Teaching high school history with picture books can enliven social studies content, advance students’ higher-order thinking skills, and help facilitate differentiated instruction.

Some key strategies can help provide students with a balanced picture of the founding fathers while honoring the lives, stories, and experiences of victims of slavery.

The 100th anniversary year of the Nineteenth Amendment offers an important opportunity to deepen student understanding of the women’s suffrage movement.

Those who would ban or burn books recognize that the threat to their power comes when people learn to think for themselves.

The present from the Maasai people to the American people described in a picture book offers an ideal opportunity for teaching young students about 9/11 in a manner that highlights global citizenship and compassion.

This year’s award-winning Carter G. Woodson books present stories about an African American World War II soldier and artist, a Mexican American community’s fight against segregation, and a book about the wrongfully accused Scottsboro boys.

Three Lines in a Circle: The Exciting Life of the Peace Symbol by Michael G. Long; illustrated by Carlos Vélez (Louisville, KY: Flyaway Books, 2021) This picture book history of the peace symbol can help expand elementary students’ understanding of peace and introduce them to historical peace movements.  

Social studies teachers can gain valuable insight from Kathleen Wellman’s book about U.S. and world history textbooks created by conservative Christian publishing houses.

This ninth-grade inquiry invites students to analyze arguments about banning certain books while also asking them to consider what makes a book worth reading.  

The featured images about an American Library Association program that sent books to soldiers fighting in World Wars I and II can help high school students connect to the experiences of soldiers and launch an interesting lesson on the era.