“Let us banish fear.”-Carter G. Woodson
The Voting Booth (Disney-Hyperion, 2020) by Brandy Colbert is a young adult romance novel where Marva and Duke find themselves “rushing from precinct to precinct, cutting school, waiting in endless lines, turned away time and again, trying to do one simple thing: vote.” Colbert’s timely story was released in 2020, shortly before a crucial presidential election. The story introduces teen readers to important topics like voting rights, activism, and using your voice to effect change.
The books on this list range from picture to young adult and feature real people who advocate for voting rights, like the Fayette County, Tennessee citizens in Alice Faye Duncan’s Evicted! and activist Stacey Abrams. In the last year or so, Abrams has been the subject of many biographies and has even authored her own picture book, Stacey’s Extraordinary Words. Although her picture book is not about voting rights, readers will learn how a young Abrams overcame fear and persevered, characteristics needed for advocacy and activism. Look out this fall for Traci N. Todd’s Stacey Abrams and the Fight to Vote (HarperCollins, August 30, 2022) illustrated by Laura Freeman.
Go here and here for more books for Black History Month 2022. Our stories matter.
1. Evicted!: The Struggle for the Right to Vote
Alice Faye Duncan | Charly Palmer | Calkins Creek | January 11, 2022 | PB | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
2. Granddaddy’s Turn: A Journey to the Ballot Box
Michael S. Bandy | Eric Stein | James E. Ransome | Candlewick Press | PB | 2019 | Amazon |Bookshop | IndieBound
3. Black Voter Suppression: The Fight for the Right to Vote
Artika R. Tyner | Lerner Publications | January 1, 2021 | MG | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
4. Finish the Fight!: The Brave and Revolutionary Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote
Veronica Chambers | The Staff of The New York Times | August 18, 2020 | MG | Amazon | Bookshop | Indiebound
5. VIP: Stacey Abrams: Voting Visionary
Andrea J. Loney | Shellene Rodney | HarperCollins | January 18, 2022 | Chp Bk | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
6. Lifting as We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box
Evette Dionne | Viking BYR | April 21, 2020 | MG | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
7. One Person, No Vote (YA edition): How Not All Voters Are Treated Equally
Carol Anderson | Tonya Bolden | Bloomsbury | September 17, 2019 | YA | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
8. Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March
Lynda Blackmon Lowery | Elspeth Leacock | Susan Buckley | P.J. Loughran | Dial Books | January 8, 2015 | YA | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
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