Highly Recommended Diverse Reads for Students

From The Resilient Educator:

“In the last several years, the publishing world has seen a surge in diverse authors, characters, and stories. While many are leading the charge to bring diverse literature into our communities, it’s time to update the reading material in our classrooms, school libraries, and lesson plans to represent all of our learners at every level.

Read on to hear from some amazing youth fiction writers, and to see our picks for books to add to your library this year. Studies have shown that reading fiction builds empathy. A 2013 study in the American Psychological Association’s journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts discovered that when readers visualize scenes while reading stories, there is an actual and measurable surge of empathy. Imagine then the impact if schools were full of diverse books — providing a literary peek into the lives of not only students themselves but of those around them.”