3 Social Justice Books About Children To Read Now

THESE THREE BOOKS about children fall into different categories—nonfiction, Young Adult lit, and memoir—but all share unflinching, dramatic, and moving stories about what it is like for children facing injustice today.

You’ll want to read these more than once, and share them with your kids and friends:

1. This Child, Every Child This is the latest collaboration from teacher David J. Smith and illustrator Shelagh Armstrong, the team behind If the World Were a Village and If America Where a Village. Like those previous publications, This Child is a straight-up look at the disparities in the way children live around the world.

It’s a facts-driven book (“nearly 80 million children do not go to school”) but like the team’s previous work, it is eye-opening and a great tool for kids’ understanding of the world. Read an interview with David J. Smith here.

2. Between Shades of Gray Ruta Sepetys’ historical novel is about the forcible relocation of Lithuanians after the Russian invasion in 1939.

The story follows fifteen-year-old Lina, whose family is arrested and deported to Siberia.

Lina’s separation from her father, who is sentenced to death in a labor camp, forms the emotional heart of the novel.

The author is herself the daughter of a Lithuanian refugee. Read the first chapter here.

3. Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal Over the course of Conor Grennan’s three-month volunteering stint at the Little Princes Orphanage, he learned most of the children were not in fact orphans, but had been trafficked. When Nepal enters civil war, Grennan is forced to leave, but vows to return and continue helping.

Little Princes is the story of how his organization, Next Generation Nepal, reunited almost 300 families with children thought lost. Read an excerpt here.