In an increasingly visible year, full of increasingly visible and often questionable political rhetoric, I’ve been looking for resources that help us explain this to children. It’s easy to underestimate what a child knows of society, and it’s easy to not discuss this sort of thing. Childhood is childhood and I get the precious protection of that. But equally, we live in a context of connectivity. We are global, we are social, and people talk.
Here’s a few resources that may help you talk with your children or those you work with. I’ve added the date in brackets after each entry for a static entry. I’d like to list more so please do feel free to comment with anything useful that I may have missed.
- A storify of young adult novels centred on politics / politicians (2015)
- 8 Empowering Middle Grade Novels for Kid’s Interested In Social Justice (2016)
- A piece I did about politics in children’s literature (2015)
- How to explain the refugee crisis to kids (2016)
- The News and Politics pages from Jump Magazine (2016)
- Analyse the same news story through different papers (Twitter suggestion)
- A is For Activist (Twitter suggestion. NB: Affiliate link)
- The 2017 Amelia Bloomer List of notable feminist literature from 0-18 (2017)
- Thirty-Five Picture Books For Young Activists (2017)
- My review of Francesca Sanna’s ‘The Journey’ (2016)
- Politics in Picture Books (2016)
- BBC Bitesize educational resources
- TES resources on teaching Government and Politics
- CBBC Newsround
- After Tomorrow by Gillian Cross (Twitter suggestion. NB: Affiliate link)
- The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon (Twitter suggestion. NB: Affiliate link)
- Gay and Lesbian History for Kids by Jerome Pohlen (Twitter suggestion. NB: Affiliate link)
- 9 Women Marchers on Why They Fearlessly Walked On Washington (2017)
- 9 Ways to Explain Brexit to children (2017)
- The Week Magazine and The Week Junior
- A Mighty Girl pages on Facebook
- Politics, freedom of choice, and the big issues – a reading list for secondary students
- Empathy Lab
- CLPE Refugee Experience Booklist
- 7 Inspiring children’s books for your young activist (2015)
Daisy May Johnson 
This looks an excellent baseline, in fact more comprehensive than that. I’m no longer in teaching but there’s enough here to be getting on with I would have thought; the analysis of news presented by different sources is certainly an approach I used in the classroom.