Protests

We Shall Overcome

“We Shall Overcome” is one of the most recognizable anthems of the Civil Rights movement, widely performed at protests and rallies to promote nonviolent civil rights activism. Now, these inspirational, empowering, legendary lyrics are brought to life with the stirring, evocative, and breathtaking illustrations from multi-award-winning talent Bryan Collier. Powerfully imagined for the present moment, Collier’s illustrations meld the most emblematic moments of the twentieth-century Civil Rights movement with the present day, depicting the movements, protests, and demonstrations — big and small — as the fight for justice continues.

The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora

When his family’s restaurant and Cuban American neighborhood in Miami are threatened by a greedy land developer, thirteen-year-old Arturo, joined by Carmen, a cute poetry enthusiast, fight back, discovering the power of poetry and protest through untold family stories and the work of José Martí.

Dream Land

One girl’s struggle to find her true home. It was meant to be like coming home…All her life, Safi’s parents have dreamed of returning to Grandpa’s native village in Crimea. But exchanging their sunny Uzbekistan house for a squalid camp is more like a nightmare. Will the return to a country where no one welcomes them tear Safi’s family apart, or can this strange land ever become home? This is a compelling story about the Crimean Tatars’ struggle to reclaim the land from which they were exiled in the Second World War.

Why Do We Fight? :

Battles, protests, standoffs, strikes. We hear about them all the time. On the surface, a battle and a protest don’t seem to have much in common, but they’re really just two ways of handling a dispute. One uses violence, the other uses signs and picket lines. But both start as a disagreement between two groups of people. Both are conflicts. Since it’s impossible for people to agree on everything all the time, conflicts naturally pop up every day, all over the world. Sometimes they turn into full-blown wars, which can be a lot trickier to understand than the conflicts that pop up in everyday life, but every conflict has some things in common. Using real world examples, Why Do We Fight? teaches kids to recognize the structures, factors, and complex histories that go into creating conflicts, whether personal or global as well as the similarities between both. They’ll be given tools to seek out information, enabling them to make informed opinions while learning to respect that others may form different ones.

All My Noble Dreams and Then What Happens

As Rosalind continues to straddle the proper English world of her family and the culture of 1920s India where they live, her support of Gandhi and his followers in opposing British rule grows and she considers trying to carry the rebels’ message to Edward, Prince of Wales, during his visit.

Momentum

With energy wars flaring across the globe, oil prices gone crazy, regular power cuts, rationing, and soldiers keeping the Outsiders in check, Hunter, one of the privileged of society, is fascinated by the Outsiders, so when he meets Uma he is quickly drawn into her circle of the poor and disenfranchised.

Sacred Leaf: The Cocalero Novels

The people of Bolivia have grown coca for legitimate purposes for hundreds of years, but the demands of America’s War on Drugs now threaten this way of life. Deborah Ellis’s searing follow-up to the highly praised “I Am a Taxi” deals with this frank reality. After he manages to escape from virtual enslavement in an illegal cocaine operation, Diego is taken in by the Ricardo family. These poor coca farmers give Diego a safe haven where he recovers from his ordeal in the jungle. But the army soon moves in and destroys the family’s coca crop — their livelihood. So Diego joins their protest of the destruction of their crops and confront the army head-on by barricading the roads. While tension between the cocaleros and the army builds to a dramatic climax, Diego wonders whether he will ever find a way to return to his family. This compelling novel defies conventional wisdom on an important issue, and shows how people in one part of the world unknowingly create hardship for people in another.

1968

1968, the year America grew up from racial and gender equality fights to the struggle against the draft and the Vietnam war. In 1968 Americans asked questions and fought for their rights.  Now, 30 years later, we look back on that seminal year–from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assasination to the Columbia University riots to our changing role among other nations–in this gripping introduction to the events home and abroad.  The year we first took steps in space, the year we shaped the present, 1968 presented by a former New York Times writer who lived through it all, shares the story with detail.