Books about Displacement, Homelessness, and Poverty

 

“One of the things we can do as artists is to be truthful about what the world holds.”

—Tony Abbott, author of The Great Jeff and Firegirl

 

Literature is a powerful tool that both reflects our world and widens it, allowing readers to see themselves and to see how people different from themselves live.  One of the most important things literature does is allow us approach tough topics. It gives us both imagined and real spaces to explore subjects like displacement, homelessness, and poverty, gives us words to describe the emotional and psychological landscapes those realities engender, gives us trailblazers, truthtellers, and characters who populate those landscapes. Here at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers we’ve a curated list of titles that can help you address these topics with the young readers in your classrooms and libraries. They cover everything from how a parent losing her job can lead to homelessness, to a hurricane forcing a young girl and her family to find a new home, to the stories of the children of migrant workers. We’re confident these books can help spark difficult conversations that need to be held, and keep those conversations going.