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Books Matter™

Children's & Young Adult Literature

ADL’s online bibliography of recommended children’s and young adult books about bias, bullying, diversity and social justice.

225 Results

Summer Reading

Monthly Featured Book

Each month a book from Books Matter is featured. Each Monthly Featured Book has educator and parent discussion guides to expand upon young people's learning from the book. Suggested activities help to facilitate discussions about identity and diversity, understanding and challenging bias and promoting social justice.

See Monthly Featured Books here.

ADL recommends children’s and young adult books that educators, students, families and others can use to explore concepts including identity, diversity, bias, and bullying. We choose age-appropriate works of literature that have engaging plots, strong themes and relevant content topics.

A book recommendation should not be considered — and is most certainly not — an approval of everything the author may have said or done. Indeed, at times, we have featured books where we may vehemently disagree with the authors on other issues outside of the content of their books. We think this not only allows us to choose the best books for educational purposes, but it is an important lesson that you can value a work even if you disagree with the creator’s views expressed elsewhere. For more, please read our post on how we can value books and other content even when one disagrees with the author and how to engage young people in this conversation.