The use of children's literature in urban social studies classrooms to facilitate students' engagement in literate behaviors and simultaneously develop a framework for understanding social action is an under-researched area. This paper discusses the use of literature for children and young adults in an urban middle school language arts and social studies block as a pedagogical strategy to facilitate understandings of social action. The African American students' responses to literature supported a development of a working definition of social action and ideas about action/inaction in their urban community contexts. These issues and others offer guidance for how literature can be used as an extension of citizenship education with the development of critical consciousness, political identity, and social action as the objectives. (Contains 1 table and 3 notes.)