40 Image Award Winning and Nominated Books for 2016

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Biography/Autobiography – Winner

Between The World And Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Age Range:
Publication Date: Jul 01, 2015
List Price: $24.00
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Nonfiction
Page Count: 176
Imprint: Spiegel & Grau

Read AALBC.com’s Review of Between The World And Me

Synopsis: Debuted #1 New York Times Best Seller • Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States” (The New York Observer) 
“This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.”
 
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?
 
Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

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Biography/Autobiography – Nominee

After The Dance: My Life With Marvin Gaye
by Jan Gaye and David Ritz

Age Range:
Publication Date: May 01, 2015
List Price: $25.99
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Nonfiction
Page Count:
Imprint: Amistad

Read AALBC.com’s Review of After The Dance: My Life With Marvin Gaye

Synopsis: 

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Biography/Autobiography – Nominee

One Righteous Man: Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York
by Arthur Browne

Age Range:
Publication Date: Jun 30, 2015
List Price: $27.95
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Fiction
Page Count: 336
Imprint: Beacon Press

Synopsis: Winner of the Christopher Award and the New York City Book Award A history of African Americans in New York City from the 1910’s to 1960, told through the life of Samuel Battle, the New York Police Department’s first black officer.

When Samuel Battle broke the color line as New York City’s first African American cop in the second decade of the twentieth century, he had to fear his racist colleagues as much as criminals. He had to be three times better than his white peers, and many times more resilient. His life was threatened. He was displayed like a circus animal. Yet, fearlessly claiming his rights, he prevailed in a four-decade odyssey that is both the story of one man’s courageous dedication to racial progress and a harbinger of the divisions between police and the people they serve that plague twenty-first-century America. By dint of brains, brawn, and an outsized personality, Battle rode the forward wave of African American history in New York. He circulated among renowned turn-of-the-century entertainers and writers. He weathered threatening hostility as a founding citizen of black Harlem. He served as godfather to the regiment of black soldiers that won glory in World War I as the Hellfighters of Harlem. He befriended sports stars like Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, and Sugar Ray Robinson, and he bonded with legendary tap dancer Bill Bojangles Robinson. Along the way, he mentored an equally smart, equally tough young man in a still more brutal fight to integrate the New York Fire Department. At the close of his career, Battle looked back proudly on the against-all-odd journey taken by a man who came of age as the son of former slaves in the South. He had navigated the corruption of Tammany Hall, the treachery of gangsters like Lucky Luciano and Dutch Schultz, the anything-goes era of Prohibition, the devastation of the Depression, and the race riots that erupted in Harlem in the 1930s and 1940s. By then he was a trusted aide to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and a friend to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Realizing that his story was the story of race in New York across the first half of the century, Battle commissioned a biography to be written by none other than Langston Hughes, the preeminent voice of the Harlem Renaissance. But their eighty-thousand-word collaboration failed to find a publisher, and has remained unpublished since. Using Hughes’s manuscript, which is quoted liberally throughout this book, as well as his own archival research and interviews with survivors, Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Arthur Browne has created an important and compelling social history of New York, revealed a fascinating episode in the life of Langston Hughes, and delivered the riveting life and times of a remarkable and unjustly forgotten man, setting Samuel Battle where he belongs in the pantheon of American civil rights pioneers.

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Biography/Autobiography – Nominee

Power Forward: My Presidential Education
by Reggie Love

Age Range:
Publication Date: Feb 03, 2015
List Price: $26.00
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Fiction
Page Count: 224
Imprint: Simon & Schuster

Synopsis: Reggie Love is a unique witness to history, whose introduction to Washington was working in Junior Senator Barack Obama’s mailroom. As body man to Obama during his first presidential campaign, Love’s job was to stay one step behind the candidate, but think and act three steps ahead during a typical eighteen-hour workday. As President Obama’s personal aide during that momentous first term, Love sat yards from the Oval Office and often spent more time with the President than anyone else. While his experiences were unique, the lessons he learned during his tenure with the President are universal. Persistence. Responsibility. Passion for a cause greater than yourself. In short, maturity. Love has been singularly lucky in his mentors. At Duke University, where he was a walk-on and a captain of its fabled basketball team, Love learned from Coach Krzyzewski that sports builds character—from President Obama, Love learned that how you conduct your life defines your character. Accountability and serving with honor were learned during unsought moments: co-coaching with Malia Obama’s and Sasha Obama’s basketball team with the President; lending Obama his tie ahead of a presidential debate; managing a personal life when no hour is truly your own. From his first interview with Senator Obama, to his near-decision not to follow the President-elect to the White House, Love drew on Coach K’s teachings as he learned to navigate Washington. But it was while owning up to (temporarily) losing the President’s briefcase, playing pick-up games in New Hampshire to secure votes, babysitting the children of visiting heads of state, and keeping the President company at every major turning point of his historic first campaign and administration, that Love learned how persistence and passion can lead not only to success, but to a broader concept of adulthood. Power Foward is a professional coming of age story like no other.

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Biography/Autobiography – Nominee

Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person
by Shonda Rhimes

Age Range:
Publication Date: Nov 10, 2015
List Price: $24.99
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Nonfiction
Page Count: 336
Imprint: Simon & Schuster

Synopsis: 
In this poignant, hilarious, and deeply intimate call to arms, Hollywood’s most powerful woman, the mega-talented creator of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal and executive producer of How to Get Away with Murder reveals how saying YES changed her life—and how it can change yours too.

She’s the creator and producer of some of the most groundbreaking and audacious shows on television today: Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder. Her iconic characters—Meredith Grey, Cristina Yang, Olivia Pope, Annalise Keating—live boldly and speak their minds. So who would suspect that Shonda Rhimes, the mega talent who owns Thursday night television (#TGIT), is an introvert? That she hired a publicist so she could avoid public appearances? That she hugged walls at splashy parties and suffered panic attacks before media interviews so severe she remembered nothing afterward?

Before her Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes was an expert at declining invitations others would leap to accept. With three children at home and three hit television shows on TV, it was easy to say that she was simply too busy. But in truth, she was also afraid. Afraid of cocktail party faux pas like chucking a chicken bone across a room; petrified of live television appearances where Shonda Rhimes could trip and fall and bleed out right there in front of a live studio audience; terrified of the difficult conversations that came so easily to her characters on-screen. In the before, Shonda’s introvert life revolved around burying herself in work, snuggling her children, and comforting herself with food.

And then, on Thanksgiving 2013, Shonda’s sister muttered something that was both a wake up and a call to arms: You never say yes to anything.

The comment sat like a grenade, until it detonated. Then Shonda, the youngest of six children from a supremely competitive family, knew she had to embrace the challenge: for one year, she would say YES to everything that scared her.

This poignant, intimate, and hilarious memoir explores Shonda’s life before her Year of Yes—from her nerdy, book-loving childhood creating imaginary friends to her devotion to creating television characters who reflected the world she saw around her (like Cristina Yang, whose ultimate goal wasn’t marriage, and Cyrus Beene, who is a Republican and gay). And it chronicles her life after her Year of Yes had begun—when Shonda forced herself out of the house and onto the stage, appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and giving the Dartmouth Commencement speech; when she learned to say yes to her health, yes to play and she stepped out of the shadows and into the sun; when she learned to explore, empower, applaud, and love her truest self. Yes.

This wildly candid and compulsively readable book reveals how the mega talented Shonda Rhimes, an unexpected introvert, achieved badassery worthy of a Shondaland character. And how you can, too.

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Children – Winner

Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America
by Carole Boston Weatherford

Age Range:
Publication Date: Feb 01, 2015
List Price: $16.99
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Children’s
Page Count: 32
Imprint: Albert Whitman & Company

Synopsis: 
His white teacher tells her all-black class, You’ll all wind up porters and waiters. What did she know? Gordon Parks is most famous for being the first black director in Hollywood. But before he made movies and wrote books, he was a poor African American looking for work. When he bought a camera, his life changed forever. He taught himself how to take pictures and before long, people noticed. His success as a fashion photographer landed him a job working for the government. In Washington DC, Gordon went looking for a subject, but what he found was segregation. He and others were treated differently because of the color of their skin. Gordon wanted to take a stand against the racism he observed. With his camera in hand, he found a way. Told through lyrical verse and atmospheric art, this is the story of how, with a single photograph, a self-taught artist got America to take notice.

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Children – Nominee

Chasing Freedom: The Life Journeys of Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony, Inspired by Historical Facts
by Nikki Grimes

Age Range:
Publication Date: Jan 06, 2015
List Price: $18.99
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Children’s
Page Count: 56
Imprint: Orchard Books

Synopsis: Nikki Grimes offers a glimpse into the inspiring lives of Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Tubman, with breathtaking illustrations by Michele Wood! What if Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony sat down over tea to reminisce about their extraordinary lives? What would they recall of their triumphs and struggles as they fought to achieve civil rights for African Americans and equal rights for women? And what other historical figures played parts in their stories? These questions led Coretta Scott King Award winner Nikki Grimes to create Chasing Freedom, an engaging work of historical fiction about two of the nineteenth century’s most powerful, and inspiring, American women. With breathtaking illustrations by Coretta Scott King Award winner Michele Wood, Chasing Freedom richly imagines the experiences of Tubman and Anthony, set against the backdrop of the Underground Railroad, the Civil War, and the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Additional back matter invites curious young readers to further explore this period in history--and the larger-than-life figures who lived it.

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Children – Nominee

Granddaddy’s Turn: A Journey to the Ballot Box
by Michael S. Bandy and Eric Stein

Age Range:
Publication Date: Jul 14, 2015
List Price: $16.99
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Children’s
Page Count: 32
Imprint: Candlewick Press

Synopsis: Based on the true story of one family’s struggle for voting rights in the civil rightsera South, this moving tale shines an emotional spotlight on a dark facet of U.S. history. Life on the farm with Granddaddy is full of hard work, but despite all the chores, Granddaddy always makes time for play, especially fishing trips. Even when there isn’t a bite to catch, he reminds young Michael that it takes patience to get what’s coming to you. One morning, when Granddaddy heads into town in his fancy suit, Michael knows that something very special must be happening?—?and sure enough, everyone is lined up at the town hall! For the very first time, Granddaddy is allowed to vote, and he couldn’t be more proud. But can Michael be patient when it seems that justice just can’t come soon enough? This powerful and touching true-life story shares one boy’s perspective of growing up in the segregated South, while beautiful illustrations depict the rural setting in tender detail.

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Children – Nominee

If You Plant a Seed
by Kadir Nelson

Age Range:
Publication Date: Mar 03, 2015
List Price: $18.99
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Children’s
Page Count: 32
Imprint: Balzer + Bray

Synopsis: Kadir Nelson, acclaimed author of Baby Bear and winner of the Caldecott Honor and the Coretta Scott King Author and Illustrator Awards, presents a resonant, gently humorous story about the power of even the smallest acts and the rewards of compassion and generosity.With spare text and breathtaking oil paintings, If You Plant a Seed demonstrates not only the process of planting and growing for young children but also how a seed of kindness can bear sweet fruit.

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Children – Nominee

New Shoes
by Susan Meyer

Age Range:
Publication Date: Jan 30, 2015
List Price: $16.95
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Children’s
Page Count: 40
Imprint: Holiday House

Synopsis: Set in the South during the time of segregation, this lushly illustrated picture book brings the civil rights era to life for contemporary readers as two young girls find an inventive way to foil Jim Crow laws. When her brother’s hand-me-down shoes don’t fit, it is time for Ella Mae to get new ones. She is ecstatic, but when she and her mother arrive at Mr. Johnson’s shoe store, her happiness quickly turns to dejection. Ella Mae is unable to try on the shoes because of her skin color. Determined to fight back, Ella Mae and her friend Charlotte work tirelessly to collect and restore old shoes, wiping, washing, and polishing them to perfection. The girls then have their very own shoe sale, giving the other African American members of their community a place to buy shoes where they can be treated fairly and ""try on all the shoes they want.""

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Debut Author – Winner

The Fishermen: A Novel
by Chigozie Obiama

Age Range:
Publication Date: Apr 14, 2015
List Price: $26.00
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Fiction
Page Count: 304
Imprint: Little, Brown and Company

Synopsis: In a Nigerian town in the mid 1990’s, four brothers encounter a madman whose mystic prophecy of violence threatens the core of their close-knit family. Told from the point of view of nine year old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, THE FISHERMEN is the Cain and Abel-esque story of an unforgettable childhood in 1990’s Nigeria, in the small town of Akure. When their strict father has to travel to a distant city for work, the brothers take advantage of his extended absence to skip school and go fishing. At the ominous, forbidden nearby river, they meet a dangerous local madman who persuades the oldest of the boys that he is destined to be killed by one of his siblings. What happens next is an almost mythic event whose impact-both tragic and redemptive-will transcend the lives and imaginations of its characters and its readers. Dazzling and viscerally powerful, The Fishermen never leaves Akure but the story it tells has enormous universal appeal. Seen through the prism of one family’s destiny, this is an essential novel about Africa with all of its contradictions-economic, political, and religious-and the epic beauty of its own culture. With this bold debut, Chigozie Obioma emerges as one of the most original new voices of modern African literature, echoing its older generation’s masterful storytelling with a contemporary fearlessness and purpose.

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Debut Author – Nominee

The Presidency in Black and White: My Up-Close View of Three Presidents and Race in America
by April Ryan

Age Range:
Publication Date: Feb 15, 2015
List Price: $24.95
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Nonfiction
Page Count: 176
Imprint: Rowman & Littlefield

Read AALBC.com’s Review of The Presidency in Black and White: My Up-Close View of Three Presidents and Race in America

Synopsis: 2016 NAACP Image Award Nominee, Essence Top 10 books of 2015, African American Literary Show Inc. 2015 Best Non Fiction Award In The Presidency in Black and White, journalist April Ryan gives readers a compelling and personal behind-the-scenes look at race relations in contemporary America from the epicenter of American power and policy making—the White House, her beat since 1997. On behalf of the American Urban Radio Networks, and through her ""Fabric of America"" news blog, she delivers her readership and listeners (millions of African Americans and close to 300 radio affiliates) a unique urban and minority perspective in news. Her position as a White House Correspondent has afforded her unique insight into the racial sensitivities, issues, and attendant political struggles of our nation’s last three presidents. In Bill Clinton, Ryan saw both a savvy politician who did his best to stay above the racial fray in public, and a man privately pained from the wrongs done to African-Americans throughout our history, not unlike those with whom he’d grown up in Arkansas. In George W. Bush, a man she respected as a faithful husband and father, an unprecedented amount of backlash against what was spun and perceived as racism in his policies particularly those surrounding his administration’s horrendous handling of Hurricane Katrina from which he never truly recovered, and by which he remained personally haunted for years. And in Barack Obama a President expected to transcend divisions and raise us above our racial squabbling simply by taking office a leader who, especially early in his administration, drew his own form of fire from those who noted his surprising absence from various racial issues that presented themselves on the national stage, but upon which he did not seem moved to comment, much less act. With humor, grace, and determination, April shares the highs and lows of her sometimes lonely but rewarding battle to keep questions of race relations in America on the political front burner, and in the President’s ear. She has made this battle her life’s work and will never stop fighting to give a voice to those members of our society who have too long been silenced.

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Debut Author – Nominee

The Star Side of Bird Hill
by Naomi Jackson

Age Range:
Publication Date: Jun 30, 2015
List Price: $25.95
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Fiction
Page Count: 304
Imprint: Penguin Press

Synopsis: 
Two sisters are suddenly sent from their home in Brooklyn to Barbados to live with their grandmother, in this stunning debut novel.

This lyrical novel of community, betrayal, and love centers on an unforgettable matriarchal family in Barbados. Two sisters, ages ten and sixteen, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live for the summer of 1989 with their grandmother Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah.

Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother’s limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations, accompanies her grandmother in her role as a midwife, and investigates their mother’s mysterious life.

This tautly paced coming-of-age story builds to a crisis when the father they barely know comes to Bird Hill to reclaim his daughters, and both Phaedra and Dionne must choose between the Brooklyn they once knew and loved or the Barbados of their family.

Jackson’s Barbados and her characters are singular, especially the wise Hyacinth and the heartbreaking young Phaedra, who is coming into her own as a young woman amid the tumult of her family.

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Debut Author – Nominee

The Turner House
by Angela Flournoy

Age Range:
Publication Date: Apr 14, 2015
List Price: $23.00
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Fiction
Page Count: 352
Imprint: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Synopsis: 
A powerful, timely debut, The Turner House marks a major new contribution to the story of the American family.

The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house has seen thirteen children grown and gone—and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit’s East Side, and the loss of a father. The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts and shapes their family’s future.

Praised by Ayana Mathis as “utterly moving” and “un-putdownable,” The Turner House brings us a colorful, complicated brood full of love and pride, sacrifice and unlikely inheritances. It’s a striking examination of the price we pay for our dreams and futures, and the ways in which our families bring us home.

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Debut Author – Nominee

The Wind in the Reeds: A Storm, A Play, and the City That Would Not Be Broken
by Wendell Pierce and Rod Dreher

Age Range:
Publication Date: Sep 08, 2015
List Price: $27.95
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Fiction
Page Count: 352
Imprint: Riverhead Books

Synopsis: 2016 Christopher Award Winner From acclaimed actor and producer Wendell Pierce, an insightful and poignant portrait of family, New Orleans and the transforming power of art.

On the morning of August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina barreled into New Orleans, devastating many of the city’s neighborhoods, including Pontchartrain Park, the home of Wendell Pierce’s family and the first African American middle-class subdivision in New Orleans. The hurricane breached many of the city’s levees, and the resulting flooding submerged Pontchartrain Park under as much as 20 feet of water. Katrina left New Orleans later that day, but for the next three days the water kept relentlessly gushing into the city, plunging eighty percent of New Orleans under water. Nearly 1,500 people were killed. Half the houses in the city had four feet of water in them—or more. There was no electricity or clean water in the city; looting and the breakdown of civil order soon followed. Tens of thousands of New Orleanians were stranded in the city, with no way out; many more evacuees were displaced, with no way back in.

Pierce and his family were some of the lucky ones: They survived and were able to ride out the storm at a relative’s house 70 miles away. When they were finally allowed to return, they found their family home in tatters, their neighborhood decimated. Heartbroken but resilient, Pierce vowed to help rebuild, and not just his family’s home, but all of Pontchartrain Park.

In this powerful and redemptive narrative, Pierce brings together the stories of his family, his city, and his history, why they are all worth saving and the critical importance art played in reuniting and revitalizing this unique American city.

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Fiction – Winner

Stand Your Ground: A Novel
by Victoria Christopher Murray

Age Range:
Publication Date: Jun 01, 2015
List Price: $16.00
Format: Paperback
Classification: Fiction
Page Count: 368
Imprint: Touchstone

Synopsis: 

From the AALBC.com bestselling and award-winning author Victoria Christopher Murray comes Stand Your Ground, a new novel about two women who are faced with the same tragedy.

A black teenage boy is dead. A white man shot him. Was he standing his ground or was it murder?

Janice Johnson is living every black mother’s nightmare. Her seventeen-year-old son was murdered and the shooter has not been arrested. Can the D.A. and the police be trusted to investigate and do the right thing? Should Janice take advantage of the public outcry and join her husband alongside the angry protestors who are out for revenge?

Meredith Spencer is married to the man accused of the killing and she sees her husband and the situation with far more clarity than anyone realizes. What she knows could blow the case wide open, but what will that mean for her life and that of her son? Will she have the courage to come forward in time so that justice can be done?

#1 national bestselling and award-winning author Victoria Christopher Murray’s Stand Your Ground is a pulse-pounding meditation on race, motherhood, marriage, and vigilante justice that will have readers spellbound until its shocking end.

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Fiction – Nominee

Under the Udala Trees
by Chinelo Okparanta

Age Range:
Publication Date: Sep 22, 2015
List Price: $26.00
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Fiction
Page Count: 336
Imprint: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Synopsis: Inspired by Nigeria’s folktales and its war, Under the Udala Trees s a deeply searching, powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly.

Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does; born before independence, she is eleven when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child and they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls. When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself. But there is a cost to living inside a lie.

As Edwidge Danticat has made Under the Udala Treesuses one woman’s lifetime to examine the ways in which Nigerians continue to struggle toward selfhood. Even as their nation contends with and recovers from the effects of war and division, Nigerian lives are also wrecked and lost from taboo and prejudice. This story offers a glimmer of hope — a future where a woman might just be able to shape her life around truth and love.

Acclaimed byVogue, theFinancial Times,and many others, Chinelo Okparanta continues to distill experience into something crystalline, stark but lustrous (New York Times Book Review).Under the Udala Treesmarks the further rise of a star whose tales will break your heart open (New York Daily News).

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Fiction – Nominee

Driving The King: A Novel
by Ravi Howard

Age Range:
Publication Date: Jan 06, 2015
List Price: $25.99
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Fiction
Page Count: 336
Imprint: Harper

Synopsis: 
A daring and brilliant novel that explores race and class in 1950s America, witnessed through the experiences of Nat King Cole and his driver, Nat Weary.The war is over, the soldiers are returning, and Nat King Cole is back in his hometown of Montgomery, Alabama, for a rare performance. His childhood friend, Nat Weary, plans to propose to his sweetheart, and the singer will honor their moment with a special song. While the world has changed, segregated Jim Crow Montgomery remains the same. When a white man attacks Cole with a pipe, Weary leaps from the audience to defend him—an act that will lead to a ten-year prison sentence.But the singer will not forget his friend and the sacrifice he made. Six months before Weary is released, he receives a remarkable offer: will he be Nat King Cole’s driver and bodyguard in L.A.? It is the promise of a new life removed from the terror, violence, and degradation of Jim Crow Alabama.Weary discovers that, while Los Angeles is far different from the Deep South, it a place of discrimination, mistrust, and intolerance where a black man—even one as talented and popular as Nat King Cole—is not wholly welcome.An indelible portrait of prejudice and promise, friendship and loyalty, Driving the King is a daring look at race and class in pre-Civil Rights America, played out in the lives of two remarkable men.

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Fiction – Nominee

Mama’s Boy
by ReShonda Tate Billingsley

Age Range:
Publication Date: Jul 01, 2015
List Price: $15.00
Format: Paperback
Classification: Fiction
Page Count:
Imprint: Gallery Books

Synopsis: 

An AALBC.com Bestselling Book for May/June 2015

When her son is in trouble, a heartbroken mother finds the courage and faith to save him, in ReShonda Tate Billingsley’s powerful family drama—a novel as timely as today’s headlines.

The breaking TV news rocks Jasper, Texas, to the core: a white police officer is fatally shot in a scuffle with three black youths—and a cellphone video captures Jamal Jones, the sixteen-year-old son of esteemed Reverend Elton Jones, escalating the tragic encounter. Now, as the national spotlight shines on a town already rife with racial tension, Jamal is a murder suspect on the run. And all of Jasper—even the Reverend’s congregation—rushes to judge the boy they thought they knew.

But Gloria Jones knows her son best, and she races to find Jamal before the law does—to the outrage of her workaholic husband. Once she finds him, she has to decide whether to turn him in or help him run. With ruthless prosecutor and Houston mayoral candidate Kay Christensen hungering to put another young thug behind bars, Gloria will face her biggest battle yet. And when long-hidden secrets and shocking lies come to light, throwing Jamal’s case and his destiny into a tailspin, all Gloria can do is pray that the truth—and a mother’s unconditional love—will be enough to redeem the mistakes of the past and ultimately, save her son.

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Fiction – Nominee

Ghost Summer: Stories
by Tananarive Due

Age Range:
Publication Date: Sep 01, 2015
List Price: $15.95
Format: Paperback
Classification: Fiction
Page Count: 256
Imprint: Prime Books

Synopsis: 

“Ms. Due accomplishes the hardest thing of all with deceptive ease, creating characters we care about on their most human level.” —Stephen King “In these extraordinary tales, American Book Award-winner Due (My Soul to Take) uses a clear-eyed view of history to explain (but never excuse) the present.” Weekly (Starred) Named one of Publishers Weekly Top 10 Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror titles for the fall! Whether weaving family life and history into dark fiction or writing speculative Afrofuturism, American Book Award winner and Essence bestselling author Tananarive Due’s work is both riveting and enlightening. In her debut collection of short fiction, Due takes us to Gracetown, a small Florida town that has both literal and figurative ghost; into future scenarios that seem all too real; and provides empathetic portraits of those whose lives are touched by Otherness. Featuring an award-winning novella and fifteen stories-one of which has never been published before-Ghost Summer: Stories, is sure to both haunt and delight. The title novella, “Ghost Summer, won a Kindred Award from the Carl Brandon Society (originally published in The Ancestors). This collection includes “Patient Zero”, “The Lake”, “The Knowing”, “Herd” Immunity”, and many other stories. With an Introduction by Nalo Hopkinson and an Afterword by Steven Barnes.

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Instructional – Winner

Soul Food Love: Healthy Recipes Inspired by One Hundred Years of Cooking in a Black Family
by Alice Randall and Caroline Randall Williams

Age Range:
Publication Date: Feb 03, 2015
List Price: $30.00
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Nonfiction
Page Count: 224
Imprint: Clarkson Potter

Synopsis: A mother-daughter duo reclaims and redefines soul food by mining the traditions of four generations of black women and creating 80 healthy recipes to help everyone live longer and stronger.

In May 2012, bestselling author Alice Randall penned an op-ed in the New York Times titled Black Women and Fat, chronicling her quest to be the last fat black woman in her family. She turned to her daughter, Caroline Randall Williams, for help. Together they overhauled the way they cook and eat, translating recipes and traditions handed down by generations of black women into easy, affordable, and healthful—yet still indulgent—dishes, such as Peanut Chicken Stew, Red Bean and Brown Rice Creole Salad, Fiery Green Beans, and Sinless Sweet Potato Pie. Soul Food Love relates the authors’ fascinating family history (which mirrors that of much of black America in the twentieth century), explores the often fraught relationship African-American women have had with food, and forges a powerful new way forward that honors their cultural and culinary heritage. This is what the strong black kitchen looks like in the twenty-first century.

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Instructional – Nominee

Big Words to Little Me: Advice to the Younger Self
by Sakina Ibrahim, Jessie Lee, and Rah Crawford

Age Range:
Publication Date: May 26, 2015
List Price: $18.99
Format: Paperback
Classification: Nonfiction
Page Count: 78
Imprint: CreateSpace

Synopsis: Big Words to Little Me is a girls guidance book that offers advice on how to navigate through some of life’s challenges as we grow from little girls to young women. By exploring Awareness, Confidence, Responsibilities, Relationships and Spirituality, this book is sure to help build a better sense of identity and power in young girls.

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Instructional – Nominee

Free Your Mind: An African American Guide to Meditation and Freedom
by Cortez R. Rainey

Age Range:
Publication Date: Jul 16, 2015
List Price: $16.50
Format: Paperback
Classification: Fiction
Page Count: 478
Imprint: CreateSpace

Synopsis: Although more and more Americans are practicing meditation, it is still relatively rare among African Americans. In Free Your Mind, Cortez Rainey does something about this by speaking directly to African Americans about meditation. Free Your Mind introduces meditation by using stories about the heroic men and women who journeyed from slavery to freedom on the Underground Railroad. This easy to read guidebook explains how to use meditation principles and techniques at home, either alone or with family and friends, to free your mind from thoughts that keep you shackled and bound. As you apply the principles and practice the techniques, the stories about Underground Railroad heroes and heroines—such as Harriet Tubman—will guide you and inspire you to overcome challenges you encounter while meditating, as well as the ones you encounter in everyday life. Free Your Mind presents meditation as a path that African Americans can use to develop a mind that is free of limiting thoughts. As you journey, you will bring forth more of your inherent goodness, genius, and potential. Eventually, you’ll reach the Promised Land.

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Instructional – Nominee

Grandbaby Cakes: Modern Recipes, Vintage Charm, Soulful Memories
by Jocelyn Delk Adams

Age Range:
Publication Date: Sep 01, 2015
List Price: $22.95
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Nonfiction
Page Count: 224
Imprint: Agate Surrey

Synopsis: Grandbaby Cakes: Modern Recipes, Vintage Charm, Soulful Memories is the debut cookbook from sensational food writer, Jocelyn Delk Adams. Since founding her popular recipe blog Grandbaby Cakes in 2012, Adams has been putting fresh twists on old favorites. Adams has earned praise from critics and the adoration of bakers both young and old for her easygoing advice, rich photography, and the heartwarming memories she shares of her family’s generations-old love of baking. As a child, Adams and her family would routinely embark on the ten-hour journey from their home in Chicago to Winona, Mississippi. There, she would watch her grandmother, affectionately nicknamed Big Mama, bake and develop delicious, melt-in-your-mouth desserts. From blooming tree-picked fruit to farm-raised eggs and fresh-churned butter, Big Mama used what was readily available to invent completely original treats. Adams treasured the moments when her mother, aunt, and Big Mama would bring her into the kitchen to let her dabble in the process as a rite of passage. Big Mama’s recipes became the fabric of their family heritage. Grandbaby Cakes is Adams’s love note to her family, thanking those who came before and passing on this touching tradition with 50 brilliant cakes. Grandbaby Cakes pairs charming stories of Big Mama’s kitchen with recipes ranging from classic standbys to exciting adventures helpfully marked by degree of difficulty that will inspire your own family for years to come. Adams creates sophisticated flavor combinations based on Big Mama’s gorgeous centerpiece cakes, giving each recipe something familiar mixed with something new. From pound cakes and layer cakes to sheet cakes and ""baby"" cakes (cupcakes and cakelettes), Grandbaby Cakes delivers fun, hip recipes perfect for any celebration. Readers will love this cookbook for its eclectic and bold recipes steeped in equal parts warm Southern charm and fresh Midwestern flavors. Not only will home bakers be able to make staples like yellow cake and icebox cake exactly how their grandmothers did, but they’ll also be preparing impressive innovations, like the Pineapple Upside-Down Hummingbird Pound Cake and the Fig-Brown Sugar Cake. Grandbaby Cakes is a collection for both new-aged and traditional bakers, but mostly it’s for anyone who wants a fresh, modern take on classic recipes as well as cakes full of heart and soul.

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Instructional – Nominee

Keep Calm… It’s Just Real Estate: Your No-Stress Guide to Buying a Home
by Egypt Sherrod

Age Range:
Publication Date: Mar 10, 2015
List Price: $16.00
Format: Paperback
Classification: Nonfiction
Page Count: 224
Imprint: Running Press

Synopsis: Egypt Sherrod knows how to take nervous prospective home-buyers by the hand and lead them through the process. She does it every week as host of HGTV’s highly-rated show, Property Virgins. Now she translates her reassuring personality onto the page, with this ""No-Stress"" guide to buying a home. Egypt takes readers through, simplifying all the many steps of the process, and giving them invaluable information, including: -Top ten things to consider before buying a home -How sticking with one agent works in your favor -Eight ways to be an attractive homebuyer on paper, and ease the mortgage-approval process. -What to do in a bidding war -Why you should NEVER overlook the home inspection -And much more! Egypt blends her professional know-how and her personable touch with this down-to-earth guide, providing plenty of anecdotes, handy lists, and even a glossary to ensure that readers keep calm...and experience the thrill of home ownership.

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Nonfiction – Winner

Spectacle: The Astonishing Life Of Ota Benga
by Pamela Newkirk

Age Range:
Publication Date: Jun 01, 2015
List Price: $25.99
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Nonfiction
Page Count:
Imprint: Amistad

Synopsis: 

An award-winning journalist reveals a little-known and shameful episode in American history, when an African man was used as a human zoo exhibit—a shocking story of racial prejudice, science, and tragedy in the early years of the twentieth century in the tradition of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Devil in the White City, and Medical Apartheid.

In 1904, Ota Benga, a young Congolese “pygmy”—a person of petite stature—arrived from central Africa and was featured in an anthropology exhibit at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Two years later, the New York Zoological Gardens displayed him in its Monkey House, caging the slight 103-pound, 4-foot 11-inch tall man with an orangutan. The attraction became an international sensation, drawing thousands of New Yorkers and commanding headlines from across the nation and Europe.

Spectacle explores the circumstances of Ota Benga’s captivity, the international controversy it inspired, and his efforts to adjust to American life. It also reveals why, decades later, the man most responsible for his exploitation would be hailed as his friend and savior, while those who truly fought for Ota have been banished to the shadows of history. Using primary historical documents, Pamela Newkirk traces Ota’s tragic life, from Africa to St. Louis to New York, and finally to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he lived out the remainder of his short life.

Illuminating this unimaginable event, Spectacle charts the evolution of science and race relations in New York City during the early years of the twentieth century, exploring this racially fraught era for Africa-Americans and the rising tide of political disenfranchisement and social scorn they endured, forty years after the end of the Civil War. Shocking and compelling Spectacle is a masterful work of social history that raises difficult questions about racial prejudice and discrimination that continue to haunt us today.

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Nonfiction – Nominee

The Light Of The World: A Memoir
by Elizabeth Alexander

Age Range:
Publication Date: Apr 21, 2015
List Price: $26.00
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Nonfiction
Page Count: 224
Imprint: Grand Central Publishing

Synopsis: 
New York Times BestsellerNew York Times Book Review Editor’s ChoiceAmazon’s Best Books of the Month, April 2015IndieBound Indie Next #1 Pick, May 2015Washington Post’s "21 Books We’ve Loved So Far This Year" PickBuzzfeed’s "53 Books You Won’t Be Able To Put Down" PickGOOP’s "The Best Summer ’15 Reading" Pick
A deeply resonant memoir for anyone who has loved and lost, from acclaimed poet and Pulitzer Prize finalist Elizabeth Alexander.
In THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD, Elizabeth Alexander finds herself at an existential crossroads after the sudden death of her husband. Channeling her poetic sensibilities into a rich, lucid price, Alexander tells a love story that is, itself, a story of loss. As she reflects on the beauty of her married life, the trauma resulting from her husband’s death, and the solace found in caring for her two teenage sons, Alexander universalizes a very personal quest for meaning and acceptance in the wake of loss.
THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD is at once an endlessly compelling memoir and a deeply felt meditation on the blessings of love, family, art, and community. It is also a lyrical celebration of a life well-lived and a paean to the priceless gift of human companionship. For those who have loved and lost, or for anyone who cares what matters most, THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD is required reading.

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Nonfiction – Nominee

Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America
by Wil Haygood

Age Range:
Publication Date: Sep 15, 2015
List Price: $0.00
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Nonfiction
Page Count: 416
Imprint: Knopf

Synopsis: 

Thurgood Marshall brought down the separate-but-equal doctrine, integrated schools, and not only fought for human rights and human dignity but also made them impossible to deny in the courts and in the streets. In this stunning new biography, award- winning author Wil Haygood surpasses the emotional impact of his inspiring best seller The Butler to detail the life and career of one of the most transformative legal minds of the past one hundred years.

Using the framework of the dramatic, contentious five-day Senate hearing to confirm Marshall as the first African-American Supreme Court justice, Haygood creates a provocative and moving look at Marshall’s life as well as the politicians, lawyers, activists, and others who shaped—or desperately tried to stop—the civil rights movement of the twentieth century: President Lyndon Johnson; Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., whose scandals almost cost Marshall the Supreme Court judgeship; Harry and Harriette Moore, the Florida NAACP workers killed by the KKK; Justice J. Waties Waring, a racist lawyer from South Carolina, who, after being appointed to the federal court, became such a champion of civil rights that he was forced to flee the South; John, Robert, and Ted Kennedy; Senator Strom Thurmond, the renowned racist from South Carolina, who had a secret black mistress and child; North Carolina senator Sam Ervin, who tried to use his Constitutional expertise to block Marshall’s appointment; Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who stated that segregation was “the law of nature, the law of God”; Arkansas senator John McClellan, who, as a boy, after Teddy Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House, wrote a prize-winning school essay proclaiming that Roosevelt had destroyed the integrity of the presidency; and so many others.

This galvanizing book makes clear that it is impossible to overestimate Thurgood Marshall’s lasting influence on the racial politics of our nation.

Pulitzer Prize-winning, Harvard professor Annette Gordon-Reed reviews Wil Haygood’s new book.

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Nonfiction – Nominee

Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America
by Jill Leovy

Age Range:
Publication Date: Jan 27, 2015
List Price: $28.00
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Nonfiction
Page Count: 384
Imprint: Spiegel & Grau

Synopsis: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE,

USA TODAY,

AND CHICAGO TRIBUNE

A masterly work of literary journalism about a senseless murder, a relentless detective, and the great plague of homicide in America NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST

NAMED

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review The Washington Post The Boston Globe

The Economist The Globe and Mail

BookPage

Kirkus Reviews On a warm spring evening in South Los Angeles, a young man is shot and killed on a sidewalk minutes away from his home, one of the thousands of black Americans murdered that year. His assailant runs down the street, jumps into an SUV, and vanishes, hoping to join the scores of killers in American cities who are never arrested for their crimes. But as soon as the case is assigned to Detective John Skaggs, the odds shift. Here is the kaleidoscopic story of the quintessential, but mostly ignored, American murder—a ghettoside killing, one young black man slaying another—and a brilliant and driven cadre of detectives whose creed is to pursue justice for forgotten victims at all costs. Ghettoside is a fast-paced narrative of a devastating crime, an intimate portrait of detectives and a community bonded in tragedy, and a surprising new lens into the great subject of why murder happens in our cities—and how the epidemic of killings might yet be stopped. Praise for Ghettoside A serious and kaleidoscopic achievement… [Jill

Leovy is] a crisp writer with a crisp mind and the ability to boil entire skies of information into hard journalistic rain.—Dwight Garner,

The New York Times Masterful… gritty reporting that matches the police work behind it.—Los Angeles Times Moving and engrossing.—San Francisco Chronicle Penetrating and heartbreaking…

Ghettoside

points out how relatively little America has cared even as recently as the last decade about the value of young black men’s lives.—USA Today Functions both as a snappy police procedural and—more significantly—as a searing indictment of legal neglect… Leovy’s powerful testimony demands respectful attention.—The Boston Globe Gritty, heart-wrenching… Everyone needs to read this book.—Michael Connelly Ghettoside is remarkable: a deep anatomy of lawlessness.—Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal [Leovy writes] with grace and artistry, and controlled—but bone-deep—outrage in her new book.…

The most important book about urban violence in a generation.—The Washington Post Riveting… This timely book could not be more important.—Associated Press Leovy’s relentless reporting has produced a book packed with valuable, hard-won insights—and it serves as a crucial, 366-page reminder that black lives matter.’ —The New York Times Book Review A compelling analysis of the factors behind the epidemic of black-on-black homicide… an important book, which deserves a wide audience.—Hari Kunzru, The Guardian

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Nonfiction – Nominee

50 Billion Dollar Boss: African American Women Sharing Stories of Success in Entrepreneurship and Leadership
by Kathey Porter and Andrea Hoffman

Age Range:
Publication Date: Nov 05, 2015
List Price: $35.00
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Nonfiction
Page Count: 178
Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan

Synopsis: For too long there have been few ‘blueprints’ for young women entrepreneurs - particularly African-American women entrepreneurs--to follow. While women are starting businesses in unprecedented numbers, many African-Americans are first-generation entrepreneurs, and there have been few role models for them to emulate and learn from. The impact of African-American women in business is undeniable. According to the 2014 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report commissioned by American Express OPEN, while firms owned by women of color are smaller than non-minority women-owned businesses, their growth in numbers and economic clout is generally far outpacing that of other women-owned entities. Businesses owned by African-American women led that growth, up 296% from 1997 to 2014, generating nearly $50 billion in revenue. It is, in a sense, a second Black Renaissance, creating what we like to call the ‘50 Billion Dollar Boss.’

African-American women continue to excel and shape society across industries. This book highlights several African American women entrepreneurs and leaders, recognizes them for their business acumen,

examines how they creatively solved business challenges and identified opportunities to grow and sustain their businesses.

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Poetry – Winner

How to Be Drawn
by Terrance Hayes

Age Range:
Publication Date: Mar 31, 2015
List Price: $20.00
Format: Paperback
Classification: Fiction
Page Count: 112
Imprint: William Morrow

Synopsis: 
A dazzling new collection of poetry by Terrance Hayes, the National Book Award winning author of Lighthead

In How to Be Drawn, his daring fifth collection, Terrance Hayes explores how we see and are seen. While many of these poems bear the clearest imprint yet of Hayes’s background as a visual artist, they do not strive to describe art so much as inhabit it. Thus, one poem contemplates the
principle of blind contour drawing while others are inspired by maps, graphs, and assorted artists. The formal and emotional versatilities that distinguish Hayes’s award-winning poetry are unified by existential focus. Simultaneously complex and transparent, urgent and composed, How to Be Drawn is a mesmerizing achievement.

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Poetry – Nominee

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (Pitt Poetry Series)
by Ross Gay

Age Range:
Publication Date: Jan 07, 2015
List Price: $15.95
Format: Paperback
Classification: Poetry
Page Count: 112
Imprint: University of Pittsburgh Press

Synopsis: 
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away—loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it—that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard. That is, this is a book that studies the wisdom of the garden and orchard, those places where all—death, sorrow, loss—is converted into what might, with patience, nourish us.

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude has been "longlisted" for the National Book Award, poetry category.

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Poetry – Nominee

Reconnaissance: Poems
by Carl Phillips

Age Range:
Publication Date: Sep 01, 2015
List Price: $23.00
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Poetry
Page Count: 64
Imprint: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Synopsis: A powerful, inventive collection from one of America’s most respected poets There’s a trembling inside the both of us, there’s a trembling, inside us both. The territory of Reconnaissance is one where morals threaten to become merely ""what the light falls through,"" ""suffering [seems] in fact for nothing,"" and ""all we do is maybe all we can do."" In the face of this, Carl Phillips, reconsidering and unraveling what we think we know, maps out the contours of a world in revision, where truth lies captured at one moment and at the next goes free, transformed. These are poems of searing beauty, lit by hope and shadowed by it, from a poet whose work ""reinstates the possibility of finding meaning in a world that is forever ready to revoke the sources of meaning in our lives"" (Jonathan Farmer, Slate).

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Poetry – Nominee

Redbone
by Mahogany L. Browne

Age Range:
Publication Date: Oct 01, 2015
List Price: $18.95
Format: Perfect Paperback
Classification: Poetry
Page Count: 80
Imprint: Aquarius Press/Willow Books

Synopsis: Poetry collection by Mahogany L. Browne, Cave Canem Fellow and Director of the Nuyorican Poets Caf Poetry Program.

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Poetry – Nominee

Wild Hundreds (Pitt Poetry Series)
by Nate Marshall

Age Range:
Publication Date: Sep 09, 2015
List Price: $15.95
Format: Paperback
Classification: Poetry
Page Count: 80
Imprint: University of Pittsburgh Press

Synopsis: Winner, 2016 BCALA Literary Award (poetry category) Winner of the 2014 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize Finalist, 2015 NAACP Image Awards (poetry category) Wild Hundreds

is a long love song to Chicago. The book celebrates the people, culture, and places often left out of the civic discourse and the travel guides. Wild Hundreds is a book that displays the beauty of black survival and mourns the tragedy of black death.

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Youth/Teens – Winner

X: A Novel
by Ilyasah Al-Shabazz, Illustrated by Kekla Magoon

Age Range:
Publication Date: Jan 06, 2015
List Price: $16.99
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Fiction
Page Count: 384
Imprint:

Synopsis: 
Cowritten by Malcolm X’s daughter, this riveting and revealing novel follows the formative years of the man whose words and actions shook the world.

Malcolm Little’s parents have always told him that he can achieve anything, but from what he can tell, that’s a pack of lies—after all, his father’s been murdered, his mother’s been taken away, and his dreams of becoming a lawyer have gotten him laughed out of school. There’s no point in trying, he figures, and lured by the nightlife of Boston and New York, he escapes into a world of fancy suits, jazz, girls, and reefer. But Malcolm’s efforts to leave the past behind lead him into increasingly dangerous territory. Deep down, he knows that the freedom he’s found is only an illusion—and that he can’t run forever.

X follows Malcolm from his childhood to his imprisonment for theft at age twenty, when he found the faith that would lead him to forge a new path and command a voice that still resonates today.

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Youth/Teens – Nominee

Rhythm Ride: A Road Trip Through the Motown Sound
by Andrea Davis Pinkney

Age Range:
Publication Date: Sep 29, 2015
List Price: $22.99
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Fiction
Page Count: 176
Imprint: Roaring Brook Press

Synopsis: From award-winning author Andrea Davis Pinkney comes the story of the music that defined a generation and a movement that changed the world.Berry Gordy began Motown in 1959 with an $800 loan from his family. He converted the garage of a residential house into a studio and recruited teenagers from the neighborhood-like Smokey Robinson, Mary Wells, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and Diana Ross-to sing for his new label. Meanwhile, the country was on the brink of a cultural revolution, and one of the most powerful agents of change in the following decade would be this group of young black performers from urban Detroit. From Berry Gordy and his remarkable vision to the Civil Rights movement, from the behind-the-scenes musicians, choreographers, and song writers to the most famous recording artists of the century, Andrea Davis Pinkney takes readers on a Rhythm Ride through the story of Motown.

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Youth/Teens – Nominee

Stella by Starlight
by Sharon M. Draper

Age Range:
Publication Date: Jan 06, 2015
List Price: $17.99
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Children’s
Page Count: 336
Imprint: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

Synopsis: When the Ku Klux Klan’s unwelcome reappearance rattles Stella’s segregated southern town, bravery battles prejudice in this Depression-era tour de force from Sharon Draper, the New York Times bestselling author of Out of My Mind. Stella lives in the segregated South—in Bumblebee, North Carolina, to be exact about it. Some stores she can go into. Some stores she can’t. Some folks are right pleasant. Others are a lot less so. To Stella, it sort of evens out, and heck, the Klan hasn’t bothered them for years. But one late night, later than she should ever be up, much less wandering around outside, Stella and her little brother see something they’re never supposed to see, something that is the first flicker of change to come, unwelcome change by any stretch of the imagination. As Stella’s community—her world—is upended, she decides to fight fire with fire. And she learns that ashes don’t necessarily signify an end.

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Youth/Teens – Nominee

Untwine
by Edwidge Danticat

Age Range:
Publication Date: Sep 29, 2015
List Price: $16.99
Format: Hardcover
Classification: Fiction
Page Count: 320
Imprint: Scholastic Press

Synopsis: A haunting and mesmerizing story about sisterhood, family, love, and loss by literary luminary Edwidge Danticat. Giselle Boyer and her identical twin, Isabelle, are as close as sisters can be, even as their family seems to be unraveling. Then the Boyers have a tragic encounter that will shatter everyone’s world forever. Giselle wakes up in the hospital, injured and unable to speak or move. Trapped in the prison of her own body, Giselle must revisit her past in order to understand how the people closest to her -- her friends, her parents, and above all, Isabelle, her twin -- have shaped and defined her. Will she allow her love for her family and friends to lead her to recovery? Or will she remain lost in a spiral of longing and regret? Untwine is a spellbinding tale, lyrical and filled with love, mystery, humor, and heartbreak. Award-winning author Edwidge Danticat brings her extraordinary talent to this graceful and unflinching examination of the bonds of friendship, romance, family, the horrors of loss, and the strength we must discover in ourselves when all seems hopeless.

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Youth/Teens – Nominee

You Are Wonderfully Made: 12 Life-Changing Principles for Teen Girls to Embrace
by Gwen Richardson and Sylvia Richardson

Age Range:
Publication Date: Sep 29, 2015
List Price: $10.00
Format: Paperback
Classification: Nonfiction
Page Count: 102
Imprint: CreateSpace

Synopsis: 

Nominated for a 2016 NAACP Image Award

The teen years are challenging ones in an individual’s development, especially for girls. The teen years are pivotal as those are the years when girls can either get tripped up—by making huge mistakes—or move up—by excelling academically. Black teen girls in particular often experience even greater challenges because of the negative messages, labels, and images perpetuated by media, music videos, and popular culture.

Rather than boost the confidence of black teen girls, these negative messages can adversely affect their self-esteem and their concept of self-worth. Low self-esteem can ultimately lead them to internalize these negative labels and make a series of bad choices. By embracing these labels, negative outcomes become a self-fulfilling prophecy for far too many black teen girls.

But black teen girls have the power to reject these negative labels and embrace positive ones. You Are Wonderfully Made: 12 Life-Changing Principles for Teen Girls to Embrace empowers black teen girls with the tools they need to successfully navigate their teen years and avoid the pitfalls that can derail their futures. The book’s title is based loosely on the biblical scripture in Psalm 139:14: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.’ However, the twelve universal principles in this book are not exclusive for those of the Christian faith nor are they only for black teenagers. They can be adopted by any teen girl, regardless of her family background, economic status, ethnicity, or educational achievement level. Each chapter includes a list of exercises and action steps teen girls can utilize to assist them with adopting these principles.