Civil Rights
The reading selection under this topic offers students an opportunity to learn about civil rights movements and human rights under oppressive governments through the personal narrative of a child or adult. Students will connect the abstract theme of social justice to concrete details of everyday life.
Animal Farm
A group of barnyard animals overthrow and chase off their exploitative human masters and set up their own egalitarian society.
Blue Gold
The lives of three teen girls are affected by coltan, or "blue gold" which is a rare mineral used in making cell phones and computers.
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
Cry, the Beloved country
In the 1950s, a black South African accused of a crime turns to his minister father and a white attorney for help, but the racial problems of the country prevent justice from being served.
Dead Man Walking
In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison.
Flowers for Algernon
Algernon is a lab mouse and Charlie is a mentally disabled man. Find out how a brain operation increases Charlie’s IQ and changes his life and the life of Algernon.
HUSH
A middle-class African American family is forced to enter the federal witness protection program after the father decides to testify against two policemen who killed an innocent boy.
I Am The Cheese
Imagine discovering that your whole life has been a fiction, your identity altered, and a new family history created.
Iqbal
When young Iqbal is sold into slavery at a carpet factory, his arrival changes everything for the other overworked and abused children there. It is Iqbal who explains to them that despite their master's promises, he plans on keeping them as his slaves indefinitely.
Jesse
To escape a home dominated by his alcoholic stepfather, 17-year-old Jesse abruptly leaves high school, moves into an apartment with his older brother, and takes classes at Fresno City College.
Kindred
A contemporary Los Angeles woman travels back in time to an Antebellum plantation, where she is assumed to be a slave and discovers the identity of her ancestors. Violent confrontations and emotional intensity are aspects of this novel depicting the political, ethical, and social influences of slavery on both black and white Americans.
Nelson Mandela
South Africa has become known as the home of the world’s most famous former political prisoner. A prisoner who emerged to become an internationally respected statesman.
Nightjohn
Nightjohn, an enslaved African American, risks severe punishments by teaching a young slave girl to read.
Parvana's Journey
After her father's death, 13-year-old Parvana, disguised as a boy, wanders alone through the war-torn Afghanistan looking for her mother and siblings who had disappeared in the tumult of the Taliban takeover of Mazar-e-Sharif.
Sarny
The Civil War is over, and Sarny has been released from the shackles of slavery. This sequel to Gary Paulsen's acclaimed novel, Nightjohn, follows Sarny as she searches for her children after the war.
Taste of Salt: A Story of Modern Haiti
Seventeen-year-old Dijo (a victim in the real-life 1991 firebombing of a boys' shelter) is remembered by a girl named Jeremie, who cares for him in the hospital after he has been beaten in an unprovoked attack.
The Breadwinner
Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan, 11-year-old Parvana has rarely been outdoors. Barred from attending school, shopping at the market, or even playing in the streets of Kabul, the heroine of The Breadwinner is trapped inside her family's one-room home.
The Giver
Jonas lives in a seemingly utopian society. He is about to experience the Ceremony of Twelve to determine his role in life. Little does he know that he will discover the secret memories of his dystopian society.
The Golden Compass
Lyra Belacqua is content to run wild among the scholars of Jodan College, with her daemon familiar always by her side. But the arrival of her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, draws her to the heart of a terrible struggle-a struggle born of Gobblers and stolen children, witch clans and armored bears.
The Help
Three women will come together for a project that will put them all at risk. They are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their time.
The Mighty Miss Malone
Deza is the smartest girl in her class in Gary, Indiana, singled out by teachers for a special path in life. But it's 1936 and the Great Depression has hit Gary hard, and there are no jobs for black men.
The Truth about Truman School
Zebby and Amr create a website about the real Truman Middle School. They want to say things that the school newspaper would never say.
Watson’s Go to Birmingham-1963
This story follows the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, as they travel south to visit their grandmother in Alabama. There they are confronted with the 1963 bombing of black churches.