For more than a decade, Tilbury House Publishers in Gardiner has specialized in publishing books that address the difficult issues children often face. Many of these have been about the environment, but a few take on questions of social justice as it relates to children in and out of the classroom, giving these world problems a child’s-eye view. Three recent books by Tilbury House offer engaging glimpses into the struggles and desires of childhood.

Back-to-school images of bright-faced children happily skipping off to class, excluding no one, is a common storybook image this time of year. Unfortunately, it’s often just a storybook image. Cliques form, children are shunned, picked on, bullied. “Say Something,” just released by Tilbury House and written by bullying expert Peggy Moss and illustrated by Lea Lyon, addresses this fact in a straightforward, real way.

The girl in “Say Something” is perhaps 12 years old. As if musing to herself, she talks about what she notices in her school, including one girl who sits alone on the bus.

“Sometimes kids throw things at her and call her names. The girls who sit behind her laugh,” says this girl. There are others she notices: a boy who gets teased, another who is frequently picked on. “I don’t pick on him. I feel sorry for him,” she says. She doesn’t participate; rather, she stands aside, a sad witness.

One day, this child finds her friends gone for the day and it is she who is sitting alone.

“Some kids came over to me and they started telling jokes. I laughed until the jokes started to be about me,” the girl continues. By the end of this short, cruel episode, she is in tears while her tormentors laugh. When they leave, she looks around to find the cafeteria filled with students, including kids she knew close by. “They were looking at me. I could tell they felt sorry for me,” she says, and suddenly she is angry, not just at the bullies, but also at the kids who just watched. She tells this to her brother, who shrugs and says, “Why? They didn’t do anything.”

“Right,” she says to her brother. The next day, she deliberately sits beside the ostracized girl on the bus. The book ends with this comment: “She’s really funny!”

This unnamed girl learns firsthand that the bystander is the initial line of defense against bullies. Because bullying is all about the show, about the bully proving his power, a bystander’s silence becomes part of the bully’s control. As Martin Luther King once said, “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.” Breaking that silence can make continued bullying plain unprofitable, for bullies gain power by immobilizing others who are terrified that they will be next.

Too often, children don’t have the techniques to confront such meanness. To this end, Moss, a former assistant attorney general who now works for the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence at the University of Southern Maine, closes her book with techniques for confronting bullies. The first, not surprisingly, is to say something. Say it to the person being teased, to the bully, to an adult. Say something to show the bully and the bystanders that meanness is neither cool nor tolerated. It isn’t always easy, but children who speak out find that it goes a long way toward their own empowerment and relief from the subtle torment of a bully-controlled classroom.

Another book, “The Carpet Boy’s Gift,” written by Pegi Deitz Shea and illustrated by Leane Morin, takes on the issue of child labor. Heartbreaking in its portrayal of child workers, it does break through to a promise of hope.

Here, readers are brought right into a rug sweatshop in Pakistan, where young Nadeem, a boy of about 12, has been working for years to pay off the loan his employer gave his parents in lieu of salary. But each time Nadeem gets close to finally paying off the loan, something happens. Nadeem falls asleep or makes an error and is slapped with a fine that gives him months, if not years of more work. Nadeem feels he has no choice but to obey, otherwise his little brother will suffer the same fate.

One day, however, he encounters Iqbal Masih, another young Pakistani carpet weaver. Iqbal tells him there are laws against bondage and that he is free to leave his master and go to school. Iqbal, we are told, was a true figure in Pakistan, a young leader who encouraged child workers to stand up to their masters. In 1994, Iqbal was awarded the Reebok Youth in Action Award, but the next year, at age 12, he was shot while riding a bicycle near his home.

Nadeem attempts to follow Iqbal’s lead, but fails and is fined yet again. This time, he’s imprisoned in the carpetmaster’s back room. Then he hears of Iqbal’s death and decides to take up the cause. Ultimately, this heroic fictional boy – presumably along with other real boys and girls throughout the world- breaks his chains, stands up to his master and leads his entire factory out of the dark and down the street to school.

Once again, the book doesn’t end here. The final pages of “The Carpet Boy’s Gift” list ways that children can get involved, so no child need feel overwhelmed by the injustices of the world.

Jane Bregoli’s “The Goat Lady” is Tilbury House’s most recent addition to their line of books for empowering children. It’s an autobiographical tale of a little girl living in a small town with just one farm remaining – one farm run by one very old lady, Noelie Houle.

Noelie is in danger of becoming terribly misunderstood. Her animals are noisy and unruly, her yard unkempt, and she herself is poorly dressed. But the little girl who moves next door becomes fascinated by her neighbor’s frisky goats and slowly befriends the kindly old Noelie.

In part, “The Goat Lady” is a story about goats. In part, it’s a story about the life of a farm. But at it’s heart, “The Goat Lady” is the story of the power of friendship, how friendship – and knowledge – can erase misunderstanding. Ultimately, the little girl suggests that her mother, an artist, might like to make a portrait of Noelie. One painting becomes a roomful, leading to an art show that turns the town’s complainers into supporters of their somewhat-eccentric goat lady. The reader, meanwhile, comes to find that this is no sugar-coated fantasy. The portraits of Noelie in this children’s book incorporate the actual portraits Bregoli created and hung in the town hall and library of a real Noelie Houle living in Dartmouth, Mass.