Yesterday I wrote about my ongoing search for chapter books for my kids with African American protagonists. I have only just begun to look, so I cannot personally recommend all the books on this list. But from asking other parents, librarians, and teachers, here are a few books for three different young age groups that you might enjoy with your children:

Ages 3-5:

The Boy Who Didn't Believe in Spring by Lucille Clifton

"Two skeptical city boys set out to find spring which they've heard is "just around the corner".

Corduroy by Don Freeman

"This story of a small teddy bear waiting on a department store shelf for a child's friendship has appealed to young readers generation after generation."

Sugar Plum Ballerinas by Whoopi Goldberg and Deborah Underwood

"Alexandrea Petrakova Johnson does not want to be a beautiful ballerina, and she does not want to leave her friends in Apple Creek. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop her ballet-crazy mother from moving them to Harlem, or from enrolling Al at the Nutcracker School of Ballet. "

Gender violence causes more death and disability among women ages 15 to 44 in the U.S. than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war. Currently our military and universities are actively seeking solutions to prevent and respond to this violence within their respective institutions.

It's time for the church and religious leaders to do so as well.

Sojourners and IMA World Health (on behalf of the WeWillSpeakOut.US coalition) recently released a new report, Broken Silence: A Call for Churches to Speak Out, based on a LifeWay Research survey of 1,000 U.S. Protestant pastors. According to the report, U.S. faith leaders seriously underestimate the prevalence of sexual and domestic violence experienced by people within their congregations. They also lack the tools to address it in constructive and helpful ways. The good news is more than 8 in 10 said they would take appropriate action to reduce sexual and domestic violence if they and the training and resources to do so.

So what can faith leaders do to reduce sexual and domestic violence?

First, they need to get a firmer grip on reality. Pastors need to fully understand that domestic and sexual violence occurs in all communities worldwide, including their own congregations. Ignoring this sin does not make it go away; it gives silent consent.

Second, pastors need to build relationships with the resources in their local communities that protect and support victims and survivors. A pastor's vocation is to nurture faith and support a victim's spiritual well being, but his or her physical or emotional well being should be guided by professionals trained in domestic and sexual violence. Yet currently, fewer than 10 percent of pastors surveyed are "very familiar" with local resources that assist victims. More than 15 percent are not at all familiar with these resources.

The despicable nature of all of this is self-evident, right? Smiling teen with one earbud in. Blushing emoji, as if she realizes she should be ashamed — but isn't. And then there are her follow-up tweets, dozens and dozens of threats and defenses and angry replies, all of them simmering down to one blood-boiling theme: Sorry, but I'm not sorry.

No wonder she has, in the past 24 hours, gotten more than 6,000 hateful tweets directed at her.

And yet, the funny thing about viral images is how endlessly easy it is to misunderstand them. The selfie is already a politically and socially fraught form of expression, as many sociologists and social media theorists have written before; while self-portraits are understood by many to be little more than a flagrant show of narcissism or a plea for attention, they may mean something different to the taker herself. It's less a matter of self-glorification than self-documentation — "I was here." "This is who I was that day." "This happened."

"Self captured images allow young adults and teens to express their mood states and share important experiences," the clinical psychologist Andrea Letamendi told Time last September. In other words — to paraphrase Jennifer Outllette, who recently published a book on "the science of self" — selfies aren't merely a "look-at-me!" attention-grab. They're an attempt to place oneself in a context, to understand how we fit into a bigger picture.