Back to School: Self Care

Many teens readers are keenly aware of what’s going on in their communities, and they’re realizing their own ability to create change. Why else would books about finding one’s superpowers be so popular? Teens may be more likely to use art to both to explore and express their nascent activism with their messages entering the realm of public protest through various social media platforms, if not on the streets. This awareness doesn’t come free; it’s saddled with all the feelings and fears from which we want to protect them. The only way to protect teens is to continue loving and nurturing them, but in ways that provide them space to be seen and heard while they continue to grow. Banning books does not allow for development to occur.

This short list provides ways teens can participate in community self-care through activism while also developing skills to check in on themselves.

Posters for Change: Tear, Paste, Protest; Princeton Architectural Press. 2018
Make your voice heard with this collection of 50 tear-out posters created by designers from around the globe! This collection of posters is made for—and by—people who want to make their voices heard in a time of unprecedented political activism and resistance. Stand up for:
• Animal Rights
• Child Labor
• Civil Rights
• Climate Change and the Environment
• Gun Control
• Health Care Access
• Immigration
• LGBTQ and Gender Rights
• Mass Incarceration
• Public Arts
• Voting Rights
• Women’s Rights
Proceeds will be donated to the following nonprofit organizations: Advocates for Human Rights, Border Angels, Honor the Earth, and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.

I See Peace Book & Journal by Maya Gonzalez. Reflection Press, 2012.
Focusing on the very big idea of peace, this small book is compact enough to carry with you wherever you go. Part story book and part guided journal, i see peace uncovers the truth about a very real and personal experience of peace and how to create it in our own lives. Award-winning children’s book illustrator/author and educator, Maya Gonzalez uses simple words and even more simple ink drawings to create both a universal and intimate experience of peace. Readers are invited to not only write in the guided journal portion of the book, but to draw or color all over the book. Come play with Maya and learn that peace is often closer than we think.

Queer Cheer: Activities, Advice, and Affirmations for LGBTQ+ Teens (LGBTQ+ Issues Facing Gay Teens and More) by Eric Rosswood and Jodie Anders. Books that Save Lives, 2024.
Queer Cheer provides advice and words of wisdom encouraging teens to find—and keep—their inner rainbow. Covering topics relevant to lgbt+ teens today, this instructional book includes everything ranging from bullies and discrimination to acceptance and advocating change.

Stay Solid! A Radical Handbook for Youth by Matt Hern. AK Press, 201
This scrapbook-style collection of essays, excerpts, explanations, and images pushes back against a culture that relentlessly demands that kids give up their best ideals, abandon their hopes, forget their ethical objections to dominant life, soothe their rage, and accept their fates. From dealing with the cops to dealing with your peers, from school and community to drugs and sex, from race and class to money and mental health, Stay Solid! provides essential support for radically inclined teens who believe that it’s possible for all of us to hang on to our values and build a life we believe in.

Be sure to check out my previous Back to School Lists

History
Government and Citizenship
Unhoused/Homeless
STEAM

Be well and do good!

Filed under: Book List, self care