better than a stand-in, and turn their fauxmance into something real. But as the lies pile up, it's not long before Nozomi's schemes take a turn toward disaster...and maybe a chance at love she didn't plan for.

Two girls on opposite sides of a war discover they're fighting for a common purpose-and falling for each other-in Zoe Hana Mikuta's high-octane debut Gearbreakers, perfect for fans of Pacific Rim, Pierce Brown's Red Rising Saga, and Marie Lu's Legend series.

We went past praying to deities and started to build them instead...

The shadow of Godolia's tyrannical rule is spreading, aided by their giant mechanized weapons known as Windups. War and oppression are everyday constants for the people of the Badlands, who live under the thumb of their cruel Godolia overlords.

Eris Shindanai is a Gearbreaker, a brash young rebel who specializes in taking down Windups from the inside. When one of her missions goes awry and she finds herself in a Godolia prison, Eris meets Sona Steelcrest, a cybernetically enhanced Windup pilot. At first Eris sees Sona as her mortal enemy, but Sona has a secret: She has intentionally infiltrated the Windup program to destroy Godolia from within.

As the clock ticks down to their deadliest mission yet, a direct attack to end Godolia's reign once and for all, Eris and Sona grow closer-as comrades, friends, and perhaps something more...

The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn't matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.

When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected-she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.​

To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia​. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way-and stop more girls from being sacrificed.

Pretty Little Liars meets Teen Wolf in this fast-paced, sharply funny, and patriarchy-smashing graphic novel from author Maggie Tokuda-Hall and artist Lisa Sterle. When the new girl is invited to join her high school's most popular clique, she can't believe her luck-and she can't believe their secret, either: they're werewolves. Fans of Mariko Tamaki and Elana K. Arnold will devour the snappy dialogue, vivid artwork, and timely social commentary.

When Becca transfers to a high school in an elite San Francisco suburb, she's worried she's not going to fit in. To her surprise, she's immediately adopted by the most popular girls in school. At first glance, Marley, Arianna, and Mandy are perfect. But at a party under a full moon, Becca learns that they also have a big secret.

Becca's new friends are werewolves. Their prey? Slimy boys who take advantage of unsuspecting girls. Eager to be accepted, Becca allows her friends to turn her into a werewolf, and finally, for the first time in her life, she feels like she truly belongs.

But things get complicated when Arianna's predatory boyfriend is killed, and the cops begin searching for a serial killer. As their pack begins to buckle under the pressure-and their moral high ground gets muddier and muddier-Becca realizes that she might have feelings for one of her new best friends.

Lena has a secret: the touch of her skin can kill. Cursed by a witch before she was born, Lena has always lived in fear and isolation. But after a devastating mistake, she and her father are forced to flee to a village near the Silence, a mysterious forest with a reputation for luring people into the trees, never to be seen again...​

Until the night an enigmatic girl stumbles out of the Silence and into Lena's sheltered world. Miranda comes from the Gather, a city in the forest brimming with magic. She is on a quest to wake a sleeping princess believed to hold the key to liberating the Gather from its tyrannical ruler-and she offers Lena a bargain. If Lena assists her on her journey, Miranda will help her break the curse.

Mesmerized by Miranda and her promise of a new life, Lena jumps at the chance. But the deeper into the Silence she goes, the more she suspects she's been lied to-about her family's history, her curse, and her future. As the shadows close in, Lena must choose who to trust and decide whether it's more important to have freedom...or power

New York Times bestselling author Natasha Ngan delivers a stunningly beautiful, heartbreaking finale to the epic Girls of Paper and Fire series.

"Don't struggle, Lei-zhi. It's time to take you back to the Hidden Palace. You're going home."

The final pages of Girls of Storm and Shadow brought a jaw-dropping conclusion that had the fates of Lei and Wren hanging in uncertainty. But one thing was certain - the Hidden Palace was the last place that Lei would ever consider home. The trauma and tragedy she suffered behind those opulent walls would plague her forever. She could not be trapped there with the sadistic king again, especially without Wren.

The last Lei saw of the girl she loved, Wren was fighting an army of soldiers in a furious battle to the death. With the two girls torn apart and each in terrorizing peril, will they find each other again or have their destinies diverged forever?

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LGBTQIAP+ YA Books by Asian Authors 2021

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Rom-coms and historical fiction and sci-fi and graphic novels-these Asian YA authors have got all of your queer reading needs covered! This list includes recent and upcoming LGBTQIAP+ young adult books written by Asian writers, so get your wallets and library cards ready! When Dimple Met Rishi meets Simon vs.

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A 501(c)(3) nonprofit, WNDB aims to create a world where every reader can find themselves in the pages of a book. To reach this goal, we've created programs to mentor diverse writers and illustrators, support diverse publishing professionals, and provide books to classrooms nationwide.

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Next month is the release of Black Was the Ink by New Visions Award winner Michelle Coles and illustrated by Justin Johnson. Motivated by Coles' frustration with the pace of racial progress in America, she wrote this book for readers to discover the critical work of Black congressmen during Reconstruction, an often overlooked time period, and make critical connections to present day.

Black Was the Ink, an extraordinary work fueled by rigorous research and impactful history, is a critical text for high school students and educators looking for authentic, honest history about the United States.

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Black Was the Ink educator resources Reconstruction teacher guides

A couple weeks ago, we shared a list of 12 Picture Books by Black Authors and Illustrators. In this blog post, we're continuing to highlight books with Black characters by Black creators, but this time for middle school and high school.

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African/African American Interest Book Lists by Topic children's books literacy

Each year, WorldCon (the World Science Fiction Convention) gathers fans and creators of science fiction and fantasy. Among many things that happen at WorldCon is the awarding of the Hugos, something like the Oscars for speculative fiction. The first convention took place in New York City in 1939, and every year after, it has been held in a different city, organized by volunteers. In 2018, Worldcon 76 was held in San Jose, California.

Now, the thing to remember is that people of color-especially Latinx folx-have been largely absent from WorldCon during its 76 years. But this year, one of the guests of honor was illustrator John Picacio, the first Mexican American to win a Hugo (and first to serve as MC). He wanted to make sure Mexicans and Mexican Americans would be there in significant numbers.

So John founded the Mexicanx Initiative, at first intending to sponsor just a couple of key creators. But when he announced it, a dozen or so movers and shakers in the world of SF/F stepped up to contribute, and before long there was enough support to bring FIFTY Mexicanx writers, illustrators, megafans, etc. Guadalupe García McCall and David Bowles were invited to be part of this stellar group. They were placed on panels, brought into the spotlight, allowed to stand on the stage in solidarity with Dreamers and refugees.

It was a gamechanging moment.

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Today, we are proud to release I Am Alfonso Jones, a heartbreaking exploration of the Black Lives Matter movement and the impact that police brutality has on families, young people, and communities. Written by Tony Medina and illustrated by Stacey Robinson and John Jennings, this title offers a powerful entry to discussion as well as essential historical context to today's discussions on police brutality. Below is the powerful foreword by Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy.

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Summer is officially here, which means lots of warm weather, longer days, and receiving submissions for our New Voices and New Visions Awards! Our annual awards encourage writers of color to submit their work to a publisher that takes pride in nurturing new talent. As the number of diverse books increases, LEE & LOW BOOKS is dedicated to increasing the number of authors of color as well. Continue reading

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New York, NY-Children's book publisher LEE & LOW BOOKS is thrilled to announce the results of its fourth annual New Visions Award for new authors of color. This year, in partnership with First Book and the NEA Foundation, the award expanded to two winning manuscripts: Operation Yellowbird, by Wah Chen, and The Wind Called My Name, by Mary Louise Sanchez.

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Pia Ceres was LEE & LOW's summer intern. She is a recipient of the We Need Diverse Books Internship Program grant. She's a senior at Brown University, where she studies Education & Comparative Literature, with a focus in French literature. When she's not reading, you can find her watching classic horror movies from under a blanket, strumming pop songs on her ukulele, and listening to her grandparents' stories about the Philippines. In this blog post, she asks the question "can fiction be a pathway to fact?" while looking at YA historical fiction.
High school students in Providence, Rhode Island, rallied in January to launch a campaign called #OurHistoryMatters, advocating for greater representation of the contributions of people of color in history curricula. Like many urban school districts, Providence serves a diverse student body where 74% of students identify as Black or Latino and 17% as Native American. Yet when student activists studied an American history textbook used in their school district, they reported that out of nearly 2,000 pages, fewer than 100 mentioned people of color.

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This week, in acknowledgement of Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples' Day, we are offering a series of blog posts that look at pieces of history that have been hidden, silenced, altered, or swept under the rug. Today we share author Guadalupe García McCall's reflections on her discovery of a startling piece of Texas history. This piece was originally published as the Author's Note in her new novel, Shame the Stars. Continue reading

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Book Lists by Topic, Dear Readers, Diversity, Diversity in YA, Diversity, Race, and Representation, Educator Resources, Interviews with Authors and Illustrators, Lee & Low Likes, Race, Uncategorized

LEE & LOW BOOKS celebrates its 25th anniversary this year! To recognize how far the company has come, we are featuring one title a week to see how it is being used in classrooms today and hear from the authors and illustrators.

Today, we are celebrating Chess Rumble, which explores the ways this strategic game empowers young people with the skills they need to anticipate and calculate their moves through life. Continue reading

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Activities and Events, Diversity, Diversity in YA, Diversity, Race, and Representation, Gender/LGBTQ Diversity, Lee & Low Likes, Race, Uncategorized, Writer Resources

After the success of the first #DVpit event in April, #DVpit is back for another round of Twitter pitching fun on October 5th and 6th! If you're unfamiliar with this event, #DVpit is a Twitter pitch contest created to showcase pitches by marginalized voices and help connect them to agents and editors. While the number of diverse books is increasing, the number of new diverse authors entering the field remains low. Significant barriers remain for authors of color, Native authors, disabled authors, and other marginalized voices. With that in mind, we are excited to share information on this special Twitter event! The information below is cross-posted with permission from literary agent Beth Phelan's #DVpit website.
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Next month is the release of Black Was the Ink by New Visions Award winner Michelle Coles and illustrated by Justin Johnson . Motivated by Coles' frustration with the pace of racial progress in America, she wrote this book for readers to discover the critical work of Black congressmen during Reconstruction, an often overlooked time period, and make critical connections to present day.

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De Colores: The Raza Experience in Books for Children

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NOTE: This post contains spoilers for the HBO TV series Game of Thrones, as well as George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels.

--

Hello, everyone! Long time no blog! #31DaysIBPOC brought me back -- thanks, Dr. Kim Parker & Tricia Ebarvia, for the invitation!

My last post was on March 31, 2016. Life has been a whirlwind since then. Last year, I made tenure at Penn, and was promoted to Associate Professor of Education.

My book, The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to The Hunger Games, will be officially released from NYU Press next Tuesday (May 21!). The seeds of my book can be found in my earliest posts here, "The Imagination Gap" and "Why Is Rue a Little Black Girl?"

My graduate students and I still maintain our booklists over on @HealingFictions, and we hope to (finally) launch our website later this year.

And the most popular show on television, Game of Thrones, took a sudden nosedive this spring. It's on track to finish tomorrow with one of the most controversial finale episodes in recent memory.

There are many people who are currently debating the ultimate fate of one of the protagonists, Daenerys Targaryen, a dragonriding exiled queen from the deposed ruling family. I'm among them.

But this post is not about Daenerys.

This post is about Missandei.

*

I said:
Now will the poets sing,-
Their cries go thundering
Like blood and tears
Into the nation's ears,
Like lightning dart
Into the nation's heart.

*

The HBO television series Game of Thrones is based on a series of novels by fantasy author George R.R. Martin, collectively titled A Song of Ice and Fire.

In the novels, Missandei of Naath is a ten-year-old girl from the Summer Isles. She is described as having "a flat face, dusky skin, and eyes like molten gold." She and her brothers were captured by slave traders when she was a young child. Her brothers were pressed into service with the Unsullied, a famed enslaved army, noted for being castrated in their youth.

While racial and ethnic characteristics in Martin's stories do not always coincide with our own (after all, Dany in the books has "purple eyes"), the show's casting of mixed-race British actress Nathalie Emmanuel seems to indicate that Missandei on the show can be read as a character of color in our world.

Specifically, a Black character.

*

In the YA literary world, there has been much talk recently about whether race in fantasy is analogous to race in the real world, and if so, what to do when books feature racist characterizations, worldbuilding, plots, themes or settings.

I'm not here to rehash those conversations. Yet.

I am here to pay my respects to Missandei.

*

Remembering their sharp and pretty
Tunes for Sacco and Vanzetti,
I said:
Here too's a cause divinely spun
For those whose eyes are on the sun,
Here in epitome
Is all disgrace
And epic wrong,
Like wine to brace
The minstrel heart, and blare it to song...

*

Four observations follow. Perhaps more, after the show and the academic year are (blessedly) done, and I have more time.

But for now, I offer just these four.

1. In other people's fantasies, we are rarely allowed to be children. The decision to cast an adult is an example of Black girl adultification, something that scholar Stephanie Toliver has noted in her recent work on Rue in the The Hunger Games. That takes nothing away from Nathalie Emmanuel's incredible performance. After all, Judy Garland's young Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz was restoried into Stephanie Mills' young adult Dorothy in The Wiz on Broadway, and eventually transformed into Diana Ross' grown-up Dorothy in the musical film of the same name.

Adaptation is an act of interpretation. The fact that showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss read about little Missandei, then chose to double her age changes the character from the novels. While other characters have changed, Missandei's literal adultification is notable.

What was it about little Missandei on the page that made Benioff and Weiss choose to make her an adult on the screen, instead of a little Black girl? Was it to provide Dany with a (Black) best friend? Why, then, did the screenwriters not evolve the story accordingly?

2. In other people's fantasies, we are rarely allowed to exist for ourselves. We exist only to be of service to others. Missandei was the "Black best friend" chararacter -- sort of. When we meet her in the novels and on the show, she is the enslaved translator for Kraznys, one of the Good Masters of Astapor. Dany uses her dragons to sack the city, then frees Missandei. Missandei chooses to remain with Dany as her handmaiden, translator and confidante.

There were many other narrative choices that could have been made by the writers.

They could have had Dany offer Missandei unconditional freedom.

They could have had Missandei return to Naath for a time -- opening space in the narrative for her to exist for herself, on her own terms -- and showing us another culture before her story rejoined Dany's.

There are a thousand other possibilities. The problem is the imagination gap. Writers can't imagine that characters like Missandei might have plausible motivations beyond service, obedience, and knowing one's place.

Although Missandei's age changed from A Song of Ice and Fire to Game of Thrones, her storyline did not evolve accordingly. In the books, she is emerging as a strategic mastermind (yes, at 10 or 11 years old! I know!). On the show, little of that complexity is apparent.

Although Missandei is free, her story remains tied to Daenerys'.

She is the Black best friend...

Sort of.

3. In other people's fantasies, we are assumed to be sexual objects. We are also seen as incapable of the full range of human emotions, including love. The last glimpse we've had of Missandei in the books is when she aided Ser Barristan in taking control of the court of Meereen after Daenerys flew off on her dragon.

On the show, Missandei, as an adultified Black girl character, was sexualized. Of course.

Sexual stereotypes about Black girls, women, and femmes abound in our culture. I will not rehash them here. But the nature of the comments about Missandei and her Unsullied lover, Grey Worm, displayed peculiar anxieties around sex, race, love, and desire.

Martin's books were noted for being explicit long before they were adapted for the small screen, and Game of Thrones became notable for its use of "sexposition." But on a show that seemed to enjoy making even the most libertine viewers wince, Missandei and Grey Worm were one of its healthiest couples.

That didn't stop fans from joking about Grey Worm's genitalia, though.

As with many such characters, the range of human emotion afforded to Missandei and Grey Worm is limited. They love Daenerys because she freed them from enslavement. They are clearly in love with each other. However, we don't see Missandei cultivate any other close friendships. Grey Worm's bond with his Unsullied brothers is meant to be assumed, but he is their general, and is giving them orders.

Missandei's and Grey Worm's origin stories -- enslaved as young children -- mean that they do not have access to love from their families and communities. Although it can be argued that being part of Dany's retinue could be consider an alternate sort of family, that's not quite the same thing on a show where one's House -- quite literally, genetically related family-- means everything.

We do not hear either character express much desire to go home to Naath and the Summer Isles until Season 8. This desire was sparked by the racist treatment they experience at the hands of the Northern subjects of House Stark (the region and House we the viewers are supposed to be rooting for, mind),

It is yet unclear whether Game of Thrones understands that this, too, is tragedy.

4. We always die in other people's fantasies. (Other people seem to fantasize about Black death. Endlessly. Often needlessly.)
In the end, Missandei died.

(The Black girl always dies.)

Here's what I wrote about that in The Dark Fantastic...

In her introduction to her masterpiece,In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Christina Sharpe asks:

What does it mean to defend the dead? To tend to the Black dead and dying, to tend to the Black person, to Black people, always living in the push toward our death...

It means work. It is work: hard emotional, physical, and intellectual work that demands vigilant attendance to the needs of the dying, to each their way, and also to the needs of the living.

This question is not limited to humans who have been labeled as Black in the past and present, both quick and dead, but extends to Black characters, and to the very idea of Blackness itself. As the title of Sharpe's book suggests, this is an ontological question that every Black child, woman, and man is confronted with throughout the course of a lifetime. It is a question that demands an answer.

The wake, according to Sharpe, is the path behind a ship, keeping watch with the dead, coming to consciousness, all at once. Throughout The Dark Fantastic, we have witnessed Black girl characters caught in the wake within the storied realms of the collective imagination...

I am by no means the only one who has observed the myriad ways that the fantastic, the speculative, and the collective imagination have rendered Black presence impossible and Black nonexistence compulsory. Most Black fans and other fans of color have thought quite a bit about our precarious state even within realms of supposedly infinite possibilities.

During a Twitter chat, an observer by the handle @relicUA noted that " I think poor nonwhite people are in a state of quantum super-position, such that they only exist when the narrative requires." Indeed, young Black women and girls exist in a state of quantum superposition in the fantastic. They cannot exist, and yet, they must: when it comes to the fantastic, Schrödinger's cat is a young Black girl...

(Schrödinger's cat is Missandei.)
In the wake of these shadows and echoes, it seems vital to examine the ways that Black writers, fans, and audiences are narrating the self into existence in the face of erasure-indeed, have always had to read ourselves into fantastic canons that excluded us. The traditional fantastic has historically assumed a White audience, and, in turn, those endarkened and Othered have had to read those stories to understand the cartographies of the imagination. In contrast to histories of fandom and audience that portray audiences for the speculative and the fantastic as predominantly White, new work from scholars like Rebecca Wanzo and André Carrington sheds light on the ways that Black fans and audiences have always interpreted fantastic media that does not always imagine us as part of the audience-a view that I share.

It is my hope that future scholars and researchers will extend Sharpe's call for wake work into the dark fantastic.

(Missandei, like us, lives in the wake.)
*

Surely, I said,
Now will the poets sing.
But they have raised no cry.
I wonder why.

--Countee Cullen, " Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song," 1934.

*

(Let others sing dirges for their fair dragon queen!
Missandei, too, is worth her song.)
(2019.)

This blog post is part of the #31DaysIBPOC Blog Challenge, a month-long movement to feature the voices of Indigenous and teachers of color as writers and scholars.
Please CLICK HERE to read yesterday's blog post by Dr. Debbie Reese titled "The I in #31DaysIBPOC is for Indigenous." (and be sure to check out the link at the end of each post to catch upon the rest of the blog circle).
You can read all of the blog posts this month here.

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NOTE: This post contains spoilers for the HBO TV series Game of Thrones, as well as George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels. -- Hello, everyone! Long time no blog! #31DaysIBPOC brought me back -- thanks, Dr. Kim Parker & Tricia Ebarvia, for the invitation!

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Based on "Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism." Updated in 2013.*
Children's books continue to be an invaluable source of information and values. They reflect the attitudes in our society about diversity, power relationships among different groups of people, and various social identities (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender, economic class, sexual orientation, and disability). The visual and verbal messages young children absorb from books (and other media) heavily influence their ideas about themselves and others. Depending on the quality of the book, they can reinforce (or undermine) children's affirmative self-concept, teach accurate (or misleading) information about people of various identities, and foster positive (or negative) attitudes about diversity. Children's books teach children about who is important, who matters, who is even visible. Consequently, carefully choosing quality children's books is an indispensable educational and child-rearing task.

It is important to offer young children a range of books about people like them and their family - as well as about people who are different from them and their family. All of the books should be accurate and appealing to young children. Fortunately, there are some good anti-bias children's books, which are available as a result of the ongoing activism of many individuals and groups over many years. However, while choices have improved over past decades, the lack of quality multicultural kid's books currently being published has frustrated many communities. The number of children of color in the United States continues to rise, but the number of books published by or about people of color stays the same or even decreases.

Check the Illustrations

Look for Stereotypes: A stereotype is an oversimplified generalization about a particular identity group (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, ability/disability), which usually carries derogatory, inaccurate messages and applies them to ALL people in the group. Stereotypes dehumanize people. So, too, does misinformation. ( See Box 1 below for a list of common, harmful stereotypes).

Unfortunately, all of us absorb socially prevailing stereotypes about a range of people, even if we do not consciously subscribe to them. To alert you to stereotypes in children's books, as well as other media, it is useful to list all the stereotypes you know about various groups of people as precondition for critically reviewing children's books. The books you choose should depict people compassionately and as real human beings. Also consider if images depict all people as genuine individuals with distinctive (rather than stereotypical) features. Books containing stereotypes require you to engage children in critical thinking, but should probably be eliminated from your collection.

BOX 1: Common Harmful/Undermining Stereotypes

Strong, independent girls and women are "manlike"

Book-loving or nonathletic boys and men are "effeminate"

Latino men talk funny, are lazy, gang members, or wear oversize sombreros

Latina women are earth mothers or subservient

African American men are gang members, oversexed, or underemployed

African American women are too independent, oversexed, or "welfare moms"

Arab and/or Muslim men are terrorists

Arab and/or Muslim women are voiceless and passive

All Muslims are Arab / All Arabs are Muslim

American Indians live in teepees, carry bows and arrows, or are half-naked in winter

American Indians were only significant in the past (read)

Disabled people are not independent or are to be pitied

Disabled people must "overcome" their disabilities rather than just live with their disabilities

LGBTQ+ people are invisible

Poor people are invisible

Poor people are depicted as passively needing help from others

AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islanders) are depicted as the "model minority"

AAPI are exotic or their food is exotic/abnormal

All AAPI know martial arts or are meek and compliant

AAPI are portrayed with slanted eyes or just lines to represent eyes

Jewish people are all Zionists (read)

Jewish people are wealthy and yield undue influence in the financial and political world

Look for Tokenism: This is the "one only" message. Regularly seeing only "one" person of any group in a book teaches young children about who is more or less important. Examples of tokenism include books with only one African American child among many white children or having only one book about children with disabilities among many other books. Tokenism also becomes stereotypical. It only allows children to see one view of a group of people, rather than the diversity that exists among all groups.

Look for Invisibility: What children do not see in their books also teaches them about who matters and who doesn't in our society. Invisibility in their storybooks - as well as in textbooks as they get older - undermines children's affirmative sense of themselves and reinforces prejudiced ideas about people who are not seen (See Box 2 for examples of groups who tend to be invisible). The booklists on this website include a great variety of books with groups who are often excluded. (The titles are vetted by Teaching for Change.)

BOX 2: Examples of Groups of People Who Are Often Invisible in Children's Books or Mainstream Media

Families who live in rural areas

Blue-collar workers

Musicians, artists, and writers

Families with two dads or two moms

Single mothers or fathers

Homeless families

Families with an incarcerated parent

People of Middle Eastern descent

Families who practice Islam

Transgender adults and children

Check the Story Line and the Relationships Between People

Even if a book shows visual diversity, the story line may carry biases related to how it handles power relationships among people of various identities. Are whites or male characters the central figures with people of color or female characters in essentially supporting roles? To gain acceptance and/or approval does a child of color, a girl, or child with a disability have to exhibit extraordinary qualities or be the one to understand, forgive, or change? Are the achievements of girls and women based on their own initiative and intelligence, or are they due to their looks or relationship with boys/men?

Are people of color, women, low-income families, or people with disabilities depicted as needing help or in passive roles, while whites, men, and "able-bodied" people are in leadership and action roles? How are problems presented, conceived, and resolved? Who typically causes a problem and who resolves it? Your book collection needs a balance of different people in "doer" roles.

Look at Messages About Different Lifestyles

Do the lives of people of color or people living in poverty in the story contrast unfavorably with the norm of white, middle-class suburban life? Are negative value judgments implied about ways of life that differ from the dominant culture or economic class (e.g., people are to be pitied, or the story is about one person who "gets out" of the less desirable way of life)? Do images and information go beyond oversimplification and offer genuine insights into the lifestyle of the characters in the story? Does the setting reflect current life - or past assumptions about life? Does your book collection depict diversity among people within a specific racial/ethnic group, such as a range of family structures, living environments, socioeconomic conditions and types of work, and male/female roles within the family? (Remember that every racial/ethnic group has diversity, including people who self-identify as white).

Consider the Effects on Children's Self and Social Identities

In addition to specific books, also examine your book collection. Do your books reinforce or counteract messages that teach children to feel inferior or superior because of their skin color, gender, family income, able-bodiedness, or type of family structure? At school, will all of the children you serve see themselves and their family's way of life reflected in your book collection? Will all children of color, including those with mixed heritage, girls, and children from the many types of family structures, children living in poverty, and children with disabilities see one or more characters with whom they can readily and positively identify? If they are visible in your book collection, are the illustrations and information accurate and respectful? Does your overall collection balance the backgrounds of all the children in your program? Does it also show diversity within the social indentity groups to which the children belong (e.g., a range of ways to be female and male, families reflecting different kinds of jobs within a racial/ethnic group). Does your book collection also include a balance between diversity within your classroom and beyond your classroom?

At home, does your book collection reflect diversity among the groups to which your family belongs? Does it have stories about people like you who have contributed to creating a more just world? Does it also include a range of books showing diversity beyond your family and neighborhood?

Look for Books About Children and Adults Engaging in Actions for Change

To fully develop a strong sense of self and a disposition toward cooperation and fairness, children need to know how to stand up for themselves and others when faced with unfairness. They also need to know about people from all social identity groups who have - and are currently - working for justice for all. In addition to previous criteria, here are more items to consider: The story line should be about children and adults working together, rather than perpetrating the myth that change happens because of special, individual people who do it by themselves. Does your book collection include a balance of people who have made important and honored contributions to American life as well as the world community - and not just the traditional white, male "heroes?" Do some of your books about important people include struggles for justice? Do they show people who were/are poor or from racial/ethnic groups of color? Are people with disabilities engaged in these struggles for justice?

Consider the Author's or Illustrator's Background and Perspective

All authors write from a cultural as well as from a personal context. In the past, most children's books were by authors and illustrators who were white and members of the middle class. As a result, a single cultural and class perspective dominated children's literature. There are now excellent books by people of color from a range of backgrounds - although not nearly enough. Consider the biographical material on the jacket flap or back of the book. What qualifies the author or illustrator to deal with the subject? If the book is not about people or events similar to the author or illustrator's background, what specifically recommends them as creators of the book? What is the author's attitude toward her/his story characters? Are the images accurate and do the illustrators respectfully render the people in the story? Do you have books reflecting a balanced range of author and illustrator identities and experiences?

Watch for Loaded Words

A word is loaded when it in any way demeans or makes people invisible because of any of their identities. One example is the generic use of the word "man" to stand for women as well as men (although the opposite never occurs). This traditional terminology is now questioned by many because of its sexist implications. Here are some examples of ways to avoid sexist language: community instead of brotherhood; firefighters inserted of firemen; human family instead of family of man; ancestors instead of forefathers; chairperson instead of chairman. Examples of adjectives applied to people of color that carry racist messages include: "savage," "primitive," "superstitious," "backward," "inscrutable" and "treacherous." Always consider the context in which a word is used and to whom it applies.

Look at the Copyright Date

Copyright dates indicate the publication year, not the time of its writing, which might be two to three years before the copyright date. Although a recent copyright date is no guarantee of a book's relevance or sensitivity, copyright dates are useful information. More children's books began to reflect the reality of a pluralistic society and nonsexist and non-ableist perspectives in the 1970s. Since then, the range of accurate, respectful, and caring books reflecting diversity has increased significantly (unfortunately the diversity of books published in the United States still does not accurately reflect the actual diversity of the people living here). When considering new books for your collection, begin with most recently published ones and then continue with descending copyright dates.

Assess the Appeal of the Story and Illustrations to Young Children

Although these guidelines focus on the messages about diversity and equality reflected in children's books, it is also important to take quality into account. Be sure the book is a "good read." If children find the story or illustrations boring, a book will not hold their attention, even if the book adds a specific kind of diversity you need. Check for active, interesting story lines where different kinds of people are integral to the people in the story, not the main topic. For example, in A Chair for My Mother, a young child tries to save money to get a comfortable chair for her waitress mother. Although the book shows a single parent, working-class family, and a resourceful girl, it is not didactic. Also look for illustrations that are colorful and recognizable to young children. Although they enjoy a range of styles, illustrations that are too subdued or abstract may not hold their attention.

Check for age appropriateness. Most booksellers list any picture book as appropriate for early childhood even if the story line is really for primary grade children. Sometimes a book for older children will work if you simplify the story or "tell" the story rather than read it. In some cases, this is the only way to get books that present specific groups of children (e.g., stories with Cambodian children or children with learning disabilities). Some additional issues to consider:

Many children's books use animal characters instead of people and there are some excellent books that explore diversity with animal characters (e.g., And Tango Makes Three or A Coyote Solstice Tale). Children enjoy these. However, such books are not a substitute for exploring issues of diversity and anti-bias fairness with people as the main characters.

Some early childhood teachers wonder if it is necessary for every book in their collection to show diversity. Every book needs to be accurate, caring, and respectful. However, you will want individual books about specific kinds of people (e.g., a biracial family or a family with adopted children). Diversity becomes essential in the balance of your book collection, where you want to avoid invisibility or tokenism of any group.

Folk and fairy tales have long been a mainstay of children's literature. In the cultures from which they come, folk and fairy tales were used to teach important lessons and values related to their culture of origin. Children love them in their original versions - not their commercially sanitized adaptations. However, folk and fairy tales also carry messages that convey sexism, classism, and racism and must be used thoughtfully as part of introducing young children to diversity and anti-bias values of quality and fairness.

Overuse of folk tales to "teach" about a specific ethnic/cultural group leads to misinformation and confusion. They are about animals and occasionally people from a mythical past and are designed to teach core values and beliefs in their culture of origin. They are not about how people actually live in contemporary society - and that is what young children need to understand. Information and images about how people really live now is what enables young children to build connections to people who are from different cultures while countering stereotypes that children have already absorbed (e.g., how American Indians really live).

Finally there is the somewhat sensitive issue of what to do about "classic" or "well-beloved" children's books. Many of these are wonderful as children's literature, but unfortunately they often convey values of sexism, racism, ableism, or even colonialism. People who love the books that pose this dilemma argue that it is OK to use them because they "reflect their times," which they imply somehow excuses their biased messages. For example, I adored the Babar series of books as a young child and was unpleasantly shocked to realize as an adult how much the images and story lines reflected messages of European colonialism in Africa. I chose not to use them with my own children, wanting them to learn accurate information about how people in Africa really live. Not sharing childhood favorites may sadden some, but it is far better than the harm caused by reinforcing messages of racism and colonialism.
In a nutshell - as you choose books or critically examine your current book selection, always keep in mind the power of books - their words and their images - to nurture or, conversely, to undermine a child's sense of self, positive attitude toward others, and motivation to act for fairness.
Additional Resources

Louise Derman-Sparks is an internationally respected anti-bias educator and author (along with Julie Olsen Edwards) of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves. She has co-authored several additional books with Dr. Carol Brunson Day (Teaching/Learning Anti-Racism), the ABC Task Force ( Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children), Dr. Patricia Ramsey (What If All the Kids Are White?), and Dr. John Nimmo and Debbie Leekeenan ( Leading Anti-Bias Early Childhood Programs: A Guide for Change). She speaks throughout the United States and abroad, and served on the NAEYC Governing Board from 1998 to 2001. Louise has a lifelong commitment to building a more just society for all people. Her children Douglass and Holly, now grown, were her inspiration. A Pacific Oaks College faculty member for 33 years - when its mission and pedagogy reflected anti-bias education principles - Louise is now retired.
*In 1980, the Council on Interracial Books for Children published the book Guidelines for Selecting Bias-Free Textbooks and Storybooks. A shorter version of the book in pamphlet form, "Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism," followed. One of the first guides written for teachers and families, it became an invaluable tool for hundreds of thousands of people. Both the book and pamphlet have been out of print for several years. Rethinking Schools published their adaptation of the original Guidelines in 1994.

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Guide for Selecting Anti-Bias Children's Books - Social Justice Books

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By Louise Derman-Sparks Based on "Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism." Updated in 2013.* Children's books continue to be an invaluable source of information and values. They reflect the attitudes in our society about diversity, power relationships among different groups of people, and various social identities (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender, [...]

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As part of a series of videos about race, we are featuring personal stories that reflect the breadth of experiences in the United States.

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As an author and someone who has BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) in our family, I wanted to do what I could for the Black Lives Matter movement. No surprise, that meant books.

I have been devouring all the lists of fabulous anti-racism children's books, and books featuring BIPOC main characters that are flying around the Internet, however I'm seeing a lot of duplicative lists. It's the same fabulous books over and over. But I know there are more books out there! So, I went digging and, in addition to all of my books, which feature BIPOC main characters, I came up with all of these. Check them all out and add them to your colorful home library.

(These are affiliate links.)

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70+ BIPOC Children's Books To Add to Your Library - Julia Inserro

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As an author and someone who has BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) in our family, I wanted to do what I could for the Black Lives Matter movement. No surprise, that means books.

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New tie? New tools? A coffee mug that says " world's greatest dad "? Rolling your eyes and yawning? I totally understand. Try gifting a book if you're looking for a more meaningful and less predictable gift for Father's Day. Have your kid(s) sign the inside of the book, include the year and maybe a tiny handprint, and you've made a keepsake for him to treasure. As a bonus, reading aloud with kids creates bonding, increased literacy, and memories for years to come.

I've rounded up 11 of the sweetest books to celebrate the BIPOC fathers in your life, because all fathers deserve to see themselves reflected in the books they read to kids.

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Picture Books That Celebrate BIPOC Dads | Brightly

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New tie? New tools? A coffee mug that says " world's greatest dad "? Rolling your eyes and yawning? I totally understand. Try gifting a book if you're looking for a more meaningful and less predictable gift for Father's Day.

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Black, Indigenous and People of Color in Books for Kids

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Black, Indigenous and People of Color in Books for Kids

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Black, Indigenous and People of Color in Books for Kids - Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

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These titles place characters of color front and center and work to dismantle stereotypes.