Resource Type: Books: Non-Fiction

Below is a collection of our recommended non-fiction books for readers at middle school level and above. You can find non-fiction illustrated books for children in our Picture Books collection.
Zapata's Disciple: Essays (Book) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

Zapata’s Disciple: Essays

Book — Non-fiction. By Martín Espada. Reprinted in 2016. 160 pages.
Essays and poems attacking social injustice and marginalization.
Teaching Activity by Martín Espada
Continue reading

Papers: Stories by Undocumented Youth

Book — Non-fiction. Edited by José Manuel, Cesar Pineda, Anne Galisky, and Rebecca Shine. Illustrated by Julio Salgado. 2012. 84 pages.
Undocumented youth from around the world tell their stories with simplicity and intimacy in this student-friendly collection.
Continue reading

Freedom in Congo Square

Book — Non-fiction. By Carole Boston Weatherford. Illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. 2016. 40 pages.
Introduces children to the brutality of slavery and the role of culture in resistance.
Continue reading

Black Reconstruction in America

Book — Non-fiction. By W. E. B. Du Bois. Edited by Eric Foner and Henry Louis Gates. 2021. 1097 pages.
Originally published in 1935, Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction was the first book to challenge the prevailing racist historical narrative of the era and in sharp, incisive prose, tell the story of the Civil War and Reconstruction from the perspective of African Americans.
Continue reading

Freedom’s Shore

Book — Non-fiction. By Russell Duncan. 1986. 192 pages.
Freedom’s Shore tells the incredible story of Tunis Campbell, a Northern abolitionist minister who heads South after the Civil War to help freedpeople in Georgia.
Continue reading

The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition

Book — Non-fiction. By Manisha Sinha. 2017. 784 pages.
A groundbreaking history of abolition that recovers the largely forgotten role of African Americans in the long march toward emancipation from the American Revolution through the Civil War.
Continue reading