It’s one week until Independence Day and the United States’s 250th Birthday, so it feels like a good time to recommend some books that remind readers of the true spirit of the USA.

The United States is every skin tone, every hair type, every culture, every faith, every family.

The United States is he, she, they, ze, ey, and more. It’s every pronoun, every identity, and every expression of individuality and autonomy.

The United States is past, present, and future—even the hard times, the shameful times, and the times we’d like to forget.

The United States is all. It is every. It is one and it is many.

It is hundreds of millions of singular people who have come together to make one nation. And to disenfranchise, to dehumanize, to deport, or to deny any of those people stands against what the United States is meant to be.

Rebellion 1776 by Laurie Halse Anderson

ABCs of America by J.D. Forester, illus. by Henry Rancourt

Love from America by Sarah Jospitre, illus. by Amandine Thomas

Liberty’s Forgotten Hero: The Revolutionary Life of James Forten by Kesha L. Grant, illus. by Anastasia Magloire Williams

I’m an American by Darshana Khiani, illus. by Laura Freeman

We Are Mighty: 12 Ordinary Americans Who Did the Next Needed Thing by Sharon McMahon, illus. by Susanna Chapman

Blue Sky White Stars by Sarvinder Naberhaus, illus. by Kadir Nelson

My Red, White, and Blue by Alana Tyson, illus. by London Ladd

It’s Time for Red, White, and Blue, illus. by Kathrin Fehrl

Thanks to Caitlyn Dlouhy Books, Atheneum BFYR, SimonKIDS, Grosset & Dunlap, Viking BFYR, Philomel, Dial BFYR, Penguin Young Readers, Knopf BFYR, Random House Children’s Books, Lee & Low, and Gibbs Smith for copies of these books.