Sara K Joiner: Youth Activists Leading Change

With the student walkouts for gun control reform last week and the upcoming March for Our Lives, I've been thinking about how social movements often begin with children and young people. There are a number of fiction and nonfiction books that show the world as it was, and how children and young people agitated for change.

Civil Rights Movement
Fiction

• A Thousand Never Evers - Shana Burg
  As the civil rights movement in the South gains momentum in 1963--and violence against African Americans intensifies--the black residents, including seventh-grader Addie Ann Pickett, in the small town of Kuckachoo, Mississippi, begin their own courageous struggle for racial justice.
• Let the Children March - Monica Clark-Robinson
  Under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, children and teenagers march against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963.
• Just Like Martin - Ossie Davis
  Following the deaths of two classmates in a bomb explosion at his Alabama church, fourteen-year-old Stone organizes a children's march for civil rights in the autumn of 1963.
• The Rock and the River - Kekla Magoon
  In 1968 Chicago, fourteen-year-old Sam Childs is caught in a conflict between his father's nonviolent approach to seeking civil rights for African Americans and his older brother, who has joined the Black Panther Party.

Nonfiction

• March Forward, Girl: From Young Warrior to Little Rock Nine - Melba Pattillo Beals
  A member of the Little Rock Nine shares her memories of growing up in the South under Jim Crow.
• Through My Eyes - Ruby Bridges
  The autobiographical story of Bridges' involvement, as a six-year-old, in the integration of her school in New Orleans in 1960. 
• Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice - Phillip Hoose
  Presents the life of the Alabama teenager who played an integral role in the Montgomery bus strike, once by refusing to give up a bus seat, and again, by becoming a plaintiff in the landmark civil rights case against the bus company.
• We've Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March - Cynthia Levinson
  Discusses the events when more than 4,000 African American students marched and were jailed to secure their freedom in May 1963.
• The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, a Young Civil Rights Activist - Cynthia Levinson
  A picture book biography of the life of nine-year-old Hendricks who became the youngest known child to be arrested for picketing against Birmingham segregation practices in 1963. 
• The March Trilogy - John Lewis
  This graphic novel series is Congressman John Lewis' first-hand account of his lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation.
• Today the World Is Watching You: The Little Rock Nine and the Fight for School Integration, 1957 - Kekla Magoon
  On September 4, 1957, nine African American teenagers made their way toward Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Armed soldiers of the Arkansas National Guard blocked most of them at the edge of campus. The three students who did make it onto campus faced an angry mob of white citizens who spit at them and shouted ugly racial slurs.

Girl's Right to Education 
Fiction

• The Breadwinner - Deborah Ellis
  Eleven-year-old Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital city. Parvana's father, a history teacher until his school was bombed and his health destroyed, works from a blanket on the ground in the marketplace, reading letters for people who cannot read or write. One day, he is arrested for the crime of having a foreign education, and the family is left without someone who can earn money or even shop for food.

Nonfiction

• Dear Malala, We Stand With You - Rosemary McCarney with Plan International
  Captures the impact Malala has had on girls from all walks of life. In powerfully simple language and stunning photographs, the struggles from poverty and violence faced by girls everywhere become a catalyst for change.
• I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World - Malala Yousafzai with Patricia McCormick
  Raised in a once-peaceful area of Pakistan transformed by terrorism, Malala was taught to stand up for what she believes. So she fought for her right to be educated. And on October 9, 2012, she nearly lost her life for the cause: She was shot point-blank while riding the bus on her way home from school.
• Malala's Magic Pencil - Malala Yousafzai
  As a child in Pakistan, Malala made a wish for a magic pencil. She would use it to make everyone happy, to erase the smell of garbage from her city, to sleep an extra hour in the morning. But as she grew older, Malala saw that there were more important things to wish for.

Workers' Rights 
Fiction

• Iqbal - Francesco D'Adamo
  A fictionalized account of the Pakistani child who escaped from bondage in a carpet factory and went on to help liberate other children like him before being gunned down at the age of thirteen.
• On Our Way to Oyster Bay: Mother Jones and Her March for Children's Rights - Monica Kulling
  Though eight-year-old Aidan and his friend Gussie want to go to school, like many other children in 1903, they work twelve hours, six days a week, at a cotton mill in Pennsylvania instead. So when the millworkers decide to go on strike, the two friends join the picket line. Maybe now life will change for them.

Nonfiction

• Kids on Strike! - Susan Campbell Bartoletti
  Describes the conditions and treatment that drove workers, including many children, to various strikes, from the mill workers strikes in 1828 and 1836 and the coal strikes at the turn of the century to the work of Mother Jones on behalf of child workers.
• Kid Blink Beats The World - Don Brown
  A story of the newsboys (and girls) who took on the world's most powerful press barons--and won.
• Iqbal Masih and the Crusaders Against Child Slavery - Susan Kuklin
  An account of the former Pakistani child labor activist whose life and unexplained murder has brought the evil of child bondage to the attention of the world.

Social movements, alone, aren't the only place where children try to make lasting change. Some turn into activists and fighters when they see truly horrible situations arise and cannot remain silent.

Fiction 

• Aluta - Adwoa Badoe
  For eighteen-year-old Charlotte, university life is better than she'd ever dreamed, a sophisticated and generous roommate, the camaraderie of dorm living, parties, clubs and boyfriends. Most of all, Charlotte is exposed to new ideas, and in 1981 Ghana, this may be the most exciting and most dangerous adventure of all. 
• Finding Zasha - Randi Barrow
  Twelve-year-old Ivan has escaped from the siege of Leningrad, but when the town he has taken refuge in is occupied by Hitler's troops, he sees his chance to help the partisans he has met--and to rescue two German shepherd puppies, Zasha and Thor, from the cruel Commander Recht. 
• Ahimsa - Supriya Kelkar
  Gandhi asks for one member of each family to join the fight for independence from the British, and when ten-year-old Anjali's mother is jailed for doing so, Anjali must step out of her comfort zone to take over her mother's work. 
• Kiss the Dust - Elizabeth Laird
  Her father's involvement with the Kurdish resistance movement in Iraq forces thirteen-year-old Tara to flee with her family over the border into Iran, where they face an unknown future.
• Number the Stars - Lois Lowry
  In 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark, ten-year-old Annemarie learns how to be brave and courageous when she helps shelter her Jewish friend from the Nazis.
• The Bicycle Spy - Yona Zeldis McDonough
  Twelve-year-old Marcel loves riding his bicycle, and dreams of competing in the Tour de France, but it is 1942 and German soldiers are everywhere, stopping him as he delivers bread from his parents' bakery around Aucoin--then one day he discovers that it is not just bread he is delivering, and suddenly he finds himself in position of dangerous secrets about his parents and his new friend from Paris, Delphine.
• When My Name Was Keoko - Linda Sue Park
  With national pride and occasional fear, a brother and sister face the increasingly oppressive occupation of Korea by Japan during World War II, which threatens to suppress Korean culture entirely.
• Shadow On the Mountain - Margi Preus
  In Nazi-occupied Norway, fourteen-year-old Espen joins the resistance movement, graduating from deliverer of illegal newspapers to courier and spy.
• When Morning Comes - Arushi Raina
  Zanele is skipping school and secretly plotting against the apartheid government. The police can't know. Her mother and sister can't know. Her best friend Thabo, schoolboy turned gang member, can tell she's up to something. Across the bridge, in the wealthy white suburbs, Jack plans to spend his last days in Johannesburg burning miles on his beat-up Mustang--until he meets a girl with an unforgettable face from the simmering black township--Soweto. Working in her father's shop, Meena finds a packet of banned pamphlets. A series of chance meetings changes everything. A chain of events is set in motion. And the students will rise. 
• The War Within These Walls - Aline Sax 
  Misha and his family do their best to survive in the appalling conditions of the Warsaw ghetto during World War II, and ultimately make a final, desperate stand against the Nazis. 
• The Fall of the Red Star - Helen M. Szablya
  Fourteen-year-old Stephen takes up arms and joins the resistance in this novel of the Hungarian Revolution.

Nonfiction

• Hans and Sophie Scholl: German Resisters of the White Rose - Toby Axelrod
  Profiles the brother and sister who founded White Rose, a student group at Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians University which attempted to build resistance against Hitler through anti-Nazi leaflets and graffiti.
• The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pederson and the Churchill Club - Phillip Hoose
  At the outset of World War II, Denmark did not resist German occupation. Deeply ashamed of his nation's leaders, fifteen-year-old Knud Pedersen resolved with his brother and a handful of schoolmates to take action against the Nazis if the adults would not.
• We Will Not Be Silent: The White Rose Student Resistance Movement That Defied Hitler - Russell Freedman
  The true story of the White Rose, a group of students in Nazi Germany who were active undercover agents of the resistance movement against Hitler and his regime.
• Who Will Shout If Not Us? Student Activists and the Tiananmen Square Protest, China, 1989 - Ann Kerns
  In the spring of 1989, university students in Beijing grabbed world headlines with a courageous stand against decades of Communist authoritarian rule in China. Thousands and then millions of students and workers from all over China gathered on the city's Tiananmen Square to support demands for democracy, clean government, and increased personal freedoms.

But activism also doesn't have to mean great upheaval. It can be as simple as trying to encourage yourself and others to think about the life you want to have in the community in which you live.

Fiction

• Edwina Victorious - Susan Bonners
  Edwina follows in the footsteps of her namesake great-aunt when she begins to write letters to the mayor about community problems and poses as Edwina the elder.
• Steinbeck's Ghost - Lewis Buzbee
  Unhappy after his parents move to a weird subdivision and become workaholics, thirteen-year-old Travis returns to his old Salinas neighborhood and becomes actively involved in saving the John Steinbeck Library.
• Imogene's Last Stand - Candace Fleming
  Enamored of history, young Imogene Tripp tries to save her town's historical society from being demolished in order to build a shoelace factory.
• Going Going - Naomi Shihab Nye
  In San Antonio, Texas, sixteen-year-old Florrie leads her friends and a new boyfriend in a campaign which supports small businesses and protests the effects of chain stores.

Nonfiction

• Teenage Rebels: Successful High School Activists, from the Little Rock 9 to the Class of Tomorrow - Dawson Barrett
  Provides a glimpse into the laws, policies, and political struggles that have shaped the lives of American high school students over the last one hundred years.
• Marley Dias Gets It Done and So Can You! - Marley Dias with Siobhan McGowan
  Drawing from her experience, Marley shows kids how they can galvanize their strengths to make positive changes in their communities, while getting support from parents, teachers, and friends to turn dreams into reality.
• Activism: The Ultimate Teen Guide - Kathlyn Gay
  Gay explains why people become activists, the types of causes they advocate or oppose, and how teenagers can get involved.
• Luna and Me: The True Story of a Girl Who Lived in a Tree to Save a Forest - Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw
  Social activism combines with environmentalism in this picture book bio of Julia Butterfly Hill and Luna, the thousand-year-old redwood tree whose life she saved.
• Political Activism: How You Can Make a Difference - Heather E. Schwartz
  Describes what political activism is and serves as a guide explaining how youth can make a change in their world.

The changes these children and young people sought to make are still being felt around the world. In some places, these changes are slower to arrive. In other places, these changes have paved the way for even more changes to move society toward a more just and stable place.

As we can see throughout history, there will be setbacks and obstacles, but change will come.

Sara K Joiner is the author of After the Ashes. She is also a public librarian.