Katharine Capshaw
Ages 3–8
"Childhood joy, pleasure, and creativity are not often associated with the civil rights movement. Their ties to the movement may have faded from historical memory, but these qualities received considerable photographic attention in that tumultuous era. Katharine Capshaw's Civil Rights Childhood reveals how the Black child has been--and continues to be--a social agent that demands change. Because children carry a compelling aura of human value and potential, images of African American children in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education had a powerful effect on the fight for civil rights. In the iconography of Emmett Till and the girls murdered in the 1963 Birmingham church bombings, Capshaw explores the function of children's photographic books and the image of the Black child in social justice campaigns for school integration and the civil rights movement. Drawing on works ranging from documentary photography, coffee-table and art books, and popular historical narratives and photographic picture books for the very young, Civil Rights Childhood sheds new light on images of the child and family that portrayed liberatory models of Blackness, but it also considers the role photographs played in the desire for consensus and closure with the rise of multiculturalism.
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We keep this on the shelf for race, identity, and seeing yourself on the page — a story kids can feel, not just a lesson adults want to teach.
Ages 3–8. Especially helpful for kids who notice unfairness and want to help.
Ask: What made someone in this story feel proud of who they are?
Bedtime tip: after the last page, ask one question and wait — silence is where the story sticks.
Two titles that deepen the same conversation.
Ages 8–12
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Ages 13+
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Ages 3–8
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Ages 3–8
Antiracist BabyFrom the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist comes a new full-sized picture book that empowers parents and children to uproot racism in our society and in ourselves, now with added ...
Ages 3–8
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Ages 13+
Children of Blood and BoneZélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie's Reaper mother summoned forth souls. But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope.
Ages 3–8
Chocolate me!Relates the experiences of a dark-skinned, curly-haired child who wishes he could look more like the lighter-skinned children in his community until his mother helps him realize how wonderful he is inside and out.
