Books related to Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities
Homelessness
(Middle school / high school)
Homelessness can happen to anyone, regardless of age, gender, marital status, and race. While it's important for societies to provide shelter, food, and support for homeless people, it's even more necessary to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place.
Key Social Safety Net Laws
(Middle School / High School) - Nonfiction
The idea that the government should intervene to lift people up from poverty and starvation is relatively new in America, where until the early twentieth century the misery of workhouses and poorhouses were all some people could count on. Since the Great Depression and the beginning of Social Security, the social safety net has expanded to cover more people and try to help them with more problems including poverty, starvation, homelessness, and lack of health care.
Claudette Colvin
"When it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can't sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.'" - Claudette Colvin 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. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders.
Youth to Power
In Youth to Power, Jamie presents the essential guide to changemaking, with advice on writing and pitching op-eds, organizing successful events and peaceful protests, time management as a student activist, utilizing social and traditional media to spread a message, and sustaining long-term action. Jamie walks readers through every step of what effective, healthy, intersectional activism looks like. Young people have a lot to say, and Youth to Power will give you the tools to raise your voice.
The 57 Bus
High School
One teenager in a skirt. One teenager with a lighter. One moment that changes both of their lives forever. If it weren't for the 57 bus, Sasha and Richard never would have met. Both were high school students from Oakland, California, one of the most diverse cities in the country, but they inhabited different worlds. Sasha, a white teen, lived in the middle-class foothills and attended a small private school. Richard, a black teen, lived in the crime-plagued flatlands and attended a large public one. Each day, their paths overlapped for a mere eight minutes.
Brown Girl Dreaming
(Middle School / High School)
Jacqueline Woodson's National Book Award and Newbery Honor winner. Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement.
A Wish in the Dark
Middle School
A boy on the run. A girl determined to find him. A compelling fantasy looks at issues of privilege, protest, and justice. All light in Chattana is created by one man -- the Governor, who appeared after the Great Fire to bring peace and order to the city. For Pong, who was born in Namwon Prison, the magical lights represent freedom, and he dreams of the day he will be able to walk among them. But when Pong escapes from prison, he realizes that the world outside is no fairer than the one behind bars. The wealthy dine and dance under bright orb light, while the poor toil away in darkness.
What Lane?
(Middle School / High School)
"STAY IN YOUR LANE." Stephen doesn't want to hear that--he wants to have no lane. As a mixed kid, he feels like he's living in two worlds with different rules--and he's been noticing that strangers treat him differently than his white friends . . . So what'll he do? Hold on tight as Stephen swerves in and out of lanes to find out which are his--and who should be with him.
Just Help!
(Picture Book)
From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Just Ask! comes a fun and meaningful story about making the world--and your community--better, one action at a time, that asks the question- Who will you help today? Every night when Sonia goes to bed, Mami asks her the same question- How did you help today? And since Sonia wants to help her community, just like her Mami does, she always makes sure she has a good answer to Mami's question.