Talk about race.
Explore diversity.
Promote equality.
Our librarians have put together a list of books to help with important conversations.
Youth
Board Books
“A Is for Activist” by Innosanto Nagara
“Antiracist Baby” by Ibram X. Kendi; illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky
“Woke Baby” by Mahogany L. Browne; illustrated by Theodore Taylor III
Picture Books
Fiction
“All Different Now: Juneteenth, the First Day of Freedom” by Angela Johnson; illustrated by E.B. Lewis
“The Bell Rang” by James E. Ransome
“Big Papa and the Time Machine” by Daniel Bernstrom; illustrated by Shane W. Evans
“Black Is a Rainbow Color” by Angela Joy; illustrated by Ekua Holmes
“Don’t Touch My Hair!” by Sharee Miller
“Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins” by by Carole Boston Weatherford; paintings by Jerome Lagarrigue
“Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life” by Ashley Bryan
“Hey Black Child” by Useni Eugene Perkins; illustrated by Bryan Collier
“Let the Children March” by Monica Clark-Robinson; illustrated by Frank Morrison
“The Other Side” by Jacqueline Woodson; illustrated by Earl B. Lewis
“Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story about Racial Injustice” by Marianne Celano, PhD, ABPP, Marietta Collins, PhD, and Ann Hazzard, PhD, ABPP; illustrated by Jennifer Zivoin
“This Is the Rope: A Story from the Great Migration” by Jacqueline Woodson; illustrated by James Ransome
Nonfiction/Biography/Poetry
“Can I Touch Your Hair?: Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship” by Irene Latham and Charles Water; illustrated by Sean Qualls and Selina Alko
“I, Too, Am America” by Langston Hughes; illustrated by Bryan Collier
“Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom” by Carole Boston Weatherford; illustrated by Kadir Nelson
“Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness” by Anastasia Higginbotham
“The Undefeated” by Kwame Alexander; illustrated by Kadir Nelson
“Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement” by Carole Boston Weatherford; illustrated by Ekua Holmes
Books for Older Kids
Fiction
“Betty before X” by Ilyasah Shabazz; with Renée Watson
“Ghost Boys” by Jewell Parker Rhodes
“A Good Kind of Trouble” by Lisa Moore Ramée
“The Journey of Little Charlie” by Christopher Paul Curtis
“One Crazy Summer” by Rita Williams-Garcia
“The Parker Inheritance” by Varian Johnson
Nonfiction
“A Child’s Introduction to African American History: The Experiences, People, and Events That Shaped Our Country” by Jabari Asim; illustrated by Lynn Gaines
“Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge: George and Martha Washington’s Courageous Slave Who Dared to Run Away” by Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Kathleen Van Cleve
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy” by Tony Medina and 13 artists
“This Book Is Anti-Racist” by Tiffany Jewell; illustrated by Aurélia Durand
“28 Days: Moments in Black History That Changed the World” by Charles Smith; illustrated by Shane Evans
“We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices” by Edited by Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson; foreword by Ashley Bryan
“Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice” by Mahogany L. Browne, with Elizabeth Acevedo and Olivia Gatwood; foreword by Jason Reynolds; illustrated by Theodore Taylor III (Poetry)
“Young, Gifted and Black: Meet 52 Black Heroes from Past and Present” by Jamia Wilson; illustrated by Andrea Pippins
Young Adult
Fiction
“All American Boys” by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
“Black Brother, Black Brother” by Jewell Parker Rhodes
“Dear Martin” by Nic Stone
“The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas
“A Phoenix First Must Burn: Sixteen Stories of Black Girl magic, Resistance, and Hope” edited by Patrice Caldwell
“Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam
Nonfiction
“Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America” edited by Ibi Zoboi
“How I Resist: Activism and Hope for a New Generation” edited by Maureen Johnson
“Just Mercy: Adapted for Young Adults: A True Story of the Fight for Justice” by Bryan Stevenson
“March Books One, Two, and Three” by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin; art by Nate Powell
“Say Her Name” by Zetta Elliott; illustrated by Loveis Wise
“Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” by Jason Reynolds; adapted from “Stamped from the Beginning” by and with an introduction from Ibram X. Kendi
“They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
“We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide” by Carol Anderson with Tonya Bolden
Adults
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
How to be an Antiracisit by Ibram X. Kendi
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad
Stamped: From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
