Ten of the Best to Introduce Children to Politics 10


You may not have noticed, but there’s an election coming up. With talk of right, left, and the squeezed middle, which books offer children a strong and stable basis in political thought? Catherine Barter, author of the political thriller Troublemakers, and bookseller at Housmans, London’s oldest radical bookshop, puts an X in the box for the best.


A is for Activist


Innosanto Nagara, Seven Stories Press, 978-1- 6098-0539-5, £6.99


A beautifully illustrated A-Z picture book in which C is is


for Feminism, G is


for Co-op, F for


Grassroots… you get the idea. A is for Activist is a playful


politics and people power, packed


with


introduction ideas


for


changing the world. It’s full of big concepts presented with humour and warmth, and provides plenty of inspiration for budding activists everywhere. Nagara’s Counting on Community is fantastic, too. .


A Rule is to Break: A Child’s Guide to Anarchy


John Seven and Jana Christy, Manic D Press, 978- 1933149257, £13.99


Anarchy might sound scary, but as a political system based on challenging authority and resisting arbitrary rules, it’s sure to have some appeal for children. Through the character of Wild Child, this fun picture book introduces some of anarchism’s bravest ideas: ‘think for yourself’, ‘build it don’t buy it’, ‘listen to the smallest voice’, ‘give away stuff for free’. While parents might balk at some of the suggestions (cake for dinner? no baths ever again?), these bold challenges to conventional thinking offer a joyful and yes, anarchic, complement to some of the more worthy and serious political children’s books out there..


. to


Who are Refugees and Migrants? What Makes People Leave Their Homes? And Other Big Questions


Michael Rosen and Annemarie Young, Wayland, 978-0-7502-9985-5, £13.99


There have been a number of excellent picture books exploring the experience of refugees and migrants recently,


like Kate


Name is Not Refugee or Francesca Sanna’s The Journey.


Milner’s My But this


non-fiction book for older readers is an excellent primer for this most timely of subjects, offering not just the usual call for tolerance and compassion, but active invitations for children to think critically about the ways in which migration is discussed politically. The inclusion of real migration stories from high- profile people like Rita Ora, Mo Farah, and Michael Rosen himself, give warmth and dimension to this complex topic.


. The Liar’s Handbook


Keren David, Barrington Stoke, 978-1-7811-2680-6, £6.99 pbk


Part of Barrington Stoke’s Super Readable series, this short, punchy novel about families,


secrets


and lies has a straight-from-the- headlines twist. River, whose mother is a lifelong political activist, is a fifteen-year-old boy with a gift for fabrication. He is suspicious of his mother’s new partner, and also has questions about his father, who mysteriously left before River was born. The Liar’s Handbook takes the recent scandals around undercover policing in activist communities and turns them in to a page-turning family drama. There’s no heavy-handed message, here: the ethical questions the book raises are implicit. But Keren David’s afterword about the true stories that inspired the book will likely leave curious readers wanting to know more about this very contemporary issue. .


10 Books for Keeps No.224 May 2017


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