We have developed this list as a resource to help families discuss with their children ways to combat racism and discrimination. This is one step in our commitment to fighting racism and injustice.

The links are a combination of websites, articles, and books, appropriate for varying ages. They've been recommended by several sources, including the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities, which has been a partner with our school in diversity initiatives, and professors at colleges and universities.

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture: Talking about Race

Teaching for Change: Teaching Young Children About Race (Recommended by the Smithsonian Tween Tribune)

Smithsonian Magazine: 158 Resources to Understand Racism in America

American Psychological Association: Talking to Kids about Discrimination

University of Pennsylvania: Talking to Children after Racial Incidents

New York Times: Talking to Kids About Racism, Early and Often

New York Times 1619 Project (Won Pulitzer Prize in 2020)

USA Today: George Floyd. Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. What do we tell our children?

National Geographic: Talking to Kids About Race

NPR: Talking Race With Young Children

BuzzFeed: An Essential Reading Guide For Fighting Racism

UVA Equity Center: Actionable Steps

Dr. Nicole Cooke, Augusta Baker Endowed Chair, University of South Carolina: Anti-Racism Resources for all ages

Jason Reynolds Talks About Racism And The Protests (Jason Reynolds is the 2020-21 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature) 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Dec. 10, 1964 

United Nations: Let's Fight Racism

* Note that some media outlets, including the New York Times, request to charge readers after a certain number of page visits.

We have developed this list as a resource to help families discuss with their children ways to combat racism and discrimination. This is one step in our commitment to fighting racism and injustice.

The books are recommendations from a variety of sources, including our school librarians and faculty, and authoritative sources outside our school, including the New York Times (a list created by Ibram Kendi), The Virginian-Pilot, Smithsonian Magazine, National Network of Schools in Partnership, Coretta Scott King Book Awards, and Holocaust Center for Humanity.

The books are broken down by appropriate school levels, though some may be suitable for a wider range. Some for younger children are poetry or picture books based on current and historical events. The links provide reviews, interviews, and additional information about the authors and books. 

Books with asterisks are available as e-books from the Batten Library Sora Collection. Although the library is closed because of the pandemic, Middle and Upper School students may log in with their school email addresses to access these titles.

Upper School and Adult

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander*  

How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America by Moustafa Bayoumi*

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates*

Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People by Ben Crump (Attorney representing the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery) 

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson

Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr. (Pulitzer Prize winner)

Stony the Road by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Blindspot by Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald*

Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America by Jennifer Harvey*

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi*

The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America by Khalil Gibran Muhammad

So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo

An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz*

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein*

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, a collection edited by Jesmyn Ward

Under Our Skin: Getting Real about Race. Getting Free from the Fears and Frustrations that Divide Us by Ben Watson (who spoke at NA in 2019; nephew of Elbert Watson)

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson*

Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male by Tim Wise

Middle School

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

We Are Not Yet Equal by Carol Anderson and Tonya Bolden*

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, adapted by Debbie Reese and Jean Mendoza*

Loving vs. Virginia by Lucinda Dyer

Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley

A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 by Claire Hartfield

Claudette Colvin by Phillip Hoose

Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston

Making Our Way Home: The Great Migration and the Black American Dream by Blair Imani

This Book Is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewell

Breaking Through by Francisco Jiménez

Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom by Lynda Lowery

The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore

The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater

Lower School

What Color Is My World?: The Lost History of African-American Inventors by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld

The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander

Resist: 35 Profiles of Ordinary People Who Rose Up Against Tyranny and Injustice by Veronica Chambers

Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop by Alice Faye Duncan, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie

Mixed, A Colorful Story by Arree Chung

Enough! 20 Protesters Who Changed America by Emily Easton

Teammates by Peter Golenbock

Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History by Vashti Harrison

Not My Idea:  A Book About Whiteness by Anastasia Higginbotham

We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices, edited by Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson

Antiracist Baby by Ibram X. Kendi

Let's Talk about Race by Julius Lester 

The Youngest Marcher by Cynthia Levinson

As Good as Anybody: Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel's Amazing March Toward Freedom by Richard Michelson

Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African-Americans by Kadir Nelson

All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold, illustrated by Suzanne Kaufman

Shades of Black: A Celebration of Our Children by Sandra L. Pinkney

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly, illustrated by Laura Freeman

People by Peter Spier

Who Was Rosa Parks? by Yona Zeldis McDonough

We have developed this list as a resource to help families discuss with their children ways to combat racism and discrimination. This is one step in our commitment to fighting racism and injustice.

Books are broken down by appropriate school levels, though some may be suitable for a wider range. Some for younger children are poetry or picture books. The links provide reviews, interviews, and additional information about the authors and books. 

Books with asterisks are available as e-books from the Batten Library Sora Collection. Although the library is closed because of the pandemic, Middle and Upper School students may log in with their school email addresses to access these titles.

Upper School

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo*

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Invisible Man by Ralph W. Ellison

Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (Morrison won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993. The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, was her first novel. Song of Solomon (1977) won the National Book Critics Circle Award and Beloved (1987) won the Pulitzer Prize and was made into a film in 1998.)

Monster by Walter Dean Myers*

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

I’m Not Dying With You Tonight by Gilly Segal and Kimberly Jones

Dear Martin by Nic Stone

On The Come Up by Angie Thomas

Ink Knows No Borders: Poetry of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience, edited by Patrice Vecchione*

Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (This novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, is also a summer reading choice for Norfolk Academy faculty and staff.)

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

Black Enough by Ibi Zoboi*

 

Middle School
 

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Parable of the Sower  by Octavia E. Butler

Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome

New Kid by Jerry Craft

Garvey’s Choice by Nikki Grimes

The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai

The Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine

What Lane? by Torrey Maldonado

Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia

Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan

The First Rule of Punk by Celia C. Pérez

A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramee*

Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Genesis Begins Again by Alicia D. Williams

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Lower School
 

I Am Enough by Grace Byers

The Blacker the Berry: Poems by Joyce Carol Thomas

Something Happened in Our Town by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard

Let the Children March by Monica Clark-Robinson

The Watsons Go to Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis

Stella by Starlight by Sharon M. Draper

Midnight Teacher:  Lily Ann Granderson and Her Secret School by Janet Halfmann

I, Too, Am America by Langston Hughes

Intersection Allies: We Make Room for All  by Chelsea Johnson, LaToya Council, and Carolyn Choi

The Colors of Us by Karen Katz

Can I Touch Your Hair?  Poems of Race, Mistakes and Friendship by Irene Latham and Charles Waters

What Is Given from the Heart by Patricia McKissack, illustrated by April Harrison

Sulwe by Lupita Nyong'o

The Bell Rang by James E. Ransome

Say Something! by Peter Reynolds

Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold

You Matter by Christian Robinson

Follow the Drinking Gourd by Jeanette Winter

The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson