Summary: This book traces a child’s journey to self-love and shows the power of words to both hurt and heal. With spare text and exquisite illustrations, this emotional exploration of being big in a world that prizes small is a tender portrayal of how you can stand out and feel invisible at the same time. 

Recommended Audience:  PreK - 3rd Grades

Review: This book was the 2023 winner of the Caldecott Medal, a Coretta Scott King Award Honor book, a National Book Award finalist, and a New York Times bestseller. All of these accolades are well-deserved. This is an extremely powerful book that is relatable for different reasons to so many people. The illustrations are so detailed that one can read it several times and find something new each time. Though younger children are the intended audience, it is captivating to all ages. It inspires rich and meaningful discussion about how we feel and how what we say/do can deeply affect others. It is truely incredible.

Summary: A story for the youngest of learners to start to think about bodies and how they are all different. It explores bodies from birth to old age. The pictures illustrate bodies of all different sizes, shapes, colors, needs, and feels. A description that everybody has a body that helps you move around the world and live every single day. The book moves beyond how bodies look different on the outside but how they work in different ways, see in different ways, talk in different ways, and think in different ways. “Your body is your body. It doesn’t look like anyone else’s and it doesn’t feel like anyone else’s.

Recommended Audience: Ages: 3 and up

Review: Everybody Has a Body is about teaching body neutrality starting at an early age, which means accepting your body as neither good or bad but as just the way it is. It’s important to recognize and respect the hard work your body does. The author grew up in a bigger body and felt disrespect ack of acceptance by others. This book sends the message to others to respect others but also for you to respect yourself. The illustrations are full of life and emotion and diversity. The diversity of how everybody looks different, works different,

Summary: This is a heartwarming story about the love between a mom and her son. The boy loves his mother’s belly. It was his home even before he was born. When he needs a place to hide or somewhere to rest his Mama’s panza is the place he wants to be. The book emphasizes that bodies can be all sizes and types. The message is of loving an important part of yourself and recognizing the body is capable of amazing things.

Recommended Audience: Ages: 3 +

Review: This is another fantastic book by Isabel Quintero who also wrote My Papi Has a Motorcycle. This book is a beautifully written book with lots of body positive language. The pictures are amazing and show a special bond and love between a young boy and his mom. It demonstrates a special appreciation and celebration for bodies.

Summary: Ever since Ellie wore a whale swimsuit and made a big splash at her fifth birthday party, she's been bullied about her weight. To cope, she tries to live by the Fat Girl Rules—like "no making waves," "avoid eating in public," and "don't move so fast that your body jiggles." And she's found her safe space—her swimming pool—where she feels weightless in a fat-obsessed world. In the water, she can stretch herself out like a starfish and take up all the room she wants. It's also where she can get away from her pushy mom, who thinks criticizing Ellie's weight will motivate her to diet. Fortunately, Ellie has allies in her dad, her therapist, and her new neighbor, Catalina, who loves Ellie for who she is. With this support buoying her, Ellie might finally be able to cast aside the Fat Girl Rules and starfish in real life--by unapologetically being her own fabulous self.

Recommended Audience: 4th - 8th Grades

Review: This book is written in novel-in-verse and therefore very accessible. It’s both heartbreaking and hopeful. This book will be relatable to many. It is particularly meaningful for young, middle-school aged girls. We live in a fat-shaming culture that is especially judgemental of girls. We also live in a culture of bullying for any number of reasons. This may give some hope to those who are bullied and maybe even give some insight to those who bully about how their actions can deeply affect others. Additionally, the normalization of seeing a therapist is much needed. This is a Printz Honor Book. 

Summary: Natalia de la Cruz wants to be a member of the LA Mermaids synchronized swim team from the very first moment she sees them perform. Her activist parents don’t approve of the way the sport glamorizes only a specific type of person- typically thin and white. In an effort to prove to her parents that she, a fat, Latine girl, can be the synchronized swimming star she knows she is, Nat goes behind their backs and signs up anyway. As she struggles to balance her secret swimming identity with her other responsibilities, Nat learns that advocating for yourself isn’t as easy as it seems. 

Recommended Audience: Grades 3-6 (8-12 years)  

Review: Natalia is a character who many children of activists can connect to. She appreciates her parents’ perspective and the way they’ve championed her all her life, but still struggles to find her own way. She’s exuberant, confident, and often finds herself in trouble when she acts before thinking. Overall, this book is an easy and enjoyable read that I think many middle grade children (or adults) would find thought provoking.

Summary: Charlie is a smart, brown, fat girl in suburban Connecticut. The world and everyone in it have ideas about what she should look like: thinner, lighter, slimmer, straight haired. Be smaller. Be whiter. Be quieter. But Charlie is confident in who she is, especially with her best frined (lean, popular, athletic, totally cool) Amelia at her side. When Charlie starts a new relationship with a cute boy at work, at first it seems like everything is finally going her way and that other people are starting to see her the way she sees herself. But when Charlie learns that she wasn't always the object of her new boyfriend's affections, she starts to doubt that really knows who she is at all.

Recommended Audience: 9 - 12 grades

Review: Absolutely delighted to recommend this realistic, funny, heartwarming, and just a little bit swoony portrait of a fat teen falling in love for the first time! I loved that Charlie already loved herself and her body as it was - there was no big narrative about "learning to love herself" - yet this novel also acknowledges that the struggle with self confidence is eternal and that the temptation to compare herself to other, especially her best friend. This novel navigates body and identity and friendships and family dynamics in a way that authentically tackles big issues and never skimps on the fun and joy while doing so.  Easily one of my favorite YA reads of the year!

Areas of Intersectionality: Race and Class