By Ntozake Shange, Illustration by Kadir A. Nelson

Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award

ISBN: 0689828845
Format: Hardcover, 40pp
Pub. Date: January 2004
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's
Age Range: 4 to 8

In a reflective tribute to the African-American community of old, noted poet Ntozake Shange recalls her childhood home and the close-knit group of innovators that often gathered there. These men of vision, brought to life in the majestic paintings of artist Kadir Nelson, lived at a time when the color of their skin dictated where they could live, what schools they could attend, and even where they could sit on a bus or in a movie theater.

Yet in the face of this tremendous adversity, these dedicated souls and others like them not only demonstrated the importance of Black culture in America, but also helped issue in a movement that "changed the world." Their lives and their works inspire us to this day, and serve as a guide to how we approach the challenges of tomorrow.


 The Love Space Demands: A Continuing Saga
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Format: Paperback, 1st ed., 80pp.
ISBN: 0312076274
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, Inc.
Pub. Date: April  1992
Edition Description: 1st pbk. ed

AALBC.com Best-selling Book March 2001

Songs of love and urban tragedy from one of the preeminent African-American writers of our time. Shange's poems express the need to be felt and heard, to be necessary. In this love space, we all wear our desires, t-cells, and hearts on our sleeves and experience all that comes with wanting to get hold of life, or someone to love.

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow Is Enuf: A Choreopoem
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Format: Paperback, 1st ed., 64pp.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Trade
Pub. Date: August 1997

AALBC.com #5 Best-selling Book for the Year 2000

Whitewash
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Illustrated by Michael Sporn (36 pages, picture book)
Published by Walker and Company, New YorkAges 7-10

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Playwright, novelist, poet Ntozake Shange turns her attention to children’s literature, and offers readers a tough lesson on racism and hate crimes.

What begins as a typical school day in Brooklyn, New York turns into a nightmare for grade-schooler Helene-Angel and her big brother, Mauricio, in this unusual children’s tale by award-winning playwright, novelist, and poet, Ntozake Shange. Loosely based on incidents that took place in the Bronx, where young black children were attacked by white gangs and spray-painted white, Whitewash is as emotionally compelling as any Shange work.

Title:  Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo
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Publisher:  St. Martin's Press, Inc.
Date Published:  January 1996
Format:  Trade Paper

My first Ntozake Shange novel. I was captivated by not only her sense of timing, characters and plot, but how she engaged all of the senses in telling this story of three sisters. A novel of experience. Shange made a believer out of me. ~Thumper, AALBC.com

0312134347

Format: Paperback, 207pp.
ISBN: 0312134347
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, Inc.
Pub. Date: February  1986

The novelist presents "the life of a prosperous black family in St. Louis during 1957, the year of school desegregation. The story focuses on threegenerations of women, 13-year-old Betsey Brown and her mother and grandmother."