In this debut YA novel from Katherine Locke, Ellie Baum has traveled to Germany with her high school German II class in defiance of her beloved grandfather’s wishes. Her grandfather, Benno Hirsch, miraculously survived the Chelmno concentration camp, but now…
Despite the supposedly ground-breaking nature of literary fiction, genre fiction – mysteries, thrillers, and science fiction – have often become the place where hard-hitting themes of social injustice and environmental degradation find their strongest expression. While race relations and police…
On August 19, 1953 a clandestine military operation led by the United States and Great Britain toppled the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and installed Shah Reza Pahlevi, who immediately reversed Mossadegh’s nationalization of oil facilities. For…
In eras of censorship children’s stories, written as fables and often featuring animals, have offered messages of resistance and a set of alternative values – ones of justice, equality, freedom and inclusion. Whether these picture book fables will soon challenge…
For the past three years, I’ve been part of the group led by Edi Campbell to put together the We’re the People Summer Reading List. With each of our lists, we have sought to highlight books created by authors and…
Every October 4, Catholics around the world celebrate the Feast of St. Francis, which honors the life of the 12th century friar who founded the Franciscan Order and became the patron saint of animals and the environment. Mark Van Steenwyk’s…
People in the United States who are now seeing their freedoms and rights eroded one by one, from reproductive rights to safety and living-wage protections for workers to the right to protest, and who believe this is a new thing…
One of the best things about children’s books in translation is that they provide a window into what other countries publish—different artistic styles in illustrated books, different senses of humor, what constitutes a happy ending, and more. This is certainly…
Innosanto Nagara, the Indonesian-born graphic artist and acclaimed author/illustrator of A Is for Activist and Counting on Community, tells his own story of facing dictatorship and oppression in My Night in the Planetarium. At the age of seven, he watched…
Shortly after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered the removal of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. From 1942 until the end of the war, men, women, and children lived in…
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