Lerner Publishing Group has many excellent titles to support the celebration of Martin Luther King Day, which Americans mark this year on January 20, today. A selection of recent titles from the Twenty-First Century Books imprint for YA readers to explore in understanding King, his life, and his work include these:

Martin Luther King Jr.: Dreaming of Equality (by Ann S. Manheimer). This biography gives an accessible and well researched overview of King’s life and achievements.

Sitting for Equal Service: Lunch Counter Sit-Ins, United States, 1960s (by Melody Herr). Part of a TFCB series called Civil Rights Struggles around the World, this title looks at civil disobedience—particularly the lunch counter sit-ins in the American South—as part of the struggle for racial equality in the United States.

Today the World Is Watching You: The Little Rock Nine and the Fight for School Integration, 1957 (by Kekla Magoon, the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award–winning author of The Rock and the River, a young adult novel set in the civil rights era). Her nonfiction book for TFCB, Today the World Is Watching You, (also part of the Civil Rights Struggles series) explores the experience of the group of teens, collectively known as the Little Rock Nine, who courageously desegregated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957.

America in the 1960s (by Edmund Lindop, with Margaret J. Goldstein). Part of the Decades of Twentieth-Century America series, this overview of the 1960s delves into the political, economic, artistic, social, and entertainment canvas of American life to help readers understand the forces that shaped the United States in this turbulent and dynamic era of social change.

For more books about Martin Luther King Jr. and the fight for racial justice in America, check out our website. You’ll find materials across a range of reading levels and in print and E-book formats.