Reading Lists
Tolerance
Picture Books | Juvenile Fiction | Young Adult Fiction | Juvenile Non-Fiction
Picture Books & Easy Readers
Adoff, Arnold
Black is Brown
is Tan (JE ADO)
Describes in verse the
life of brown-skinned momma, white-skinned daddy, their children, and
assorted relatives.
Arnold, Marsha Diane
The Pumpkin Runner
(JE ARN)
An Australian sheep rancher who eats pumpkins for energy enters a race
from Melbourne to Sydney, despite people laughing at his eccentricities.
Baer, Edith
This is the Way
We Go to School (JE BAE)
Describes, in text and
illustrations, the many different modes of transportation children all
over the world use to get to school.
Bunting, Eve
Smoky Night
(JE BUN)
When the Los Angeles
riots break out in the streets of their neighborhood, a young boy and
his mother learn the values of getting along with others no matter what
their background or nationality.
Carlson,
Nancy
Arnie and the New
Kid (JE CAR)
When an accident requires
Arnie to use crutches, he begins to understand the limits and possibilities
of his new classmate, who has a wheelchair.
Cristaldi, Kathryn
Baseball Ballerina
(JE READ CRI)
A baseball-loving girl
worries that the ballet class her mother forces her to take will ruin
her reputation with the other members of her baseball team.
Fox, Mem
Whoever You Are
(JE FOX)
Despite the differences between people around the world, there are similarities
that join us together, such as pain, joy, and love.
Friedman, Ina R.
How My Parents
Learned to Eat (JE FRI)
An American sailor courts
a Japanese girl and each tries, in secret, to learn the other's way
of eating.
Fries, Claudia
A Pig Is Moving
In (JE FRI)
Dr. Fox, Henrietta Hen,
and Nick Hare are worried when a pig moves into their building, but
they are pleasantly surprised at what a good neighbor he turns out to
be.
Hamanaka, Sheila
All the Colors
of the Earth (JE HAM)
Reveals in verse that
despite outward differences children everywhere are essentially the
same and all are lovable.
Henkes, Kevin
Chester’s
Way (JE HEN)
Chester and Wilson share
the same exact way of doing things, until Lilly moves into the neighborhood
and shows them that new ways can be just as good.
Henkes, Kevin
Chrysanthemum
(JE HEN)
Chrysanthemum loves her name,
until she starts going to school and the other children make fun of
it.
Hutchins, Pat
My Best Friend
(JE HUT)
Despite differences in abilities, two little girls appreciate each other
and are "best friends."
Hutton, Warwick
Beauty and the
Beast (JE HUT)
Through her great capacity
to love, a kind and beautiful maid releases a handsome prince from the
spell which has made him an ugly beast.
Jackson, Isaac
Somebody’s
New Pajamas (JE JAC)
When two boys from different
backgrounds become friends and sleep over at each other's homes, they
exchange ideas about sleepwear as well as about family life.
Kroll, Virginia
New Friends, True
Friends, Stuck-Like-Glue Friends (JE KRO)
Illustrations and rhyming
text provide a look at all kinds of friendships.
Lester, Helen
Three Cheers for
Tacky (JE LES)
Tacky the penguin adds his own unique touch to his team's routine at
the Penguin Cheering Contest, with surprising results.
Mitchell, Lori
Different Just
Like Me (JE MIT)
While preparing for a visit to her grandmother, a young girl notices
that, like the flowers in Grammie's garden, people who are different
from one another also share similarities and it's okay to like them
all the same.
Munsch, Robert
The Paperbag Princess
(JE MUN)
Tells how the princess outwits
the dragon which had burned down her castle and burned up her clothes,
leaving her with only a paperbag to wear.
Nestor, Larry
Foursome, the Spider
(JE NES)
The inhabitants of an
insect museum get along very well but keep to their own areas until
a spider, recently removed from a golf course, involves them all in
his favorite pastime.
Parish, Peggy
Come Back Amelia
Bedelia (JE READ PAR)
Because she does exactly
as she is told, Amelia Bedelia is fired from one job after another.
Polacco, Patricia
Mrs. Katz and Tush
(JE POL)
A long-lasting friendship
develops between Larnel, a young African-American, and Mrs. Katz, a
lonely Jewish widow, when Larnel presents Mrs. Katz with a scrawny kitten
without a tail.
Raschka, Christopher
Yo! Yes? (JE
RAS)
Two lonely characters,
one black and one white, meet on the street and become friends.
Whitcomb, Mary E.
Odd Velvet
(JE WHI)
Although she dresses differently from the other girls and does things
which are unusual, Velvet eventually teaches her classmates that even
an outsider has something to offer.
Juvenile Fiction
Belton, Sandra
Ernestine and Amanda
(JUV FIC BELTON)
Ernestine and Amanda, two African-American girls growing up in the
1950s, don't get along but can't quite hate each other either, as
they start a new school year filled with sleepover parties, new clubs,
and surprising new friends.
Blume, Judy
Iggie’s House
(JUV FIC BLUME)
Iggie's house is sold to a black family and her friend Winnie must adjust
to her departure and to a new situation.
Cohen, Barbara
Molly’s Pilgrim
(JUV FIC COHEN)
Told to make a doll like a Pilgrim for the Thanksgiving display at school,
Molly's Jewish mother dresses the doll as she herself dressed before
leaving Russia to seek religious freedom--much to Molly's embarrassment.
Curtis, Christopher
The Watsons Go
to Birmingham—1963 (JUV FIC CURTIS)
The ordinary interactions
and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living
in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma
in Alabama in the summer of 1963.
Estes, Eleanor
The Hundred Dresses
(JUV FIC ESTES)
In winning a medal she is
no longer there to receive, a tight-lipped little Polish girl teaches
her classmates a lesson.
McGraw, Eloise
Jarvis
The Moorchild (JUV
FIC MCGRAW)
Feeling that she is neither fully human nor "Folk," a changeling
learns her true identity and attempts to find the human child whose
place she had been given.
Speare, Elizabeth
George
Sign of the Beaver
(JUV FIC SPEARE)
Left alone to guard the family's
wilderness home in eighteenth-century Maine, a boy is hard-pressed to
survive until local Indians teach him their skills.
Taylor, Mildred
The Friendship
(JUV FIC TAYLOR)
Four children witness a confrontation between an elderly man and a white
storekeeper in rural Mississippi in the 1930s.
Taylor, Mildred
Roll of Thunder,
Hear My Cry (JUV FIC TAYLOR)
A black family living in the South during the 1930's are faced with
prejudice and discrimination which their children don't understand.
Taylor, Mildred
Song of the Trees
(JUV FIC TAYLOR)
During the Depression,
a rural black family deeply attached to the forest on their land tries
to save it from being cut down by an unscrupulous white man.
Taylor, Mildred
The Well: David’s
Story (JUV FIC TAYLOR)
In Mississippi in the
early 1900s ten-year-old David Logan's family generously shares their
well water with both white and black neighbors in an atmosphere of potential
racial violence.
Taylor, Theodore
The Cay (JUV
FIC TAYLOR)
When the freighter on which they are traveling is torpedoed by a German
submarine during World War II, an adolescent white boy, blinded by a
blow on the head, and an old black man are stranded on a tiny Caribbean
island where the boy acquires a new kind of vision, courage, and love
from his old companion.
Juvenile Non-Fiction
Coles, Robert
The Story of Ruby
Bridges (JUV 921 BRIDGES)
For months six-year-old Ruby
Bridges must confront the hostility of white parents when she becomes
the first African American girl to integrate Frantz Elementary School
in New Orleans in 1960.
Johnson, Spencer
The Value of Understanding:
the Story of Margaret Mead (JUV 921 MEAD)
A biography, stressing the
understanding and tolerance, of an anthropologist who did extensive
studies of primitive cultures.
Kindersley, Barnabas
Children Just Like
Me ([OVERSIZE] JUV 305.23 COPSEY)
Photographs and text depict the homes, schools, family life, and culture
of young people around the world.
Kuklin, Susan
How My Family Lives in America (JUV 305.8 KUKLIN)
African-American, Asian-American,
and Hispanic-American children describe their families' cultural traditions.
Raatma, Lucia
Tolerance (JUV
179.9 RAATMA)
Describes tolerance as a virtue and suggests ways in which it can be
recognized and practiced.
Spier, Peter
People ([OVERSIZE]
JUV 155.2 SPIER)
Emphasizes the differences
among the four billion people on earth.
Tillage, Leon Walter
Leon’s Story
(JUV 975.655 TILLAGE)
The son of a North Carolina
sharecropper recalls the hard times faced by his family and other African
Americans in the first half of the twentieth century and the changes
that the civil rights movement helped bring about.
Young Adult Fiction
Abelove, Joan
Go and Come Back:
a Novel (YA FIC ABELOVE)
Alicia, a young tribeswoman
living in a Amazonian village in the Andes, tells about the two American
women anthropologists who arrive to study the way of life of her people.
Crutcher, Chris
Staying Fat for
Sarah Byrnes (YA FIC CRUTCHER)
The daily class discussions
about the nature of man, the existence of God, abortion, organized religion,
suicide and other comtemporary issues serve as a backdrop for a high-school
senior's attempt to answer a friend's dramatic cry for help.
Ferris, Jean
Eight Seconds (YA
FIC FERRIS)
Eighteen-year-old John
must confront his own sexuality when he goes to rodeo school and finds
himself strangely attracted to an older boy who is smart, tough, complicated,
gorgeous, and gay.
Gee, Maurice
The Champion (YA
FIC GEE)
In 1943 twelve-year-old
Rex sees his quiet New Zealand village dramatically changed by the arrival
of a black American soldier on leave from the war.