Books Matter™

Children's & Young Adult Literature

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.