Child Activists

  • Allen, Eric.   "The Latchkey Children"
  • Bartoletti, Susan Campbell. KIDS ON STRIKE
  • Beatty, Patricia.  Lupita Manana
  • Bruchac, Joseph.  HEART OF A CHIEF, The protagonist is Chris Nicola, a sixth grader, from the Penacook Indian Reservation.
  • Bunting, Eve.  December
  • Bunting, Eve. A Day's Work
  • Bunting, Eve. Your Move
  • Burton, Hester. "Riders of the Storm" (young Englishman involved in the French Revolution).
  • Burton, Hester. "The Rebel"
  • Chinn, Karen.  Sam and the Lucky Money
  • Coleman, Evelyn.  White Socks Only
  • Coles, Robert. The Story of Ruby Bridges
  • Corey, Shana.  You forgot your skirt, Amelia Bloomer
  • Disalvo-Ryan, Dyanne. Uncle Willie and the Soup Kitchen
  • Fitzhugh, Louise. Nobody's Family is Going to Change, Deals with issues of gender, age and race.
  • Fleischman, Paul. Weslandia
  • Forbes, Eshter.  Johnny Tremain
  • Griffin, Phoebe and the General (early reader)
  • Hamilton, Virginia.  M.C. Higgins, the Great
  • Heide, Sammi and the Time of Troubles (Anti-war protests, Beirut)
  • Hopkinson, Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt (quilting a map to freedom)
  • Innocenti, Rose Blanche (smuggling food to people in concentration camps)
  • Kirkpatrick, Redcoats and Petticoats (boy and mother spy for Patriots, picture book)
  • Lee, Nim and the War Effort (WWII paper drive)
  • Levine, Ella.  Freedom's children. Avon Flare, 1994  in which "young civil rights activists tell their own stories"
  • Levine, Freedom's Children (oral histories)
  • Lewin, Ted. Amazon Boy
  • Lewin, Ted. Red Legs
  • McCully, Emily.  The Bobbin Girl
  • McGill, Alice.  Molly Bannaky
  • McGovern, Ann.  The Lady in the Box
  • Miller, William.  Night Golf
  • Moss, Marissa.  True Heart
  • Myers, Christopher.  Wings
  • Park, Frances, and Ginger.  The Royal Bee
  • Polacco, The Butterfly (French family hides Jewish family during the Holocaust)
  • Rael, What Zeesie Saw on Delancey Street (birthday money given to needy family)
  • Ransom, Candice.  The Promise Quilt
  • Savitz, May. "Run Don't Walk" (late 70s?). Not a literary masterpiece, but the first young people's book that I can think of that portrays disabled people campaigning for their rights.
  • Speare, Elizabeth George. The Bronze Bow
  • Tran, Little Weaver of Thai Yen Village (Vietnamese girl takes food to bombed out village)
  • Trease, Geoffrey. "Bows Against the Barons"
  • Trease, Geoffrey. "Comrades for the Charter"
  • Vipont, Elfrida. "The Pavilion"
  • Virgie goes to school with us Boys
  • West, Sheyann.  _Selma, Lord, Selma_ an interview of Sheyann West and Rachel Nelson, ten years after their participation in  "Bloody Sunday" crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the Montgomery March.  They were 8 year old activitist - their interview, by Frank Sikorsky, a Birmingham journalist, comes complete with photos of that period when they skipped school in order to go to the church where the march was planned.  Those two knew that 'something big' was going on, much to their parents' dismay. An excellent piece of nonfiction for 8 year olds to 80 years old.
  • Wiles, Deborah.  Freedom Summer
  • Woodson, The Other Side (picture book)
  • Yin, Coolies
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