Books of Diversity *
in Children’s Nonfiction
Recommended by Hannah Lee, Main Point Books (Wayne, PA)
BOARD BOOKS
Signing Smart: My First Signs
Michelle Anthony • (Scholastic)
EASY READERS
Brad Meltzer’s Ordinary People Change the World series (Penguin)
I am Martin Luther King, Jr.
I am Rosa Parks
I am Jackie Robinson
PICTURE BOOKS
Be Water, My Friend:
Early Years of Bruce Lee
Ken Mochizuki
(Lee & Low)
Exploring Chinatown
Carol Stepanchuk
(Pacific View Press)
A Faith Like Mine
Laura Buller
(DK)
Kids Like Me in China
Ying Ying Fry
(Yeong & Yeong)
Let’s Eat!
Beatrice Hollyer
(Henry Holt)
My First Book of Chinese
Words
Faye-Lynn Wu
(Tuttle)
16 Extraordinary
Asian Americans
Nancy Lobb
(Walch)
Sixteen Years in
Sixteen Seconds
Paula Yoo, Dom Lee
(Lee & Low)
Sky High
Marissa Moss
(Random House)
Wake Up, World!
Beatrice Hollyer
(Henry Holt)
MIDDLE GRADE
Who is…? and Who was…? series (Penguin)
Muhammad Ali
Maya Angelou
Louis Armstrong
George Washington
Carver
Roberto Clemente
Frederick Douglass
Gandhi
Michael Jackson
Derek Jeter
Frida Kahlo
Genghis Khan
Nelson Mandela
Barack Obama
Jesse Owens
Sacagawea
Sitting Bull
Maria Tallchief
Sojourner Truth
Harriet Tubman
King Tut
Stevie Wonder
*Diversity defined as referring to 1) people of color (of African/African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, Latin American, Middle Eastern, or Native American/Indigenous
descent); 2) people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, or queer; 3) people with disabilities; and 4) people representing minority religious faiths.
MIDDLE GRADE
Brown Girl Dreaming
Jacqueline Woodson
(Penguin)
I am Malala (YA edition)
Malala Yousafzai
(Little, Brown)
The Lost Garden
Laurence Yep
(HarperCollins)
Stories Behind Chinese Idioms
Zheng Ma, Zheng Li
(Shanghai Press)
YOUNG ADULT
Am I Blue?
Marion Dane Bauer (ed.)
(HarperTeen)
Becoming Maria
Sonia Manzano
(Scholastic)
Being Jazz
Jazz Jennings
(Random House)
Beyond Magenta
Susan Kuklin
(Candlewick)
The Full Spectrum
David Levithan (ed.)
(Random House)
YA GRAPHIC
I Will Always Write Back
Caitlin Alifirenka
(Little, Brown)
Hello Cruel World
Kate Bornstein
(Seven Stories)
Twirling Naked in the Streets
Jeannie Davide-Rivera
(David and Goliath)
American Born Chinese
Gene Luen Yang
(Square Fish)
El Deafo
Cece Bell
(Amulet)
ADULT NONFICTION
Barefoot Heart
Elva Trevino Hart
(Bilingual Review)
The Beast
Oscar Martinez
(Verso Books)
City of Thorns
Ben Rawlence
(Picador)
Crossing Over
Rubén Martínez
(Picador)
I, Migrant
Sami Shah
(Allen & Unwin)
Of Beetles and Angels
Mawi Asgedom
(Little, Brown)
Outcasts United
Warren St. John
(Random House)
Life and Love
Zosia Zaks • (Autism
Asperger Publishing)
Moving Violations
John Hockenberry
(Hachette)
My Body Politic
Simi Linton
(Univ. of Michigan)
Notes from My Travels
The Writer as
Migrant • Ha Jin
(Univ. of Chicago)
Angelina Jolie
(Gallery Books)