Years ago I was struck by a conversation I had with the parents of an American teenager who was applying for a highly selective scholarship to the international high school network from which I had graduated. The UWCs strive to make “education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future.” As a U.S. National Committee member, I delighted in interacting with teens and their families from every imaginable background and corner of the U.S. (and beyond). The genuinely caring, concerned parents in question caught me by surprise when they asked, “If our son goes to one of these schools, will he be taught to hate America?”

The answer I gave then is what I’d say now to anyone in this increasingly polarized country who objects to books that present viewpoints that go beyond sanitized, simplistic, feel-good versions of the past: I told them that he’d be exposed to many different perspectives, some of them challenging and uncomfortable, and that his beliefs would certainly evolve over time. But crucially, he’d be taught how to think, not what to think.

Of course, you wouldn’t want to entrust your child to people—whether teachers or authors—you fear will lead them to scorn a cultural identity that is deeply meaningful to you. But true appreciation and respect go beyond the surface to embrace complexity. Discomfort opens the door to growth. To supplement the dry, bland history textbooks that limit substantive engagement and the patently biased ones that peddle falsehoods, offer teens one of these bold and courageous works that they can truly grapple with. These books expose them to writers who model critical thinking and construct persuasive arguments that are grounded in solid evidence.

Beginning with her title, White Lies: How the South Lost the Civil War, Then Rewrote the History (Roaring Brook Press, August 12), Ann Bausum holds nothing back in her latest work, which both reckons with a sustained campaign of deliberate historical misinformation and calls readers to action. By thoroughly and systematically demolishing 20 false tenets she finds underlying the white supremacist Lost Cause philosophy, she exposes how deeply embedded it remains throughout the country.

For readers too young to have come of age during the most traumatic years of the AIDS epidemic, Michael G. Long’s Fight AIDS!: How Activism, Art, and Protest Changed the Course of a Deadly Epidemic and Reshaped a Nation (Norton Young Readers, June 3) will be an eye-opening and provocative read. It encourages reflection on the power of grassroots activism, the impact of homophobia and other biases on medical research and public health, queer community history, and more.

Ideal for those seeking compelling, historically accurate fiction, Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, February 4), contains three interwoven storylines, two of which highlight youth activism in politically oppressive times—World War II and the Cold War in Germany. In the third, set in Brooklyn during the Covid-19 lockdown, a Filipino and white teen with two moms questions his identity, finds his voice, and figures out what he wants to say in a world that feels overwhelming.

Laura Simeon is a young readers’ editor.