Skip to main content

Change Agents: Elementary/Middle School Book Club Sets

Books that build empathy and inspire action. Made possible by a gift from Paula Silver.

Scan on mobile.
Download PDF

25 items

Home of the brave [BOOK DISCUSSION]
Applegate, Katherine.
Format:

Kek, an African refugee, is confronted by many strange things at the Minneapolis home of his aunt and cousin, as well as in his fifth grade classroom, and longs for his missing mother, but finds comfort in the company of a cow and her owner.

Inside out & back again [BOOK DISCUSSION]
Lai, Thanhha.
Format:

Through a series of poems, a young girl chronicles the life-changing year of 1975, when she, her mother, and her brothers leave Vietnam and resettle in Alabama.

It ain't so awful, falafel [BOOK DISCUSSION]
Dumas, Firoozeh.
Format:

Zomorod (Cindy) Yousefzadeh is the new kid on the block ... for the fourth time. California's Newport Beach is her family's latest perch, and she's determined to shuck her brainy loner persona and start afresh with a new Brady Bunch name--Cindy. It's the late 1970s, and fitting in becomes more difficult as Iran makes U.S. headlines with protests, revolution, and finally the taking of American hostages.

Lucky broken girl [BOOK DISCUSSION]
Behar, Ruth, 1956- author.
Format:

In 1960s New York, fifth-grader Ruthie, a Cuban-Jewish immigrant, must rely on books, art, her family, and friends in her multicultural neighborhood when an accident puts her in a body cast.

Marley Dias gets it done [BOOK DISCUSSION] : and so can you!
Dias, Marley (Marley Emerson)
Format:

In this accessible "keep-it-real" guide, Marley explores activism, social justice, volunteerism, equity and inclusion, and using social media for good. 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.

Out of my mind [BOOK DISCUSSION]
Draper, Sharon M. (Sharon Mills)
Format:

A brilliant, impatient fifth-grader with cerebral palsy, considered by many to be intellectually disabled, discovers a technological device that will allow her to speak for the first time.

Princess Princess ever after [BOOK DISCUSSION]
O'Neill, Katie (Cartoonist)
Format:

When the heroic princess Amira rescues the kind-hearted princess Sadie from her tower prison, neither expects to find a true friend in the bargain. Yet as they adventure across the kingdom, they discover that they bring out the very best in the other person. They'll need to join forces and use all the know-how, kindness, and bravery they have in order to defeat their greatest foe yet: a jealous sorceress with a dire grudge against Sadie. Join Sadie and Amira, two very different princesses with very different strengths, on their journey to figure out what happily ever after really means and how they can find it with each other.

The birchbark house [BOOK DISCUSSION]
Erdrich, Louise.
Format:

Omakayas, a seven-year-old Native American girl of the Ojibwa tribe, lives through the joys of summer and the perils of winter on an island in Lake Superior in 1847.

The epic fail of Arturo Zamora [BOOK DISCUSSION]
Cartaya, Pablo, author.
Format:

When his family's restaurant and Cuban American neighborhood in Miami are threatened by a greedy land developer, thirteen-year-old Arturo, joined by Carmen, a cute poetry enthusiast, fight back, discovering the power of poetry and protest through untold family stories and the work of José Martí.

The revolution of Evelyn Serrano [BOOK DISCUSSION]
Manzano, Sonia.
Format:

It is 1969 in Spanish Harlem, and fourteen-year-old Evelyn Serrano is trying hard to break free from her conservative Puerto Rican surroundings, but when her activist grandmother comes to stay and the neighborhood protests start, things get a lot more complicated--and dangerous.