Social Issues
- activism, systemic injustice, and political reform -
Embedded Files
** Rating Key **
Audience: A = Adult Audience | YA = YA Audience
Content: D = Death/Grief | L = Strong Language | MH = Mental Health |
P = Political/Social Issues | S = Sexual Content/Relationships | SU = Substance Use | V = Violence
Fiction
Fiction
-- NOVEL IN VERSE --
Audience: YA
Content: D, P, V
Kent State by Deborah Wiles
From the Publisher
* Five Starred Reviews: Booklist, Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Horn Book, and Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books *
. . . told in many voices at many angles . . .
You are new here
and we don’t want to scare you away
but we want you to know the truth
so we will start by telling you what is most important:
They did not have to die.
From two-time National Book Award finalist Deborah Wiles, a masterpiece exploration of one of the darkest moments in our history, when American troops killed four American students protesting the Vietnam War.
May 4, 1970. Kent State University. As protestors roil the campus, National Guardsmen are called in. In the chaos of what happens next, shots are fired and four students are killed. To this day, there is still argument of what happened and why. Told in multiple voices from a number of vantage points -- protestor, Guardsman, townie, student -- Deborah Wiles's Kent State gives a moving, terrifying, galvanizing picture of what happened that weekend in Ohio . . . an event that, even 50 years later, still resonates deeply.
From the Author
You can listen at Spotify to selections from the audiobook as well as the protest songs used in the book.
You can also see at Pinterest the Kent State playlist and some of the sources used in researching and writing the book.
Audience: YA
Content: D, P, V
We Are Not Free by Traci Chee
From the Publisher
* National Book Award Finalist * Printz Honor Book ( Walter Honor Book * Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature Honor Book *
From New York Times best-selling and acclaimed author Traci Chee comes We Are Not Free, the collective account of a tight-knit group of young Nisei, second-generation Japanese American citizens, whose lives are irrevocably changed by the mass U.S. incarcerations of World War II.
Fourteen teens who have grown up together in Japantown, San Francisco.
Fourteen teens who form a community and a family, as interconnected as they are conflicted.
Fourteen teens whose lives are turned upside down when over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry are removed from their homes and forced into desolate incarceration camps.
In a world that seems determined to hate them, these young Nisei must rally together as racism and injustice threaten to pull them apart.
Audience: YA
Content: D, P, V
We Are Not From Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez
From the Publisher
* A Pura Belpre 2021 Young Adult Author Honor Book * A BookPage Best Book of 2020 * A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best of 2020 * A School Library Journal Best Book of 2020 * A New York Public Library 2020 Top 10 Best Book for Teens *
A poignant novel of desperation, escape, and survival across the U.S.-Mexico border, inspired by current events.
Pulga has his dreams.
Chico has his grief.
Pequena has her pride.
And these three teens have one another. But none of them have illusions about the town they''ve grown up in and the dangers that surround them. Even with the love of family, threats lurk around every corner. And when those threats become all too real, the trio knows they have no choice but to run: from their country, from their families, from their beloved home.
Crossing from Guatemala through Mexico, they follow the route of La Bestia, the perilous train system that might deliver them to a better life--if they are lucky enough to survive the journey. With nothing but the bags on their backs and desperation drumming through their hearts, Pulga, Chico, and Pequena know there is no turning back, despite the unknown that awaits them. And the darkness that seems to follow wherever they go.
In this striking portrait of lives torn apart, the plight of migrants at the U.S. southern border is brought to light through poignant, vivid storytelling. An epic journey of danger, resilience, heartache, and hope.
Nonfiction
Nonfiction
Audience: A
Content: P
Bad company : private equity and the death of the American dream by Megan Greenwell
From the Publisher
* Kirkus Best Nonfiction Books of the Year 2025 * One of AV Club's Best Books of 2025 *
A timely work of singular reportage and a damning indictment of the private equity industry told through the stories of four American workers whose lives and communities were upended by the ruinous effects of corporate takeovers.
Private equity runs our country, yet few Americans have any idea how ingrained it is in their lives. Private equity controls our hospitals, daycare centers, supermarket chains, voting machine manufacturers, local newspapers, nursing home operators, fertility clinics, and prisons. The industry even manages highways, municipal water systems, fire departments, emergency medical services, and owns a growing swath of commercial and residential real estate.
Private equity executives, meanwhile, are not only among the wealthiest people in American society, but have grown to become modern-day barons with outsized influence on our politics and legislation. CEOs of firms like Blackstone, Carlyle, KKR, and Apollo are rewarded with seats in the Senate and on the boards of the country's most august institutions; meanwhile, entire communities are hollowed out as a result of their buyouts. Workers lose their jobs. Communities lose their institutions. Only private equity wins.
Acclaimed journalist Megan Greenwell's Bad Company unearths the hidden story of corporate greed and the world of private equity by examining the lives of four American workers that were devastated as private equity upended their employers and communities: a Toys R Us floor supervisor, a rural doctor, a local newspaper journalist, and an affordable housing organizer. Taken together, their individual experiences also pull back the curtain on a much larger project: how the relentless pursuit of shareholder value reshaped the American economy to serve its own interests, creating a new class of billionaires while stripping ordinary people of their livelihoods, their health care, their homes, and their sense of security.
In the tradition of deeply human reportage like Matthew Desmond's Evicted, Megan Greenwell pulls back the curtain on shadowy multibillion dollar private equity firms, telling a larger story about how private equity is reshaping the economy, disrupting communities, and hollowing out the very idea of the American dream itself. Timely and masterfully told, Bad Company is a forceful rebuke of America's most consequential, yet least understood economic forces.
Audience: A
Content: D, L, P, V
Born a Crime : stories from a South African childhood by Trevor Noah
From the Publisher
* Winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor and an NAACP Image Award * Named one of the best books of the year by The New York Time, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Esquire, Newsday, and Booklist *
Trevor Noah's unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents' indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa's tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.
Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man's relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother--his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.
The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother's unconventional, unconditional love.
Audience: YA
Content: D, MH, P, V
Death in the Jungle : murder, betrayal, and the lost dream of Jonestown by Candace Fleming
From the Publisher
* A YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Winner * A SCBWI Golden Kite Award Finalist * One of the Best Books of the Year: Publishers Weekly, BookPage, Horn Book, Booklist, The Bulletin of The Center for Children's Books, School Library Journal *
How did Jim Jones, the leader of Peoples Temple, convince more than 900 of his followers to commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced punch? From a master of narrative nonfiction comes a chilling chronicle of one of the most notorious cults in American history.
Using riveting first-person accounts, award-winning author Candace Fleming reveals the makings of a monster: from Jones's humble origins as a child of the Depression... to his founding of a group whose idealistic promises of equality and justice attracted thousands of followers... to his relocation of Temple headquarters from California to an unsettled territory in Guyana, South America, which he dubbed "Jonestown"... to his transformation of Peoples Temple into a nefarious experiment in mind-control.
And Fleming heart-stoppingly depicts Jones's final act, persuading his followers to swallow fatal doses of cyanide--to "drink the kool-aid," as it became known--as a test of their ultimate devotion.
Here is a sweeping story that traces, step by step, the ways in which one man slowly indoctrinated, then murdered, 900 innocent, well- meaning people. And how a few members, Jones' own son included, stood up to him... but not before it was too late.
Audience: A
Content: D, P, S
Finding my Way : a memoir by Malala Yousafzai
From the Publisher
* An Instant New York Times Bestseller! * A USA Today Best Book of the Year *
"A remarkably intimate and insistently human chronicle of a moral authority's coming of age." --The New York Times
This is not the story you think you know. It's the one I've been waiting to tell.
Thrust onto the public stage at fifteen years old after the Taliban's brutal attack on her life, Malala Yousafzai quickly became an international icon known for bravery and resilience. But away from the cameras and crowds, she spent years struggling to find her place in an unfamiliar world. Now, for the first time ever, Malala takes us beyond the headlines in Finding My Way--a vulnerable, surprising memoir that buzzes with authenticity, sharp humor, and tenderness.
Finding My Way is a story of friendship and first love, of anxiety and self-discovery, of trying to stay true to yourself when everyone wants to tell you who you are. In it, Malala traces her path from high school loner to reckless college student to a young woman at peace with her past. Through candid, often messy moments like nearly failing exams, getting ghosted, and meeting the love of her life, Malala reminds us that real role models aren't perfect--they're human.
In this astonishing memoir, Malala reintroduces herself to the world, sharing how she navigated life as someone whose darkest moments threatened to define her narrative--while seeking the freedom to find out who she truly is. Finding My Way is an intimate look at the life of a young woman taking charge of her destiny--and a deeply personal testament to the strength it takes to be unapologetically yourself.
Audience: Y
Content: P
A Greater Goal : the Epic Battle for Equal Pay in Women's Soccer-and Beyond by Elizabeth Rusch
From the Publisher
* YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award Finalist * A CCBC Choice *
More than 250 women have played on the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team, and most contributed to the battle for equal pay. This narrative nonfiction book by the award-winning author and journalist Elizabeth Rusch traces the evolution of that fight, bringing this important rights issue in sports and in our culture to the attention of young readers. Features extensive back matter.
With the passage of Title IX in 1972, the doors opened for young women to play sports at a higher level. But for the women on the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team, being able to compete at an international level didn't mean fair treatment and fair compensation.
From economy-class airplane seats and inadequate lodging to minimal marketing and slashed wages, the women representing the United States at the Olympics, the World Cup, and other tournaments had reason to be fed up. They were expected to--and did--win, but they weren't compensated for their talent and dedication. With the help of their union and in collaboration with the men's team, they secured an equitable contract in 2022 that ultimately benefited both national teams as well as athletes of the future.
Elizabeth Rusch's A Greater Goal chronicles how members of the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team fought to receive fair treatment and equal pay despite the intense pushback they received from U.S. Soccer, the governing body of soccer in the United States. With a narrative that includes player profiles and vignettes framed from team member perspectives, A Greater Goal illuminates the work, support, and grit needed to be treated with equality in a world that often undervalues the contributions of women.
Features extensive back matter, including a call to action, additional resources, and an index.
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