The first Earth Day was held in the spring of my junior year in high school, and I became an enthusiastic participant. In my isolated rural area, this consisted primarily of encouraging people to turn off the lights when they left a room and to put bricks in their toilets to conserve water when they flushed. Never mind that many people in the area couldn’t turn the lights on because they couldn’t pay their electricity bills and that many didn’t have toilets to flush. I was thrilled to be doing my part to save the world.
My understanding of political protest and activism has become much more nuanced since then, but I’m still proud of my younger self for having so much passion and dedication to a cause greater than herself. I also know that being a tiny part of the fledgling environmental justice movement had a significant effect on me. When I saw news reports of other young people engaged in similar activities around the country, it made me feel a part of the larger world outside my small community. It made me believe that there might be a place for me in that larger world.
My experience was by no means unique. Becoming involved in political activism has changed the lives of thousands of young people in the United States for the better. Oral histories from the 1960s and 1970s support this idea, and research has shown it to be true for young people in the 2020s. For example, research at the University of Michigan found that adolescents engaged in community activism became better critical thinkers.
Of course, random rioting in the streets doesn’t have a positive impact on anyone, but it’s possible to be a political activist without resorting to violence. Unfortunately, the skills needed for nonviolent protest aren’t routinely taught in schools. Until that happens, young people who want to change the world for the better have to look elsewhere for role models. I recommend the four books I’ve described below as a good place to start. The young people in these books fight against racism, sexism, classism, and environmental injustice, respectively.
A Good Kind of Trouble
By Lisa Moore Ramée
Shayla is reasonably happy with her life, other than wishing that her forehead wasn’t so big and that Jace, the boy she likes, would notice her. She does well in school, and though her parents are strict, they obviously love her. She is careful to follow all the rules at home and at school, and she never gets in trouble. She is proud of the fact that she and her two best friends can call themselves the United Nations because Shayla is black, Isabella is Puerto Rican, and Julia is Japanese American.
Then things begin to change. Julia suddenly wants to spend time with other Asian students. Isabella suddenly seems much prettier when she gets her braces removed and removes her “unibrow,” and Shayla feels twinges of jealousy when Jace takes notice of Isabella. Shayla finds herself on the school track team, and her struggles and successes there start to uproot her perceptions of herself. She is even accused by other black students of being “not black enough.”
Perhaps the biggest change in Shayla’s life is that her sense of social justice awakens. She has been only vaguely aware that her older sister has been involved in the Black Lives Matter movement. Then she becomes aware of the tensions surrounding the trial of police officer who was seen on video shooting a black man. She attends her first protest rally with her parents. Finally, she decides to begin wearing a black armband to school in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, even though this means getting into trouble.
A Good Kind of Trouble would be a very good middle-grade novel even without its focus on social justice. The way in which it shows Shayla’s social justice awakening moves it into the brilliant category. Shayla isn’t a stereotypical firebrand activist who has been protesting since the cradle. Her reluctance to get pulled into a conflict is true to life. Her awareness of injustice comes to her gradually and is all the more powerful because of that. An important part of Shayla’s story is that she had the support of friends and family as she took her first steps into the social justice realm.
You can learn more about Lisa Moore Ramée here.
Dress Coded
By Carrie Firestone
Molly Frost is an average eight-grade student who uses a podcast to start a revolution. She decides to start the podcast when she sees a student being berated by two school administrators and “witnessed a piece of her soul leave her body.” She interviews the student, Olivia, to learn why Olivia was “dress coded.” It happened after she removed her hoodie and wrapped it around her waist to hide a blood stain from her period on her white pants. She was dress coded for exposing the tank top she wore under the hoodie. Although reluctant at first, Olivia agrees to let Molly make her story the focus of the podcast. (This leads to the boys in the class nicknaming her “Tampon Fail.”)
Horror stories about the dress code are revealed on the podcast. Sometimes one girl is dress coded for wearing the same outfit as another girl who doesn’t get dress coded, simply because the first girl has a curvier figure. A black student is dress coded for having “tall hair.” One girl has been dress coded 37 times.
Gradually, most of the girls in the class unite around their shared injustice. They realize that the dress code is based on the idea that girls must conceal their bodies to spare boys from being distracted by their appearance. When their petition to the school administration is ignored, they escalate their campaign, using the podcast, Instagram, and text messages to share information and organize.
Dress Coded is told through a series of podcast transcripts, journal entries, text messages, letters, and lists. The characters include a diverse group of girls who are fully rounded, not simply filling slots for Black Character, Artistic Character, Disabled Character, etc. Details of the character’s lives beyond the campaign to change the dress code are included, and they will be familiar to most middle-grade readers, including (unfortunately) vaping addiction and concern about active-shooter lockdowns.
At the end of Dress Coded, I felt as though I’d gotten to know real girls and found myself wondering what would happen to them as adults. I suspect that, having achieved success as activists in middle school, they would be unstoppable as women.
You can learn more about Carrie Firestone here.
Just Like That
By Gary D. Schmidt
When Meryl Lee Kowalski’s dearest friend dies in an accident, she is overwhelmed with a grief so all-consuming that she calls it the Blank. She can’t imagine returning to her junior high school without Hodding, and her parents decide to send her to St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls, an elite private school in Maine.
Meryl Lee is from Hicksville, New York, and arrives with her belongings in shopping bags; her classmates at St. Elene’s are the children of diplomats and financiers. Meryl Lee’s best blouse came from Woolworth’s; her roommate wears a lavender silk robe from Brussels. Meals at St. Elene’s involve white linen tablecloths with white linen napkins, heavy silverware, and heavier crystal; they are served by “town girls.”
Meryl Lee is a trouper, and she gives her best to everything that St. Elene’s demands of her, including classes in Domestic Economy, field hockey practice, and chapel services in which she is encouraged to face Obstacles with Resolution and become Accomplished. All the while she is fighting to keep the Blank at bay.
Meryl Lee’s classmates never miss an opportunity to let her know that they consider her to be a lesser being, such as expressing astonishment in her last name because “I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone from Eastern Europe.” She takes all of that in stride, comforting herself with thoughts of the sarcastic things Hodding would have to say about St. Elene’s. What she refuses to accept is the rampant classism that permeates St. Elene’s, particularly the way in which her classmates and her teachers treat the “town girls.”
When a town girl who is a gifted poet isn’t allowed to participate in the newly formed literary society, Meryl has had enough of St. Elene’s classism. She stages a one-girl protest, complete with a protest sign in each hand, demanding that the school “Open the literary society to all!” She maintains her protest around the clock for two days and two nights, joined eventually by classmates and even teachers.
Meryl Lee is such a well-developed, multifaceted character that it’s hard not to like her, and the other characters in the story are equally true to life. The descriptions of the 1968 time period are also spot-on — including a cameo appearance by Vice President Spiro Agnew.
The world needs more Meryl Lee Kowalskis, and I hope that Just Like That will inspire young readers to follow her example.
You can learn more about Gary D. Schmidt here.
Strange Birds: A Field Guide to Ruffling Feathers
By Celia C. Perez
In Strange Birds, four girls who couldn’t be more different from one another form an unlikely friendship in the process of protesting environmental injustice.
Lane DeSanti, a white girl who loves making art with found objects and knows a lot about healing crystals, has been essentially exiled to her grandmother’s estate in Florida while her parents finalize their divorce.
Aster Douglas, an African American girl who is being home-schooled by her grandfather while her mother is stationed with the military in Japan, is already an accomplished cook and loves to experiment with new recipes.
Ofelia Castillo is an aspiring journalist whose attempts to hunt for a good story constantly collide with her Cuban American parents’ need to protect her from any and every danger.
Cat Garcia, also Cuban American, is already knowledgeable about bird lore and wants to become an ornithologist. She is being prodded by her mother to enter the Miss Floras competition, the highlight of a local girls’ club. Miss Flora is crowned with a hat made with real feathers. Cat knows the hat was made during a period when three hundred million birds were slaughtered each year to make hats for women.
The Floras group was started by Lane’s ancestors, but she is not interested in joining. Instead, she wants to start the Ostentation of Others and Outsiders. Ofelia, Aster, and Cat respond to the mysterious invitations she issues. At first, the different ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds of the girls threaten to derail the group before it begins, but they eventually unite around the goal of stopping the Floras from using the hat used to crown Miss Flora.
The girls in the Ostentation become enthusiastic activists, taking some cues from what Aster has learned from her grandfather about protests in the 1960s. They utilize a variety of protest methods, including street art and even civil disobedience. They make mistakes, and they get into trouble, but as they open up to each other, they let go of their own prejudices and misconceptions and learn what true friendship means.
An author’s note provides information about Harriet Hemenway and Minna Hall, two women who helped end the use of feathers in women’s hats. She also encourages readers to become activists, reminding them that “Each one of us has the ability to speak up for what we believe in, challenge what we disagree with, and support what we care about.”
You can learn more about Celia C. Perez here.
These four books all feature female protagonists. That’s because they were selected from books I’ve read and enjoyed and, being female myself, I’ve gravitated toward books with strong female protagonists. I do acknowledge the injustice in not including books with strong male protagonists who are activists against injustice. I resolve to find and read books that feature young male activists. I’ll plan to write about them in a future blog post.
Thanks to RNE Stock Project at pexels.com for the featured image above.