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Universal Human Rights Month Booklist

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December 1, 2023

December is Universal Human Rights Month, a time for people around the world to join together and stand up for the rights and dignity of all individuals.

Human Rights Day is observed every year on December 10 — the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR proclaims the inalienable rights that everyone is entitled to as a human being regardless of race, color, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Find it in English here. Find it in over 500 other languages here.

Click on a title to find it in our catalog; and find many more titles at cobbcat.org.

Children’s Picture Books

All Are Neighbors by Alexandra Penfold

All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold

Four Feet, Two Sandals by Karen Lynn Williams

Get Up, Stand Up by Cedella Marley

Hair Twins by Raakhee Mirchandani

I Am Enough by Grace Byers

I Am Human: A Book of Empathy by Susan Verde

I Can Be All Three by Salima Alikhan

It’s Okay to be Different by Todd Parr

Lunch from Home by Joshua David Stein

More Than Peach: Changing the World… One Crayon at a Time! by Bellen Woodard

Steamboat School by Deborah Hopkinson

Thao by Thao Lam

We Wait for the Sun by Dovey Johnson Roundtree

What's the Difference?: Being Different is Amazing by Doyin Richards

You Are a Story by Bob Raczka

Your Name is a Song by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow

Children’s Nonfiction

Dreams of Freedom: In Words and Pictures

Fighting for Yes!: The Story of Disability Rights Activist Judith Heumann by Maryann Cocca-Leffler 

I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World by Malala Yousafzai

Lifting As We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box by Evette Dionne

Playing at the Border: A Story of Yo-Yo Ma by Joanna Ho

Rainbow Revolutionaries: 50 LGBTQ+ People Who Made History by Sarah Prager

Right Now!: Real Kids Speaking Up for Change by Miranda Paul

Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez & Her Family's Fight for Desegregation by Duncan Tonatiuh

Walking for Water: How One Boy Stood Up for Gender Equality by Susan Hughes

We Are All Born Free: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Pictures by Amnesty International

We are a Garden: A Story of How Diversity Took Root in America by Lisa Westberg Peters

Why We Live Where We Live by Kira Vermond

Children’s and Preteen Chapter Books

The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Equal by Joyce Moyer Hostetter

Essie and the March on Selma by Anitra Butler-Ngugi

A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramée

I Am Not a Number by Jenny Kay Dupuis

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park

The Many Meanings of Meilan by Andrea Wang

My Name Was Hussein by Hristo Kyuchukov

The Stars Beneath Our Feet by David Barclay Moore

Young Adult Fiction

Banned Book Club by Hyun Sook Kim

Everything Within and In Between by Nikki Barthelmess

A Girl in Three Parts by Suzanne Daniel

Golden Boy by Tara Sullivan

I Rise by Marie Arnold

Loving vs. Virginia by Patricia Hruby Powell

March by John Lewis

Music From Another World by Robin Talley

Watch Us Rise by Renée Watson

Young Adult Nonfiction

#NotYourPrincess edited by Mary Beth Leatherdale

Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Girls Resist!: A Guide to Activism, Leadership, and Starting a Revolution by  KaeLyn Rich

Jane Against the World: Roe v. Wade and the Fight for Reproductive Rights by Karen Blumenthal

Making It Right: Building Peace, Settling Conflict by Marilee Peters

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

Stonewall: Breaking Out in the Fight for Gay Rights by Ann Bausum

We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson

Adult Fiction

Death Rattle by Alex Gilly

Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok

In the Midst of Winter Isabel Allende

Joan is Okay by Weike Wang

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Maame by Jessica George

The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Adult Nonfiction

Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women by Lyz Lenz

Bryan Stevenson: I Know This to be True: On Equality, Justice & Compassion by Bryan Stevenson

Everybody: A Book About Freedom by Olivia Laing

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof

Holding Together: The Hijacking of Rights in America and How to Reclaim Them for Everyone by John HF Shattuck

Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall

How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up For Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez

A Place to Belong: Celebrating Diversity and Kinship in the Home and Beyond by Amber O,Neal Johnston

Period. End of Sentence: A New Chapter in the Fight for Menstrual Justice by Anita Diamant

Period: The Real Story of Menstruation by Kathryn BH Clancy

Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw: Reimagining Success as a Disabled Achiever by Eddie Ndopu

To Stop a Warlord: My Story of Justice, Grace, and the Fight for Peace by Shannon Sedgwick Davis

Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality by Sarah McBride

Until We Are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran by Shīrīn ʻIbādī

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories From Rwanda by Peter Gourevitch