100 books like Red and Green and Blue and White

By Lee Wind, Paul O. Zelinksy (illustrator),

Here are 100 books that Red and Green and Blue and White fans have personally recommended if you like Red and Green and Blue and White. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Yaffa and Fatima: Shalom, Salaam

Arthur A. Levine Author Of The Hanukkah Magic of Nate Gadol

From my list on Hanukkah picture books for trying times.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve had a long career, publishing books that have won the highest awards in the industry, including two books that won Caldecott Medals. I’m best known as the editor of the Harry Potter books. But my expertise in this area also comes from being a father, a reader, and the author of several books with Jewish and intersectional themes.

Arthur's book list on Hanukkah picture books for trying times

Arthur A. Levine Why did Arthur love this book?

My motivations for recommending this book are very similar to the ones that make me recommend the previous book. 

Beyond the rhetoric of the news, what can we reach for that is undeniably true during these holidays that fall during the darkest days of the year?

Hebrew and Arabic have words for “Peace” that are nearly identical. Can we start there on a path to mutual understanding? Fawzia Gilani-Williams imagines this possibility.

By Fawzia Gilani-Williams, Chiara Fedele (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Yaffa and Fatima as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 4, 5, 6, and 7.

What is this book about?

Two neighbors―one Jewish, one Muslim―have always been best friends. When they both fall on hard times, can they find a way to help each other? In Fawzia Gilani's retelling of this folktale―which has both Jewish and Arab origins―differences are not always causes for conflict and friendship can overcome any obstacle.


Book cover of The Trees of the Dancing Goats

Arthur A. Levine Author Of The Hanukkah Magic of Nate Gadol

From my list on Hanukkah picture books for trying times.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve had a long career, publishing books that have won the highest awards in the industry, including two books that won Caldecott Medals. I’m best known as the editor of the Harry Potter books. But my expertise in this area also comes from being a father, a reader, and the author of several books with Jewish and intersectional themes.

Arthur's book list on Hanukkah picture books for trying times

Arthur A. Levine Why did Arthur love this book?

In this warm telling of a cherished memory, Polacco presents a Jewish girl celebrating Hanukkah who discovers that her Christian neighbors are too sick with Scarlet Fever to celebrate their holiday. So she resolves to help. 

Patricia Polacco’s storytelling voice has brought warmth and comfort to millions of readers. Combined with her signature art, full of expressive lines and bright color combinations, Polacco produces a story about community that feels like a warm embrace.

By Patricia Polacco,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Trees of the Dancing Goats as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Trisha loves the eight days of Hanukkah, when her mother stays home from work, her Babushka makes delicious potato latkes, and her Grampa carves wonderful animals out of wood as gifts for Trisha and her brother. In the middle of her family's preparation for the festival of lights, Trisha visits her closest neighbors, expecting to find them decorating their house for Christmas. Instead they are all bedridden with scarlet fever. Trisha's family is one of the few who has been spared from the epidemic. It is difficult for them to enjoy their Hanukkah feast when they know that their neighbors…


Book cover of Daddy Christmas and Hanukkah Mama

Arthur A. Levine Author Of The Hanukkah Magic of Nate Gadol

From my list on Hanukkah picture books for trying times.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve had a long career, publishing books that have won the highest awards in the industry, including two books that won Caldecott Medals. I’m best known as the editor of the Harry Potter books. But my expertise in this area also comes from being a father, a reader, and the author of several books with Jewish and intersectional themes.

Arthur's book list on Hanukkah picture books for trying times

Arthur A. Levine Why did Arthur love this book?

This interracial, bi-religious couple expresses the joy of sharing holiday traditions in a book that is a collaboration on text and art, as well as in spirit.

As one of the parents of an interfaith family, I’ve found it very rare to see a book that embraces this reality so vivaciously.

Alko and Qualls present a family that approaches the holidays in a more integrated manner than mine does, still the main message is one of exuberant celebration encouraging interfaith kids to embrace their dual heritage.

By Selina Alko,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Daddy Christmas and Hanukkah Mama as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 5, 6, 7, and 8.

What is this book about?

A perfect gift for the holiday season, no matter what you celebrate!

I am a mix of two traditions.
From Daddy Christmas and Hanukkah Mama.
How lucky am I?

Holiday time at Sadie's house means golden gelt sparkling under the Christmas tree, candy canes hanging on eight menorah branches, voices uniting to sing carols about Macabees and the manger, and latkes on the mantel awaiting Santa's arrival.

Selina Alko's joyous celebration of blended families will make the perfect holiday gift for the many Americans who celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah.


Book cover of Snow in Jerusalem

Arthur A. Levine Author Of The Hanukkah Magic of Nate Gadol

From my list on Hanukkah picture books for trying times.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve had a long career, publishing books that have won the highest awards in the industry, including two books that won Caldecott Medals. I’m best known as the editor of the Harry Potter books. But my expertise in this area also comes from being a father, a reader, and the author of several books with Jewish and intersectional themes.

Arthur's book list on Hanukkah picture books for trying times

Arthur A. Levine Why did Arthur love this book?

This year Jews and Muslims around the world are struggling with the awful conflict in the Middle East.

Like so many, I yearn for a reality in which all the religions that count Jerusalem as a holy place could coexist with respect and honor.

De la Costa explores this elusive connection on a level that even young kids can understand, the shared love of a cat. The art is beautiful.

By Deborah Da Costa, Cornelius Van Wright (illustrator), Ying-Hwa Hu (illustrator)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Snow in Jerusalem as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Avi and Hamudi are two boys who live in Jerusalem's Old City―Avi in the Jewish Quarter and Hamudi in the Muslim Quarter. To each boy, the other's neighborhood is an alien land. And although neither boy knows it, both are caring for the same beautiful white stray cat. One day the boys follow the cat as she travels the winding streets and crosses the boundaries between the city’s quarters. And on this journey something wonderful happens, as unexpected as a snowfall in Jerusalem.


Book cover of Hate Crime in Football

Jon Garland Author Of Racism and Anti-Racism in Football

From my list on parts of football that you havent read.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been a football fan since childhood. I grew up in rural Norfolk, supporting my local club, Norwich City. Even from an early age, though, I realized that it wasn’t just the game itself that fascinated me but also the behavior and passion of the fans. However, as I grew older and became more socially and politically aware, I came to realize that many of society’s deep-rooted problems, such as racism, homophobia, and misogyny, manifested themselves in football and often went unchallenged. Researching them seemed the best way to learn more about them and then challenge them. 

Jon's book list on parts of football that you havent read

Jon Garland Why did Jon love this book?

I found this an enlightening read about an issue that I thought I knew well. Football has made significant progress in highlighting and tackling bigotry and discrimination in the game over the last 30 years or so.

However, this edited volume reminds us that there is still a long way to go. It’s an academic work that contains chapters covering many aspects of hate crime and how they manifest themselves on matchdays, in the boardroom, and online.

I learned a lot from this volume, and I feel it should be compulsory reading for anyone responsible for running the contemporary game.

By Imran Awan (editor), Irene Zempi (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Hate Crime in Football as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Rates of hate crime within football have been increasing, despite the visibility of anti-racist actions such as 'taking the knee'. With a unique collection of testimonies, this book shows that hostility is a daily occurrence for some professional football players, ranging from online threats to physical intimidation and violence at football matches.
Bringing a range of perspectives to this widespread problem, leading academics, practitioners and policy makers shed light on the best strategies to tackle racism, homophobia, transphobia and misogyny in football.


Book cover of A Wreath for Emmett Till

Amanda West Lewis Author Of These Are Not the Words

From my list on prose-poetry about childhood in a messy world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a writer, theatre artist and calligrapher who has spent a lifetime dedicated to the look, sound, texture and meaning of words. Writing in verse and prose poetry gives me a powerful tool to explore hard themes. Poetry is economical. It makes difficult subjects personal. Through poetry, I can explore painful choices intimately and emerge on a different path at a new phase of the journey. While my semi-autobiographical novel These Are Not the Words “is about” mental health and drug addiction, I’ve shown this through layers of images, sounds, textures, tastes—through shards of memories long submerged, recovered through writing, then structured and fictionalized through poetry.

Amanda's book list on prose-poetry about childhood in a messy world

Amanda West Lewis Why did Amanda love this book?

In A Wreath for Emmett Till, Marilyn Nelson reminds us of the unique beauty of a life, of the vibrancy of youth at 14 years old. Written as a “crown of sonnets,” where the last line of one sonnet becomes the first of the next, it is a book that bears witness and conveys huge themes of justice, loss, and remembrance while focussing on small moments, gestures, and images. I am in awe of Nelson’s ability to use a very formalized writing style to depict one of the most brutal murders of the twentieth century.

By Marilyn Nelson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Wreath for Emmett Till as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1955, people all over the United States knew that Emmett Louis Till was a fourteen-year-old African American boy lynched for supposedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi.The brutality of his murder, the open-casket funeral, and the acquittal of the men tried for the crime drew wide media attention.

Award-winning poet Marilyn Nelson reminds us of the boy whose fate helped spark the civil rights movement.This martyr's wreath, woven from a little-known but sophisticated form of poetry, challenges us to speak out against modern-day injustices, to 'speak what we see.'


Book cover of Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940

David Livingstone Smith Author Of On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It

From my list on inhumanity.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been studying dehumanization, and its relationship to racism, genocide, slavery, and other atrocities, for more than a decade. I am the author of three books on dehumanization, one of which was awarded the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf award for non-fiction, an award that is reserved for books that make an outstanding contribution to understanding racism and human diversity. My work on dehumanization is widely covered in the national and international media, and I often give presentations at academic and non-academic venues, including one at the 2012 G20 economic summit where I spoke on dehumanization and mass violence.

David's book list on inhumanity

David Livingstone Smith Why did David love this book?

Most people’s idea of lynching is the sanitized version that they have picked up from movies and TV. However, the practice of lynching, as it was carried out in the United States from the late 19th to well into the 20th century, was far more hideous than a few people hanging a man from a tree. This classic contribution concentrates on spectacle lynchings. These were public lynchings attended by hundreds or even thousands of spectators. They involved hours of torture and bodily mutilation, often culminating in the victim being burned alive. Lynching and Spectacle is a vital read for anyone wishing to understand the full horror of American Racism.

By Amy Louise Wood,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Lynching and Spectacle as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This title presents public reinforcement of white supremacy. Lynch mobs in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America often exacted horrifying public torture and mutilation on their victims. In ""Lynching and Spectacle"", Amy Wood explains what it meant for white Americans to perform and witness these sadistic spectacles and what they derived from them. Lynching, Wood argues, overlapped with a wide range of cultural practices and performances, both traditional and modern, including public executions, religious rituals, photography, and cinema. The connections between lynching and these practices encouraged the horrific violence committed and gave it social acceptability.Wood expounds on the critical role…


Book cover of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, with a New Preface

Douglas Flowe Author Of Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York

From my list on race, crime, and American imprisonment.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an Associate professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis who is primarily interested in crime, illicit leisure, masculinity, American cities, and imprisonment. I grew up both in New York City and Orlando, Florida, and I received a PhD from the University of Rochester. Most of the books I read have to do with understanding the American criminal justice system, criminality itself, and the part societies play in constructing crime. Currently I am researching and writing a book about African American men and the carceral state, tentatively entitled Jim Crow Prison.  

Douglas' book list on race, crime, and American imprisonment

Douglas Flowe Why did Douglas love this book?

Muhammad’s study of ideas and discourse about real and imagined crime among African Americans is a touchstone for anyone seeking to understand this history.

He has painstakingly assembled the intellectual, pseudo-scientific, and popular conversations Americans had about the subject from the end of slavery until well into the 20th century.

This work has been particularly important for me because he brings our attention to the urban North and the use of census data, statistics, eugenics, etc., to condemn blackness as a dangerous threat to be contained.

There is no way to truthfully understand race and crime in America without consulting this essential text. 

By Khalil Gibran Muhammad,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Condemnation of Blackness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the John Hope Franklin Prize
A Moyers & Company Best Book of the Year

"A brilliant work that tells us how directly the past has formed us."
-Darryl Pinckney, New York Review of Books

How did we come to think of race as synonymous with crime? A brilliant and deeply disturbing biography of the idea of black criminality in the making of modern urban America, The Condemnation of Blackness reveals the influence this pernicious myth, rooted in crime statistics, has had on our society and our sense of self. Black crime statistics have shaped debates about everything from…


Book cover of King and the Dragonflies

Kimberly Behre Kenna Author Of Artemis Sparke and the Sound Seekers Brigade

From my list on middle grade kids and nature mingle.

Why am I passionate about this?

From early childhood, I escaped into nature when times got tough—climbing trees, exploring the woods, and chatting with beach creatures. When I had to be indoors, books were my escape, and most of my favorites had rich nature settings that were so well-drawn that I could see them and feel like I was actually there. Following strong protagonists as they deal with life challenges by interacting with nature was an affirmation for me and still is. As a parent and former fifth-grade teacher, I’ve witnessed the power that books have to lessen loneliness and inspire hope and activism. 

Kimberly's book list on middle grade kids and nature mingle

Kimberly Behre Kenna Why did Kimberly love this book?

King thinks his deceased brother has returned as a dragonfly and visits him in the bayou area where he hangs out. I love books with hints of magic in them, especially when they show up in nature, and I couldn’t help but root for King. Even as he struggles, he is sweet and empathetic and worries about others as much as he worries about himself.

Friends and family are fully developed; nobody is all good or all bad. The teacher in me appreciates King’s story as a great discussion starter and empathy-builder, as well as an engaging plot. Witnessing the triumph of an underdog never gets old for me.

By Kacen Callender,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked King and the Dragonflies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 8, 9, 10, and 11.

What is this book about?

A 2021 Coretta Scott King Honor Book!

Winner of the 2020 National Book Award for Young People's Literature!

Winner of the 2020 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction and Poetry!

In a small but turbulent Louisiana town, one boy's grief takes him beyond the bayous of his backyard, to learn that there is no right way to be yourself.

FOUR STARRED REVIEWS!

Booklist

School Library Journal

Publishers Weekly

The Horn Book

Twelve-year-old Kingston James is sure his brother Khalid has turned into a dragonfly. When Khalid unexpectedly passed away, he shed what was his first skin for another to live…


Book cover of A Turn for Noah: A Hanukkah Story

Sylvia A. Rouss Author Of Sammy Spider's First ABC

From my list on for Jewish preschool children.

Why am I passionate about this?

I believe that good Jewish stories are important tools in building Jewish identity. But when I first taught preschoolers, the books were either too didactic or written for older children. One day, when the children in my class were enthusiastically discussing the Christmas display at the mall, the idea came to me that maybe an eight-legged Spider celebrating the eight days of Hanukkah could compete with Frosty the Snowman. When Sammy Spider asks to spin a dreidel, he is told, “Spider’s don’t spin dreidels. Spiders spin webs.” The response became a favorite with Jewish children and a form of the phrase is part of all the Sammy Spider holiday and values books.

Sylvia's book list on for Jewish preschool children

Sylvia A. Rouss Why did Sylvia love this book?

A Turn for Noah is a Hanukkah story written by Susan Remick Topek. At preschool, Noah can’t quite spin the dreidel. Hanukkah is about to end, and still Noah “can’t do it.” With the encouragement of his teacher and all his friends, on the very last day of Hanukkah, Noah takes a deep breath, twists the handle quickly, and exclaims, “It’s spinning!” And since one good turn deserves another, Noah lights the Hanukkah candles with the teacher’s help. 

I particularly like A Turn for Noah because so many of my preschool students have trouble learning to spin a dreidel and the story shows how with effort, even difficult tasks can be completed. Little children identify with Noah's efforts, feelings, and his success.

By Susan Remick Topek, Sally Springer (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Turn for Noah as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 3, 4, 5, and 6.

What is this book about?

Noah has trouble learning to spin the dreidel as his nursery school class celebrates Hanukkah.


Book cover of Yaffa and Fatima: Shalom, Salaam
Book cover of The Trees of the Dancing Goats
Book cover of Daddy Christmas and Hanukkah Mama

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Interested in hate crimes, Hanukkah, and antisemitism?

Hate Crimes 8 books
Hanukkah 15 books
Antisemitism 50 books