Some of you know I'm part of a Facebook read-to-change book group. We finished Michele Alexander's THE NEW JIM CROW: MASS INCARCERATION IN THE AGE OF COLORBLINDNESS and are about to start Bryan Stevenson's JUST MERCY. It's not to late to join us as we begin this round of reading next week.
As I'm reading, I find myself wondering which children's and young adult novels feature a main character with an incarcerated parent. I put the question out on twitter, and here are the results (please leave other titles in the comments section and I will add.)
Picture Books
- KNOCK KNOCK by Daniel Beaty
- MAMA LOVES ME FROM FAR AWAY by Pat Brisson
- KENNEDY'S BIG VISIT by Daphne Brooks
Early Readers
- VISITING DAY by Jacqueline Woodson
- THE SUNNY HOLIDAY SERIES by Coleen Paratore
Middle-Grade Novels
- NINE CANDLES by Maria Testa
- RUBY ON THE OUTSIDE by Nora Raleigh Baskin
- QUEENIE PEAVY by Robert Burch
- ALL RISE FOR THE HONORABLE PERRY T. COOK by Leslie Connor
- AN ANGEL FOR MARIQUA by Zetta Elliott
- JAKEMAN by Deborah Ellis
- THE YEAR THE SWALLOWS CAME EARLY by Kathryn Fitzmaurice
- HIDDEN by Helen Frost
- PIECES OF WHY by K.L. Going
- FLUSH by Carl Hiaasen
- JUNEBUG IN TROUBLE by Alice Mead
- THE RAILWAY CHILDREN by E. Nesbit (Classic)
- THE SAME STUFF AS STARS by Katherine Paterson
- THE GIRL IN THE WELL IS ME by Karen Rivers
Young Adult Novels
- DOG YEARS and SOME FRIEND by Sally Warner
- TYRELL by Coe Booth
- MEXICAN WHITE BOY by Matt De la Peña
- LITTLE DORRIT by Charles Dickens (Classic)
- KEESHA'S HOUSE by Helen Frost
Author Francesca Forrest (PEN PAL) has a brilliant suggestion: why not buy a few of these titles and then donate them to a prison library? Fantastic! Here's the American Library Association's page on how and which libraries serve prisons.
- THE ROW by J. R. Johansson
- CHASING FORGIVENESS by Neal Shusterman