As the summer sun beckons and school hallways echo with the fading footsteps of students, it’s the perfect time to dive into a good book. Whether you’re lounging poolside, soaking up sun at the beach, or simply enjoying the quiet moments at home, a great read can be the perfect companion. But why not make your summer reading both enjoyable and enriching?
Here are some summer reading recommendations tailored just for educators like you by dedicated and insightful Facing History staff members. From captivating novels to thought-provoking professional development texts, our list has something for everyone. So grab your sunglasses, a comfy chair, and let’s explore the pages that will inspire, rejuvenate, and deepen our understanding of ourselves and our profession.
Fiction
The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan
Tracking the natural beauty that surrounds us, The Backyard Bird Chronicles maps the passage of time through daily entries, thoughtful questions, and beautiful original sketches. With boundless charm and wit, author Amy Tan charts her foray into birding and the natural wonders of the world.
In 2016, Amy Tan grew overwhelmed by the state of the world: Hatred and misinformation became a daily presence on social media, and the country felt more divisive than ever. In search of peace, Tan turned toward the natural world just beyond her window and, specifically, the birds visiting her yard. But what began as an attempt to find solace turned into something far greater--an opportunity to savor quiet moments during a volatile time, connect to nature in a meaningful way, and imagine the intricate lives of the birds she admired.
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe's theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.
As these characters' stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town's white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community–heaven and earth–that sustain us.
Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.
The Sons of El Rey by Alex Espinoza
Ernesto Vega has lived many lives, from pig farmer to construction worker to famed luchador El Rey Coyote, yet he has always worn a mask. He was discovered by a local lucha libre trainer at a time when luchadores–Mexican wrestlers donning flamboyant masks and capes--were treated as daredevils or rock stars. Ernesto found fame, rapidly gaining name rec-ognition across Mexico, but at great expense, nearly costing him his marriage to his wife Elena.
Years later, in East Los Angeles, his son, Freddy Vega, is struggling to save his father's gym while Freddy's own son, Julian, is searching for professional and romantic fulfillment as a Mexican American gay man refusing to be defined by stereotypes.
With alternating perspectives, Ernesto and Elena take you from the ranches of Michoacán to the makeshift colonias of Mexico City. Freddy describes life in the suburban streets of 1980s Los Angeles and the community their family built, as Julian descends deep into our present-day culture of hook-up apps, lucha burlesque shows, and the dark underbelly of West Hollywood. The Sons of El Rey is an intimate portrait of a family wading against time and legacy, yet always choosing the fight.
Table for Two by Amor Towles
From the bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Rules of Civility, a richly detailed and sharply drawn collection of stories, including a novella featuring one of his most beloved characters
Millions of Amor Towles fans are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories based in New York City and a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood.
The New York stories, most of which take place around the year 2000, consider the fateful consequences that can spring from brief encounters and the delicate mechanics of compromise that operate at the heart of modern marriages.
In Towles's novel Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September 1938 with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, "Eve in Hollywood" describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself--and others--in a noirish tale that takes us through the movie sets, bungalows, and dive bars of Los Angeles.
Written with his signature wit, humor, and sophistication, Table for Two is another glittering addition to Towles's canon of stylish and transporting fiction.
Larose: A Novel by Louise Erdrich
In this literary masterwork, Louise Erdrich, bestselling author of the National Book Award-winning The Round House and the Pulitzer Prize nominee The Plague of Doves, wields her breathtaking narrative magic in an emotionally haunting contemporary tale of a tragic accident, a demand for justice, and a profound act of atonement with ancient roots in Native American culture.
North Dakota, late summer, 1999. Landreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence--but when the buck springs away, Landreaux realizes he's hit something else, a blur he saw as he squeezed the trigger. When he staggers closer, he realizes he has killed his neighbor's five-year-old son, Dusty Ravich.
The youngest child of his friend and neighbor, Peter Ravich, Dusty was best friends with Landreaux's five-year-old son, LaRose. The two families have always been close, sharing food, clothing, and rides into town; their children played together despite going to different schools; and Landreaux's wife, Emmaline, is half sister to Dusty's mother, Nola. Horrified at what he's done, the recovered alcoholic turns to an Ojibwe tribe tradition—the sweat lodge—for guidance, and finds a way forward. Following an ancient means of retribution, he and Emmaline will give LaRose to the grieving Peter and Nola. "Our son will be your son now," they tell them.
LaRose is quickly absorbed into his new family. Plagued by thoughts of suicide, Nola dotes on him, keeping her darkness at bay. His fierce, rebellious new "sister," Maggie, welcomes him as a coconspirator who can ease her volatile mother's terrifying moods. Gradually he's allowed shared visits with his birth family, whose sorrow mirrors the Raviches' own. As the years pass, LaRose becomes the linchpin linking the Irons and the Raviches, and eventually their mutual pain begins to heal.
But when a vengeful man with a long-standing grudge against Landreaux begins raising trouble, hurling accusations of a cover-up the day Dusty died, he threatens the tenuous peace that has kept these two fragile families whole.
Inspiring and affecting, LaRose is a powerful exploration of loss, justice, and the reparation of the human heart, and an unforgettable, dazzling tour de force from one of America's most distinguished literary masters.
Memoir & History
Becoming Janet: Finding Myself in the Holocaust by Janet Singer Applefield
As a four-year-old in Nowy Targ, Poland, Gustawa Singer lived an idyllic life. Her parents doted on her, and she was always surrounded by loving relatives. Her father worked in the hardware store owned by her grandfather, and the family prospered. Then, in 1939, everything Hitler’s army invaded Poland, and Gustawa’s carefree childhood days of petting her dog, going to the candy store with Uncle Artur, and savoring her grandmother’s fresh-baked challah were gone forever. Ultimately, the Nazis killed 2,000 of the 2,200 Jews in her small hometown. Gustawa’s mother was transported to the death camp at Belzec, her father was assigned to forced labor, and Gustawa became separated from everyone she had ever known.
Amidst the Nazis’ vile hatred and appalling savagery, a compassionate stranger spotted Gustawa after her “caretaker” cousin abandoned her in Krakow. This kindhearted woman took her in and fed, clothed, and loved her at terrible risk to her own family. For Gustawa’s protection, her name had to be changed several times. She survived the seemingly endless ordeal of the Holocaust and was eventually reunited with her father, who had never stopped searching for her. They emigrated to the United States where Janet grew up. Believing that the world must never forget the horrors unleashed by Hitler’s regime, the woman who was now Janet Singer Applefield began a series of talks to middle- and high-school students, telling them the moving story of all she had endured, teaching them the power of courage and resilience in the face of bigotry and hate, and encouraging them to stand up to every kind of discrimination and injustice.
A Few Days Full of Trouble by Christopher Benson
The last surviving witness to the lynching of Emmett Till tells his story, with poignant recollections of Emmett as a boy, critical insights into the recent investigation, and powerful lessons for racial reckoning, both then and now.
In 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was lynched. That remains an undisputed fact of the case that ignited a flame within the Civil Rights Movement that has yet to be extinguished. Yet the rest of the details surrounding the event remain distorted by time and too many tellings.
What does justice mean in the resolution of a cold case spanning nearly seven decades? In A Few Days Full of Trouble, this question drives a new perspective on the story of Emmett Till, relayed by his cousin and best friend--the Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr., a survivor of the night of terror when young Emmett was taken from his family's rural Mississippi Delta home in the dead of night.
Rev. Parker offers an emotional and suspenseful page-turner set against a backdrop of reporting errors and manipulations, racial reckoning, and political pushback--and he does so accompanied by never-before-seen findings in the investigation, the soft resurrection of memory, and the battle-tested courage of faith. A Few Days Full of Trouble is a powerful work of truth-telling, a gift to readers looking to reconcile the weight of the past with a hope for the future.
See No Stranger by Valerie Kaur
How do we love in a time of rage? How do we fix a broken world while not breaking ourselves? Valarie Kaur--renowned Sikh activist, filmmaker, and civil rights lawyer--describes revolutionary love as the call of our time, a radical, joyful practice that extends in three directions: to others, to our opponents, and to ourselves. It enjoins us to see no stranger but instead look at others and say: You are part of me I do not yet know. Starting from that place of wonder, the world begins to change: It is a practice that can transform a relationship, a community, a culture, even a nation.
Kaur takes readers through her own riveting journey--as a brown girl growing up in California farmland finding her place in the world; as a young adult galvanized by the murders of Sikhs after 9/11; as a law student fighting injustices in American prisons and on Guantánamo Bay; as an activist working with communities recovering from xenophobic attacks; and as a woman trying to heal from her own experiences with police violence and sexual assault. Drawing from the wisdom of sages, scientists, and activists, Kaur reclaims love as an active, public, and revolutionary force that creates new possibilities for ourselves, our communities, and our world. See No Stranger helps us imagine new ways of being with each other—and with ourselves—so that together we can begin to build the world we want to see.
The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood by Richard Blanco
A poignant, hilarious, and inspiring memoir from the first Latino and openly gay inaugural poet, which explores his coming-of-age as the child of Cuban immigrants and his attempts to understand his place in America while grappling with his burgeoning artistic and sexual identities.
Richard Blanco's childhood and adolescence were experienced between two imaginary worlds: his parents' nostalgic world of 1950s Cuba and his imagined America, the country he saw on reruns of The Brady Bunch and Leave it to Beaver--an "exotic" life he yearned for as much as he yearned to see "la patria."
A prismatic and lyrical narrative rich with the colors, sounds, smells, and textures of Miami, Richard Blanco's personal narrative is a resonant account of how he discovered his authentic self and ultimately, a deeper understanding of what it means to be American. His is a singular yet universal story that beautifully illuminates the experience of "becoming;" how we are shaped by experiences, memories, and our complex stories: the humor, love, yearning, and tenderness that define a life.
Avedis' Story: An Armenian Boy's Journey by Avedis Albert Abrahamian, edited by Carolann Najarian, M.D.
This is the story of Avedis, who was born in Sheykh Hadji, in Ottoman Turkey. He survived the Armenian Genocide of 1915 by going into hiding with his mother and siblings, and escaping to Russia. He lived through the Russian revolution and civil war, and managed to come to the USA. He thereafter lived to strike new roots and become a good American citizen.
The Little Rock Nine and the Fight for Equal Education by Gary Jeffrey
The story of a group of African American students known as the Little Rock Nine is a saga of incredible courage and grace. Following the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that struck down school segregation, black leaders turned their attention to the next challenge: getting African American students into white schools. In Little Rock, Arkansas, a small group of African American students were selected to integrate the high school. This taut, thrilling graphic novel plunges readers into the cauldron of hate, bigotry, and fear the students faced. Powerful illustrations grip readers, and accessible text presents the emotionally charged events in readily understandable language.
Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death by Lillian Faderman
A lively and engaging biography of the first openly gay man elected to public office in the United States, a man fiercely committed to protecting all minorities
Harvey Milk—eloquent, charismatic, and a smart-aleck—was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, but he had not even served a full year in office when he was shot by a homophobic fellow supervisor. Milk's assassination at the age of forty-eight made him the most famous gay man in modern history; twenty years later Time magazine included him on its list of the hundred most influential individuals of the twentieth century.
Before finding his calling as a politician, however, Harvey variously tried being a schoolteacher, a securities analyst on Wall Street, a supporter of Barry Goldwater, a Broadway theater assistant, a bead-wearing hippie, the operator of a camera store and organizer of the local business community in San Francisco. He rejected Judaism as a religion, but he was deeply influenced by the cultural values of his Jewish upbringing and his understanding of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. His early influences and his many personal and professional experiences finally came together when he decided to run for elective office as the forceful champion of gays, racial minorities, women, working people, the disabled, and senior citizens. In his last five years, he focused all of his tremendous energy on becoming a successful public figure with a distinct political voice.
Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home by Nora Krug
Nora Krug was born decades after the fall of the Nazi regime, but the Second World War cast a long shadow over her childhood and youth in the city of Karlsruhe, Germany. Yet she knew little about her own family's involvement; though all four grandparents lived through the war, they never spoke of it.
After twelve years in the US, Krug realizes that living abroad has only intensified her need to ask the questions she didn't dare to as a child. Returning to Germany, she visits archives, conducts research, and interviews family members, uncovering in the process the stories of her maternal grandfather, a driving teacher in Karlsruhe during the war, and her father's brother Franz-Karl, who died as a teenage SS soldier. In this extraordinary quest, "Krug erases the boundaries between comics, scrapbooking, and collage as she endeavors to make sense of 20th-century history, the Holocaust, her German heritage, and her family's place in it all" (The Boston Globe). A highly inventive, "thoughtful, engrossing" (Minneapolis Star-Tribune) graphic memoir, Belonging "packs the power of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and David Small's Stitches" (NPR.org).
Non-Fiction Teaching & Educational Practice
Becoming an Everyday Changemaker: Healing and Justice at School by Alex Shevrin Venet
Educators with a vision for more equitable, caring schools often struggle with where to begin. In this new book, bestselling author Alex Shevrin Venet empowers everyday changemakers by showing how equity-centered trauma-informed practices can guide our approach to school change.
Textured Teaching: A Framework for Culturally Sustaining Practices by Lorena Escoto Germán
As middle and high school teachers, we know that students begin to develop racial identities and ideologies as early as preschool. By the time they reach us, there is much socializing and learning that needs to be undone. Textured Teaching is a way to seamlessly embed the social justice work that is needed to undo; to begin to make things right.
With Culturally Sustaining Practice as its foundation, Textured Teaching helps secondary teachers in any school setting stop wondering and guessing how to implement teaching and learning that leads to social justice. Lorena shares her framework for creating a classroom environment that is highly rigorous and engaging, and that reflects the core traits of Textured Teaching: student-driven, community centered, interdisciplinary, experiential, and flexible. Throughout the book, Lorena shares lesson design strategies that build traditional literacy skills while supporting students in developing their social justice skills at the same time. The actionable strategies Lorena uses to bring Textured Teaching values to life illuminate what is possible when we welcome all types of texts, all types of voices, and all forms of expression into the classroom.
Workshopping the Canon for Democracy and Justice by Mary E. Styslinger
Workshopping the Canon for Democracy and Justice adopts and adapts foundational reading and writing workshop structures for democratic and justice teaching in the context of the middle and secondary classroom and curriculum.
Through workshopping, teachers can foster democratic dispositions and skills as they explore justice-oriented units focused around core canonical texts, or teachers may elect to disrupt and displace the canon by teaching a thematically related contemporary text. Critical essential questions interweave texts and bind units. Genres including young adult novels, short stories, informational texts, picture books, music, art, movies, and social media are included in the Appendixes. These diverse resources make current societal/global connections, foster multiple perspectives, prompt critical thinking, and include primary voices. This book, filled with teacher voices, useful models, and helpful ideas, is written to foster agency for change in society, teachers, and students.
Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides by Geoffrey L. Cohen
Discover the secret to flourishing in an age of division: belonging. In a world filled with discord and loneliness, finding harmony and happiness can be difficult. But what if the key to unlocking our potential lies in this deceptively simple concept? Belonging is the feeling of being a part of a group that values, respects, and cares for us--a feeling that we can all cultivate in even the smallest corners of social life. In Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides, Stanford University professor Geoffrey L. Cohen draws on his own and others' groundbreaking scientific research to offer simple, concrete solutions for fostering a sense of belonging. These solutions can generate surprisingly significant and long-lasting benefits.
In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School by Sarah Fine and Jal Mehta
What would it take to transform our high schools into places capable of supporting deep learning for students across a wide range of aptitudes and interests? To find out, Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine spent hundreds of hours observing and talking to teachers and students in and out of the classroom at thirty of the country's most innovative schools. To their dismay, they discovered that deeper learning is more often the exception than the rule. And yet they found pockets of powerful learning at almost every school, often in extracurriculars but also in a few mold-breaking academic courses. So what must schools do to achieve the integrations that support deep learning: rigor with joy, precision with play, mastery with identity and creativity?
In Search of Deeper Learning takes a deep dive into the state of our schools and lays out an inspiring new vision for American education.
