Fans pick 100 books like The Challenge of Children's Rights for Canada

I loved the bravery of the author in tackling a controversial question.

This book deals with the US Supreme Court’s “parental rights doctrine.” Through a complete overview of jurisprudence from the earliest days of the country’s existence, Shulman challenges the commonly-held modern idea that parental rights have long held an exalted position in American jurisprudence. He demonstrates that, on the contrary, the American state originally entrusted parents with custody of the child for the purpose of meeting the child's needs and that the notion of the custody of one’s child as an entitlement is a relatively modern one.

I think this is a message that is vital to be brought out into the public sphere, and I am happy that the author was willing to devote an entire book to it.

I love this classic novel; it is one of my old favorites.

Nowhere in the genre of young adult literature does there seem to be an author more subversive than Paula Danziger; here (and in the companion novel The Cat Ate My Gymsuit), she directly encourages the young reader to question adult authority and suggests that with protests and education about what rights the law gives (and withholds from) young people, it might be possible to effect change and increase their rights.

I also found it great that the novel shows the protagonist’s parents in raw realism–the father as a hypocritical, cheap, unlikable domestic despot, the mother as a shrinking violet who at first tends to excuse the father and conform to his expectations, but eventually starts questioning her stance when she sees her daughters rebel.

This is a young adult literature novel from Canada. I found this book very inspiring when reading it as a kid. I enjoyed its subversive nature as it portrays a group of boys and girls, from two private schools, who conspire to overthrow the tyrannical assistant headmaster and headmistress that their respective schools have appointed.

The novel, while written as a comedy, is suggestive of the idea that adults should not be allowed to micromanage and tyrannize their young charges and that such administrators can be ousted. I like that it conveys this message in an entertaining way while still showing a youth’s eye perspective on unreasonable adult actions toward them.

This is my favorite manifesto monograph for children’s rights. It is very radical for its date of publication (1974) and argues for emancipating kids as much as possible from adult control. His message is laid out in a number of clear, simple, and explicit points and is accompanied by appropriate argumentation.

I love that the book does not shrink from controversy and that it adopts explicit recommendations for diametrically altering the status of young people without beating about the bush. The message is still timely today, and it would be good if more people thought to act upon it. It is a classic that should be rediscovered by today’s generations.

Dorothy Roberts is the foremost expert on the harms of the child welfare system, which she terms the family policing system.

Her first book on the subject, Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare was published in 2001 and was way ahead of the curve in naming the racist practices of a system that’s in theory designed to help children. Torn Apart is a really important update, published in 2022, that allows for a new generation of readers to grapple with a harmful system and to wrap their minds around the need for a completely different approach.

How we treat children has a political dimension and is related to policies toward children.

A Right to Childhood discusses the first and only time that the United States created a federal agency to investigate and help direct child life. Lindenmeyer traces the origins of the Children’s Bureau to the fierce efforts of reform-minded women, and considers the agency’s attempts to improve the welfare of all children, including the children of the poor and foreign.

Starting with concerns about very high rates of infant mortality in the United States, the bureau moved on to study and inform mothers about children’s health, nutrition, and development, and issued a widely- distributed and influential guide to child rearing to mothers across the country.

For me, the experience of the Children’s Bureau provides an important lesson about how policies can be created and their political vulnerabilities.

If you are a Gen Xer like me and you wax nostalgia about the freedom of the mothers of your childhood vs. the shackles of parenting in the early twenty-first century as I have, Kim Brooks’ book is for you. Kim made the most grievous error a parent can make today: she left her four-year-old in her minivan in the parking lot of a rural Target so she could quickly grab an item. Though her child was fine, someone called the police. This event sent Kim down a rabbit hole to find out: is the American childhood as dangerous as people think? Her remarkable, thought-provoking book argues that childhood is remarkably safe, children should be exploring their environs, and some form of free-range parenting for many parents and kids should be the norm rather than the exception. This has been my philosophy since having children, and I was happy to… show more.

The full title of this memoir by Cea Sunrise Person is North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Counter Culture Family, and How I Survived Both, which basically sums up this fascinating and wild ride through Cea’s unconventional upbringing in a pot-smoking, free-loving, clothing-optional, canvas tipi-sleeping, non-conforming family in the Canadian wilderness. Gaining this unique view into the psychology and emotional fallout of the eccentric family lifestyle was shocking, heart-breaking, and inspirational all at once. You will never read another book quite like it.

A book I’d wanted to read for a long time, but it wasn’t until later in life I was able to get it. When I was just on the early stages of my writing career, my now longtime friend, Marty, said he had a spare copy of Cabal laying around and offered to send it to me. Marty was my writing mentor at the time as he’d been writing horror for many years previous, and his work is inspiring. So, knowing I was getting a book in the mail from my mentor, to whom I hadn’t met in person yet, was very exciting. The book itself was a tired secondhand copy (which I was told it was) yet this gave it more special meaning. Even the cover was a little torn and it was a pocket edition. So, I sat back with this little book, which I still have as… show more.

By the thousands, young Black men from Canada–some were escaped slaves, others were freemen, often descended from Americans–rallied to join Lincoln’s army.

Reid paints moving portraits of their determination to fight racism, their sacrifices, and their contributions to the cause. I was particularly interested in the historic role played by Black Canadian doctors and Reid delivers a sweeping overview and fascinating details of the main characters.