Books about children growing up in poverty
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Anonymous
| Lots of Dickens: Oliver Twist, Hard Times, A Christmas Carol, etc. |
Anonymous
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how old? high schoolers.. educated is a good one. Nickel and dimed, Maid (Both of them, the funny mystery and the memoir). Angelas ashes,
actually a lot of the books from the 80s have kids who's families are struggling with normal life. Ramona age 8.. they are dealing with job loss, her mom got back to work.. her dad decides to go to school and works at a supermarket. I grew up very privileged and I still remember that 30 years later. Same with Betty wren wright ghost stories, (ghosts beneath my feet etc).. angle working moms rent issues, just regular folks living regular lives. I love sharing these books with my kids b/c so many books nowadays are just pure fantasy and escapism, not about the ordinary struggles of regular life. I wish that there were more books like this written with todays technology for grades 2-5 and not extreme circumstances like Refugee, or homelessness, drug addicted parents etc. Just working parents with budgets who had to say no and were tired and couldn't afford the latest gadgets or camps. Sheila turn age books are also good and set in the present day, the railway children. The Moffats are old fashioned but I think its good to show kids that they aren't alone in their struggles, people have dealt with want and financial difficulty for ever. The Vander Beeker stories are contemporary, all of a kind family stories. Would be fun to actually read both all of a kind family and the vander beeker together to see how NYC has stayed the same and changed. |
Anonymous
| Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt |
Anonymous
+1. |
Anonymous
| Recs for you or for your students? Urban or rural? POC or white? Historical or modern? |
Anonymous
Another +1 But this book is relentless, not just poverty but infant deaths, flooding, deprivation, the whole lot. A real wrist-slasher of a read. |
Anonymous
Agree. This is not a book that I would assign or read to younger kids in difficult circumstances — or even assign as required reading to older kids. Again, I’m curious about the OP’s motives. Middle school kids choosing to read about situations and characters that the can identify with is different from forcing older kids to read adult depictions of dire poverty, which is different from introducing issues that often accompany poverty to younger kids. There are lots of WWII era British children’s books as well as books originally published here that deal with families with limited budgets. Noel Streatfield has a series of books about talented, plucky children whose professional earnings made a difference for themselves and for their families — with lots of conversations about budgeting, planning inexpensive treats, and the impact on the household when a parent might be out of work or absent. (Ballet Shoes, Theatre Shoes, Skating Shoes….) |
Anonymous
OP here. I teach kindergarteners. |
Anonymous
Mostly poverty in the US but most of my students are from Central American so books from those areas would interest me too. Thanks! |
Anonymous
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Adding Little Women as well as A Little Princess, A Secret Garden, and Little Lord Fauntleroy for discussions of relative poverty.
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Anonymous
OP here. I really enjoyed this book! |
Anonymous
Sorry. I meant books that I could read, not books to read to my students. I’d just like to learn more about poverty, even if it is a fictional book. |
Anonymous
Another wonderful book. |
Anonymous
Books for me, not for my students. I work in a city school with high poverty. An interesting mix of students. Some are Hispanic and poor and some are white and poor. The white students mostly came from families from Appalachia. They came to the city during WW2 to work in factories. Now there are very few factory jobs left so they are either unemployed or working in low paying, hourly jobs. |
Anonymous
| Your mentioning Appalachia made me think of Christy, by Catherine Marshall. |