Dive into these stories from our past, present, and future that explore the dangers of misinformation, disinformation, stereotyping, and racism, with nonfiction titles that will help you build a better future.
After discovering the body of fourteen-year-old Jawad Ali in Jackson Park, seventeen-year-old journalism student Safiya Mirza begins investigating his murder and ends up confronting white supremacy in her own high school.
New York City high school student Mateo dreams of becoming a Broadway star, but his life is transformed after his parents are deported to Mexico.
False information, conspiracy theories, and political violence have a long history in America. Watchdog groups document how misinformation and hatred can give rise to violence. Misinformation and conspiracy theories have increasingly become staples on social media and extremist websites. The spread of false information about so many key issues, from elections to vaccines and pandemic protocols, has created a growing climate of distrust in America.
She put in her work, but there's so much left to do." Beginning in the Antebellum era, the song of suffrage was a rallying cry across the nation that would persist over a century. Capturing the spirit of this refrain, New Yorker contributing cartoonist Caitlin Cass pens a sweeping history of women's suffrage in the U.S. — a kaleidoscopic story akin to a triumphant and mournful protest song that spans decades and echoes into the present. In Suffrage Song, Cass takes a critical, intersectional approach to the movement's history—celebrating the pivotal, hard-fought battles for voting rights while also laying bare the racist compromises suffrage leaders made along the way. She explores the multigenerational arc of the movement, humanizing key historical figures from the early days of the suffrage fight (Susan B. Anthony, Frances Watkins Harper), to the dawn of the "New Women" (Alice Paul, Mary Church Terrell), to the Civil Rights era (Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker). Additionally, this book sheds light on less chronicled figures such as Zitkala-Sa and Mabel Ping Hua-Lee, whose stories reveal the complex racial dynamics that haunt this history.
In the early morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob marched across the train tracks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and into its predominantly Black Greenwood District—a thriving, affluent neighborhood known as America's Black Wall Street. They brought with them firearms, gasoline, and explosives. In a few short hours, they'd razed thirty-five square blocks to the ground, leaving hundreds dead. The Tulsa Race Massacre is one of the most devastating acts of racial violence in US history. But how did it come to pass? What exactly happened? And why are the events unknown to so many of us today? These are the questions that author Brandy Colbert seeks to answer in this nonfiction account of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
Here is the explosive story of the Kids for Cash scandal in Pennsylvania, a judicial justice miscarriage that sent more than 2,500 children and teens to a for-profit detention center while two judges lined their pockets with cash, as told by Candy J. Cooper, an award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist.
This is the story of how the movement that started with a hashtag, # BlackLivesMatter, spread across the nation and then across the world, and the journey that led one of its co-founders, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, to this moment. Patrisse Khan-Cullors grew up in an over-policed United States where incarceration of Black people runs rampant. Surrounded by police brutality, she gathered the tools and lessons that would lead her to found one of the most powerful movements in the world. This is her story. Necessary and timely, 'When They Call You a Terrorist' reminds us that protest in the interest of the most vulnerable comes from love: that love is the push to search for justice for those victimized by the powerful. With journal entries, photos and notes that show the formation of an activist from a very young age, this meaningful, empowering account of survival, strength, and resilience seeks to change the culture that declares innocent Black life expendable.
Liliana Cruz does what it takes to fit in at her new nearly all-white school, but when family secrets come out and racism at school gets worse than ever, she must decide what she believes in and take a stand.
For African American women, the fight for the right to vote was only one battle. An eye-opening book that tells the important, overlooked story of black women as a force in the suffrage movement — when fellow suffragists did not accept them as equal partners in the struggle.
High school junior Del Rainey unwittingly joins a Purity Pledge class at church, hoping to get closer to his long-term crush, Kiera.
While writing letters to Innocence X, a justice-seeking project, asking them to help her father, an innocent black man on death row, teenaged Tracy takes on another case when her brother is accused of killing his white girlfriend.
Warmer temperatures. Fires in the Amazon. Superstorms. These are just some of the effects of climate change that we are already experiencing. The good news is that we can all do something about it. A movement is already underway to combat not only the environmental effects of climate change but also to fight for climate justice and make a fair and livable future possible for everyone. And young people are not just part of that movement; they are leading the way. They are showing us that this moment of danger is also a moment of great opportunity-an opportunity to change everything. Full of empowering stories of young leaders all over the world, this information-packed book from award-winning journalist and one of the foremost voices for climate justice, Naomi Klein, offers young readers a comprehensive look at the state of the climate today and how we got here, while also providing the tools they need to join this fight to protect and reshape the planet they will inherit.
In an alternate 1991, the authoritarian US government keeps tabs on everybody and everything. It censors which books can be read, what music can be listened to, and which plays can be performed. When her best friend is killed by the authorities and her theater teacher disappears without a trace, Gigi decides to organize her fellow Champaign High School thespians to put on a production of Henry VI. But at what cost?
Free speech is a fundamental right that is a pillar of our democracy, but it is not unlimited. Where those limits lie affects nearly every corner of our society. This book will explore the questions and issues surrounding this turbulent age of censorship, banning, and cancel culture.
It's 2002, a year after 9/11, and Shirin has just started at yet another school. It's an extremely turbulent time for the world, but also for someone like Shirin, a sixteen-year-old Muslim girl who's tired of being stereotyped. She's tired of the rude stares, the degrading comments—even the physical violence—she endures as a result of her race, her religion, and the hijab she wears every day. She decided long ago not to trust anyone anymore, and she doesn't expect, or even try, to fit in anywhere or let anyone close enough to hurt her. But then she meets Ocean James. He's the first person in forever who really seems to want to get to know Shirin. It terrifies her—they seem to come from two irreconcilable worlds—and Shirin has had her guard up for so long that she's not sure she'll ever be able to let it down.
Scammers are using new technology to make their scams appear more realistic. Some scammers pretend to be a loved one in trouble, the government, a bank's fraud department, or even a technical support expert. In May 2024, the FBI warned individuals and businesses nationwide about the increasing threat from criminals using AI.
You might be the kind of person who stands up to online trolls. Or who marches to protest injustice. Perhaps you are #DisabledAndCute and dancing around your living room, alive and proud. Or perhaps you are the trans mentor that you wish you had when you were younger. Maybe you call out false allies, or stand up to loved ones. Maybe you speak your truth and drop the mic, or maybe you take it with you when you leave. This anthology features fictional stories— in poems, prose, and art— that reflect a slice of the varied and limitless ways that readers like you resist every day.
Summary taken from the publisher's website.
At the front of a middle school classroom in Oklahoma, a boy named Khosrou (whom everyone calls "Daniel") stands, trying to tell a story. His story. But no one believes a word he says. To them, he is a dark-skinned, hairy-armed boy with a big butt whose lunch smells funny, who makes things up and talks about poop too much. But Khosrou's stories, stretching back years, and decades, and centuries, are beautiful and terrifying, from the moment his family fled Iran in the middle of the night with the secret police moments behind them, back to the sad, cement refugee camps of Italy. And further back to the fields near the river Aras, where rain-soaked flowers bled red like the yolk of sunset burst over everything, and further back still to the Jasmine-scented city of Isfahan.
It's 1989 in New York City, and for three teens, the world is changing. Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. He's terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows he's gay, but all he knows of gay life are the media's images of men dying of AIDS. Judy is an aspiring fashion designer who worships her uncle Stephen, a gay man with AIDS who devotes his time to activism as a member of ACT UP. Judy has never imagined finding romance... until she falls for Reza and they start dating. Art is Judy's best friend, their school's only out and proud teen. He'll never be who his conservative parents want him to be, so he rebels by documenting the AIDS crisis through his photographs. As Reza and Art grow closer, Reza struggles to find a way out of his deception that won't break Judy's heart — and destroy the most meaningful friendship he's ever known. This is a bighearted, sprawling epic about friendship and love and the revolutionary act of living life to the fullest in the face of impossible odds.
High school junior Quinn Calvet gets caught up in the disappearance of kids in a nearby town, soon beginning to suspect more to the story than anyone understands, and it is up to her to figure out what's going on.
In our modern information age, it's impossible to escape fake news. Whether it's coming from the mouth of a politician or the suspicious article shared in your family group chat, fake news is everywhere. But the truth is, fake news is not a new phenomenon. From the ancient Egyptians to the French Revolution to Jack the Ripper, and the founding fathers, fake news has been around as long as human civilization. But that doesn't mean that we should just give up on the idea of finding the truth.
In True or False, Former CIA analyst Cindy Otis will take readers through the history and impact of misinformation over the centuries, sharing stories from the past and insights that readers today can gain from them. Then, she shares lessons learned in over a decade working for the CIA, including actionable tips on how to spot fake news, how to make sense of the information we receive each day, and, perhaps most importantly, how to understand and see past our own information biases, so that we can think critically about important issues and put events happening around us into context.
Summary taken from the publisher's website.
With humor, easy-to-understand language, and fun illustrations, marine scientist Ellen Prager and meteorologist Dave Jones use frequently asked and zany questions about the ocean and atmosphere to combat misinformation and make science engaging and understandable for all.
Going beyond the story of America as a country "discovered" by a few brave men in the "New World," Indigenous human rights advocate Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz reveals the roles that settler colonialism and policies of American Indian genocide played in forming our national identity. The original academic text is fully adapted by renowned curriculum experts Debbie Reese and Jean Mendoza, for middle-grade and young adult readers, to include discussion topics, archival images, original maps, recommendations for further reading, and other materials to encourage students, teachers, and general readers to think critically about their own place in history.
January 6, 2021, was a crisis point for American democracy, where the results of a democratic election were challenged violently. However, the crisis did not end that day. This is an unusual and frightening moment in American history. Many of the democratic norms of American society-like trust in the legitimacy of elections, and the willingness of legislators from different parties to work together-have shifted. American democracy is at a turning point, and the future is uncertain.
Incarcerated teen Quan Banks writes letters to Justyce McCallister, with whom he bonded years before over family issues, about his experiences in the American juvenile justice system.
Tells the story of Gerda Taro, a headstrong photojournalist with a passion for capturing the truth amid political turmoil and the first woman photojournalist killed in combat.
Tracing the spread of misinformation and disinformation through our fast-moving media landscape, a journalist, scientist, medical professional, and professor gives readers the skills to identify and counter poorly sourced clickbait and misleading headlines.
When America bans all abortion and the fight for bodily autonomy is taken underground, Laylah and Noor want to be part of the resistance. After graduation, Laylah plans to become an OB-GYN, and Noor an investigative journalist. In the meantime, they're writing an essential guide to getting an abortion. It's illegal and dangerous. What else are two perfectly respectable Muslim teens supposed to do? But what if it's not that simple? What happens if the underground abortion network is corrupt? What happens when it gets harder and harder to get safe medications, supplies, or help? And what happens when the need gets much more personal?