2022 Middle Division Summer Reading Book Lists: Home

School Library Journal article: Figuring out to how to handle classics that critics say haven’t aged well can be tough for librarians charged with putting together school collections. Students have been reading To Kill a Mockingbird, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and the “Little House” series for generations, and for many years, having these “classics” available in school libraries was a given. But today, some media specialists are questioning the proper place for these and other novels.

Search Poets.org's curated collection of over 10,000 poems by the Social Justice theme.

This document was compiled by Center for Racial Justice in Education. It is not meant to be exhaustive and will be continually updated as we are made aware of more resources.

"Black Lives Matter," or BLM, is a protest movement that began as a hashtag. It is a response to the killing of black Americans by police. Most recently, nationwide protests broke out following the May 25 death of George Floyd, a black man from Minneapolis. Floyd died after a police officer pressed his knee on the man's neck. The officer has now been charged with Floyd's murder.

There are 13 guiding principles of the Black Lives Matter movement. We seek to expand student understanding of these principles through the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action (scheduled for the first week of February each year) and beyond. Below you’ll find a growing list of recommended titles that center each of the Black Lives Matter 13 Guiding Principles, as well as additional recommended booklists.

Children’s books continue to be an invaluable source of information and values. They reflect the attitudes in our society about diversity, power relationships among different groups of people, and various social identities (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender, economic class, sexual orientation, and disability). The visual and verbal messages young children absorb from books (and other media) heavily influence their ideas about themselves and others. Depending on the quality of the book, they can reinforce (or undermine) children’s affirmative self-concept, teach accurate (or misleading) information about people of various identities, and foster positive (or negative) attitudes about diversity. Children’s books teach children about who is important, who matters, who is even visible. Consequently, carefully choosing quality children’s books is an indispensable educational and child-rearing task.

A list of the best middle grade #ownvoices books.

15 Titles for Young Readers Celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage

Need suggestions for summer reading? This year we've super-sized our lists, with a baker's dozen recommendations for different age ranges — including fiction, nonfiction, folklore, and poetry — all published 2020–2021 and ideal for the season. Grade levels are only suggestions; the individual child is the real criterion.

WNDB is deeply committed to increasing the visibility of diverse books. Oftentimes these works often don't receive the marketing and promotion that blockbuster books get, and so we want to do our part in raising the profile of diverse books and bringing them to a larger audience.

Celebrate the Library’s anniversary with 125 books for kids, selected by our expert librarians from the last 125 years, that inspire those both young and young at heart to love reading. Check out the list below—or find the titles on our e-reader app SimplyE—by category or suggested age.

Summer is the time to read what you love - and love what you read! This year's Summer Reading booklists are created by librarians from Brooklyn Public Library and New York Public Library. Students will have a better chance of finding these books at the library because we have many copies available.