254 Books Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

Click for more detail about Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America by Joy-Ann Reid Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America

by Joy-Ann Reid
Mariner Books (Feb 06, 2024)
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The host of MSNBC’s The ReidOut and New York Times bestselling author of The Man Who Sold America traces the extraordinary lives and legacy of civil rights icons Medgar and Myrlie Evers, situating Medgar Evers’s assassination as a catalyzing moment in American history.

Myrlie Louise Beasley met Medgar Evers on her first day of college. They fell in love at first sight, married just one year later, and Myrlie left school to focus on their growing family.

Medgar became the field secretary for the Mississippi branch of the NAACP, charged with beating back the most intractable and violent resistance to black voting rights in the country. Myrlie served as Medgar’s secretary and confidant, working hand in hand with him as they struggled against public accommodations and school segregation, lynching, violence, and sheer despair within their state’s “black belt.” They fought to desegregate the intractable University of Mississippi, organized picket lines and boycotts, despite repeated terroristic threats, including the 1962 firebombing of their home, where they lived with their three young children.

On June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers became the highest profile victim of Klan-related assassination of a black civil rights leader at that time; gunned down in the couple’s driveway in Jackson. In the wake of his tragic death, Myrlie carried on their civil rights legacy; writing a book about Medgar’s fight, trying to win a congressional seat, and becoming a leader of the NAACP in her own right.

In this groundbreaking and thrilling account of two heroes of the civil rights movement, Joy-Ann Reid uses Medgar and Myrlie’s relationship as a lens through which to explore the on-the-ground work that went into winning basic rights for Black Americans, and the repercussions that still resonate today.


Click for more detail about Nothing Burns as Bright as You by Ashley Woodfolk Nothing Burns as Bright as You

by Ashley Woodfolk
Versify (Feb 07, 2023)
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Five starred reviews!

Now in paperback, from New York Times bestselling author Ashley Woodfolk, Nothing Burns as Bright as You is an impassioned stand-alone tale of queer love, grief, and the complexity of female friendship.

Two girls. One wild and reckless day. Years of tumultuous history unspooling like a thin, fraying string in the hours after they set a fire.

They were best friends. Until they became more. Their affections grew. Until the blurry lines became dangerous.

Over the course of a single day, the depth of their past, the confusion of their present, and the unpredictability of their future is revealed. And the girls will learn that hearts, like flames, aren’t so easily tamed.

It starts with a fire.

How will it end?


Click for more detail about The Playbook by Kwame Alexander The Playbook

by Kwame Alexander
Clarion Books (Jan 10, 2023)
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A companion to the Newbery Medal-winning middle-grade novel The Crossover, the basis of the show streaming on Disney+!

What can we imagine for our lives? What if we were the star players, moving and grooving through the game of life? What if we had our own rules of the game to help us get what we want, what we aspire to, what will enrich our lives?

Illustrated with photographs by Thai Neave, The Playbook is intended to provide inspiration on the court of life. Each rule contains wisdom from inspiring athletes and role models such as Nelson Mandela, Serena Williams, LeBron James, Carli Lloyd, Steph Curry, and Michelle Obama. Kwame Alexander also shares his own stories of overcoming obstacles and winning games in this motivational and inspirational book for readers of any age and for anyone needing a little bit of encouragement.

You gotta know the rules to play the game. Ball is life. Take it to the hoop. Soar.


Click for more detail about The Narrows by Ann Petry The Narrows

by Ann Petry
Mariner Books Classics (Jan 10, 2023)
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A novel first published in 1953.

From author of the bestselling novel The Street, a “masterpiece of social realism” (Wall Street Journal) about a tragic love affair, and a powerful look into how class, race, and love intersected in midcentury America.

With a new introduction by Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of Libertie.

The Narrows deftly explores what it means to have an interior life under the unrelenting gaze of whiteness…it is a master class in using descriptions of place and space to explore the realities of race, gender, class and psychology.”—Kaitlyn Greenidge, from her introduction

It’s Saturday, past midnight, and thick fog rolls in from the river like smoke. Link Williams is standing on the dock when he hears quick footsteps approaching, and the gasp of a woman too terrified to scream. After chasing off her pursuer, he takes the woman to a nearby bar to calm her nerves, and as they enter, it’s as if the oxygen has left the room: they, and the other patrons, see in the dim light that he’s Black and she’s white.

Link is a brilliant Dartmouth graduate, former athlete and soldier who, because of the lack of opportunities available to him, tends bar; Camilo is a wealthy married woman dissatisfied with and bored of her life of privilege. Thrown together by a chance encounter, both Link and Camilo secretly cross the town’s racial divide, defying the social prejudices of their times.

In this stunning and heartbreaking story, Petry illuminates the harsh realities of race and class through two doomed lovers. This profound, necessary novel stakes Petry’s place as an indelible writer of American literature.

“Petry is the writer we have been waiting for; hers are the stories we need to fully illuminate the questions of our moment, while also offering a page-turning good time. Ann Petry, the woman, had it all, and so does her insightful, prescient and unputdownable prose.” — Tayari Jones, New York Times Book Review


Click for more detail about Country Place: A Novel by Ann Petry Country Place: A Novel

by Ann Petry
Mariner Books Classics (Jan 10, 2023)
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A novel first published in 1947

“Petry is the writer we have been waiting for; hers are the stories we need to fully illuminate the questions of our moment, while also offering a page-turning good time. Ann Petry, the woman, had it all, and so does her insightful, prescient and unputdownable prose.” —Tayari Jones, New York Times Book Review

From the author of the bestselling novel The Street, Ann Petry’s classic 1947 novel portrays a small, sleepy New England town grappling with the indignities and lies of American life.

Johnnie Roane has come home from four years of fighting in World War II to his loving parents and his beautiful wife, Gloria. But his first doubts of Gloria’s infidelity are created on the way home by the local taxi driver, a passionate gossip, and these doubts which mature with the hurricane that is bearing down on them darkening the seemingly perfect town of Lennox, Connecticut. But a greater violence lurks beneath the surface of the storm…Country Place is a classic, page-turning story that masterfully captures the transformation of small-town life in America from one of the twentieth century’s finest writers.

“I’ve recently had my brain re-wired by Ann Petry, and it’s that exhilarating feeling of falling in love with one of your lifetime writers for the first time.” —Brandon Tyler


Click for more detail about Miss Muriel And Other Stories by Ann Petry Miss Muriel And Other Stories

by Ann Petry
Mariner Books Classics (Jan 10, 2023)
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A collection of stories first published in 1971.

From the author of the bestselling novel The Street, comes a powerful collection of stories that captures a remarkably diverse panorama of African American experience in the 1950s and 1960s.

A small-town pharmacist’s decision to take a day off leads his wife to an agonizing encounter with the police. A retired Black college professor teaching at a predominately white high school is kidnapped and forced to witness an unthinkable horror. A young Black girl watches her aunt’s suitors threaten her family’s wellbeing, with repercussions that reverberate for decades.

Ann Petry wrote these and the other extraordinary stories in this collection over half a century ago, but the problems they interrogate still exist today, incisively uncovering the consequences of America’s pervasive racism, while telling timeless stories of everyday lives, of aspiration, frustration, and love. Miss Muriel and Other Stories is “a delicate, unflinching probe into African-American existence” (Boston Globe) from one of the most gifted writers of the twentieth century. Originally published between 1945 and 1971, Petry’s stories are “a delicate, unflinching probe into African-American existence” (Boston Globe) and an assertion of her status as one of the most gifted writers of the twentieth century.

“I’ve recently had my brain re-wired by Ann Petry, and it’s that exhilarating feeling of falling in love with one of your lifetime writers for the first time.” —Brandon Tyler

“Petry is the writer we have been waiting for; hers are the stories we need to fully illuminate the questions of our moment, while also offering a page-turning good time. Ann Petry, the woman, had it all, and so does her insightful, prescient and unputdownable prose.” —Tayari Jones, New York Times Book Review


Click for more detail about Let It Bang: A Young Black Man’s Reluctant Odyssey into Guns by RJ Young Let It Bang: A Young Black Man’s Reluctant Odyssey into Guns

by RJ Young
Mariner Books (Oct 25, 2022)
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The quest, funny and searing, of a young man black man learning to shoot—a fascinating odyssey into race, guns, and self-protection in America

The most RJ Young knew about guns was that they could get him killed. Until, recently married to a white woman and in desperate need of a way to relate to his gun-loving father-in-law, Young does the unimaginable: he accepts Charles’s gift of a Glock.

Despite, or because of, the racial rage and fear he experiences among white gun owners (“Ain’t you supposed to be shooting a basketball?”), Young determines to get good, really good, with a gun. Let It Bang is the compelling story of the author’s unexpected obsession—he eventually becomes an NRA-certified pistol instructor—and of his deep dive into the heart of America’s gun culture: what he sees as the domino effect of white fear, white violence, black fear, rinse, repeat. Young’s original reporting on shadow industries like US Law Shield, which insures and defends people who report having shot someone in self-defense, and on the newly formed National African American Gun Association, gives powerful insight into the dynamic. Through indelible profiles, Young brings us up to the current rocketing rise in gun ownership among black Americans, most notably women.

Let It Bang is an utterly original look at American gun culture from the inside, and from the other side—and, most movingly, the story of a young black man’s hard-won nonviolent path to self-protection.


Click for more detail about Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America by Cody Keenan Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America

by Cody Keenan
Mariner Books (Oct 04, 2022)
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A New York Times Bestseller

“At a time when the meaning of America is up for grabs, Cody Keenan’s new book chronicles ten days that tested us and ultimately showed us at our best. It’s a captivating story about what’s worth fighting for, an antidote to cynicism that will make you believe again.”—President Barack Obama, via Twitter

From Barack Obama’s chief speechwriter Cody Keenan, a spellbinding account of the ten most dramatic days of the presidency, when a hate-fueled massacre and looming Supreme Court decisions put the character of our country on the line, and a president’s words could bring the nation together or tear it apart.

A white supremacist shooting and an astonishing act of forgiveness. A national reckoning with race and the Confederate flag. The fate of marriage equality and the Affordable Care Act. GRACE is the propulsive story of ten days in June 2015, when Obama and his chief speechwriter Cody Keenan composed a series of high-stakes speeches to meet a succession of stunning developments.

Through behind-the-scenes moments—from Obama’s suggestion that Keenan pour a drink, listen to some Miles Davis, and “find the silences,” to the president’s late-night writing sessions in the First Family’s residence—Keenan takes us inside the craft of speechwriting at the highest level for the most demanding of bosses, the relentlessly poetic and perfectionist Barack Obama. GRACE also delivers a fascinating portrait of White House insiders like Ben Rhodes, Valerie Jarrett, Jen Psaki, and the speechwriting team responsible for pulling it all off during a furious, historic stretch of the Obama presidency—including a gifted fact-checker who took Keenan’s rhetoric to task before taking his hand in marriage. GRACE is the most intimate writing that exists on the rhetorical tightrope our first Black president had to walk, culminating with an unforgettable high point: Obama stunning everybody by taking a deep breath and leading the country in a chorus of “Amazing Grace.”


Click for more detail about A Library by Nikki Giovanni A Library

by Nikki Giovanni
Versify (Sep 27, 2022)
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In this lyrical picture book, world-renowned poet, New York Times bestselling author, and Coretta Scott King Honor winner Nikki Giovanni and fine artist Erin Robinson craft an ode to the magic of a library as a place not only for knowledge but also for imagination, exploration, and escape.

In what other place can a child “sail their dreams” and “surf the rainbow” without ever leaving the room? This ode to libraries is a celebration for everyone who loves stories, from seasoned readers to those just learning to love words, and it will have kids and parents alike imagining where their library can take them.

This inspiring read-aloud includes stunning illustrations and a note from Nikki Giovanni about the importance of libraries in her own childhood.


Click for more detail about Booked Graphic Novel by Kwame Alexander Booked Graphic Novel

by Kwame Alexander
Clarion Books (Aug 02, 2022)
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In this electrifying follow-up to Kwame Alexander’s Newbery winner The Crossover, soccer, family, love, and friendship take center stage. A New York Times bestseller and National Book Award Longlist nominee, now in a graphic novel edition featuring art from Dawud Anyabwile.

Twelve-year-old Nick learns the power of words as he wrestles with problems at home, stands up to a bully, and tries to impress the girl of his dreams. Helping him along are his best friend and sometimes teammate Coby, and The Mac, a rapping librarian who gives Nick inspiring books to read.

This electric and heartfelt novel-in-verse bends and breaks as it captures all the thrills and setbacks, action and emotion of a World Cup match.

"A novel about a soccer-obsessed tween boy written entirely in verse? In a word, yes. Kwame Alexander has the magic to pull off this unlikely feat, both as a poet and as a storyteller. " —The Chicago Tribune

Can’t nobody stop you

Can’t nobody cop you…


Click for more detail about I Rise by Marie Arnold I Rise

by Marie Arnold
Versify (Aug 02, 2022)
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A heartbreaking and powerful novel about racism and social justice as fourteen-year-old Ayo has to decide whether to take on her mother’s activist role when her mom is shot by police. As she tries to find answers, Ayo looks to the wisdom of her ancestors and her Harlem community for guidance.

Ayo’s mother founded the biggest civil rights movement to hit New York City in decades. It’s called ‘See Us’ and it tackles police brutality and racial profiling in Harlem. Ayo has spent her entire life being an activist and now, she wants out. She wants to get her first real kiss, have a boyfriend, and just be a normal teen.

When her mom is put into a coma after a riot breaks out between protesters and police, protestors want Ayo to become the face of See Us and fight for justice for her mother who can no longer fight for herself. While she deals with her grief and anger, Ayo must also discover if she has the strength to take over where her mother left off.

This impactful and unforgettable novel takes on the important issues of inequality, systemic racism, police violence, and social justice.


Click for more detail about Harry Sylvester Bird by Chinelo Okparanta Harry Sylvester Bird

by Chinelo Okparanta
Mariner Books (Jul 12, 2022)
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“Disarmingly funny.” —The New York Times

From the award-winning author of Under the Udala Trees and Happiness, Like Water comes a brilliant, provocative, up-to-the-minute satirical novel about a young white man’s education and miseducation in contemporary America.

Harry Sylvester Bird grows up in Edward, Pennsylvania, with his parents, Wayne and Chevy, whom he greatly dislikes. They’re racist, xenophobic, financially incompetent, and they have quite a few secrets of their own. To Harry, they represent everything wrong with this country. And his small town isn’t any better. He witnesses racial profiling, graffitied swastikas, and White Power signs on his walk home from school. He can’t wait until he’s old enough to leave. When he finally is, he moves straight to New York City, where he feels he can finally live out his true inner self.

In the city, he meets and falls in love with Maryam, a young Nigerian woman. But when Maryam begins to pull away, Harry is forced to confront his identity as he never has before—if he can.

Brilliant, funny, original, and unflinching, Harry Sylvester Bird is a satire that speaks to all the most pressing tensions and anxieties of our time—and of the history that has shaped us and might continue to do so.


Click for more detail about How to Survive America by D.L. Hughley How to Survive America

by D.L. Hughley
Mariner Books (Jun 07, 2022)
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“Dispels the myth that people of color are somehow predisposed to poor health, blaming systemic injustice in the health care system.” —New York Times Book Review

Legendary comedian D.L. Hughley uses his “hilarious yet soul-shaking” (Black Enterprise) humor to confront racism’s unjust impact on the health and wellbeing of Blacks and minorities

White people love survival guides. But have you noticed they’re always about ridiculous activities in locations far from home, with chapters like “How to Survive an Avalanche" or "How to Live on Bugs in the Jungle.” Huh?!

You know who really needs a survival guide? Black and brown Americans. For surviving their own damn country! Minority populations wake up every day in a battle for their health and safety. Thankfully, legendary activist-comedian D.L. Hughley offers How to Survive America, a fearless satire that exposes racism’s unjust toll on our bodies and minds.

Even before COVID-19 disproportionately impacted minority communities, life expectancy for Blacks was a full three years less than for white Americans. The very air we breathe is more polluted, our water is more contaminated, our local food options are toxic, and our jobs are underpaid. Despite the obvious need, the quality of our health care is tragically inadequate. Our communities are statistically less safe than the average, and yet we’re terrorized by the law-enforcement and criminal-justice systems that are supposed to protect us, sending Blacks to prison at five times the rate of whites. Not least, our means of addressing these injustices—voting—is perennially under assault.

It’s enough to drive you crazy. Well, guess what? According to Cigna, Blacks are 20 percent more likely to report “psychological distress” yet “50 percent less likely to receive counseling or mental health treatment.” It’s almost like the entire country has been structured with no regard for our welfare. Hmmm.

Whether you’re Black, white, brown, or Asian, don’t leave home without arming yourself with How to Survive America!


Click for more detail about Kicks by Van G. Garrett Kicks

by Van G. Garrett
Versify (Apr 19, 2022)
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“A brilliantly written and illustrated ode to sneakers and sneakerheads, young and old. A gift to us all.” —Angie Thomas, #1 New York Times bestselling author

A fun, lyrical debut picture book, Kicks is an essential read for sneaker fans of all ages, from award-winning poet Van G. Garrett and New York Times bestselling illustrator Reggie Brown.

This is a love letter to sneakers. But not just any sneakers. Only the flyest, floatiest, you-est kicks you can get—the ones that let you soar!

This colorful, rhythmic adventure has something to offer anyone who prizes a great pair of shoes and any reader who loves to play with words.


Click for more detail about White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America’s Darkest Secret by A. J. Baime White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America’s Darkest Secret

by A. J. Baime
Mariner Books (Feb 08, 2022)
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A riveting biography of Walter F. White, a little-known Black civil rights leader who passed for white in order to investigate racist murders, help put the NAACP on the map, and change the racial identity of America forever Walter F. White led two lives: one as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and the NAACP in the early twentieth century; the other as a white newspaperman who covered lynching crimes in the Deep South at the blazing height of racial violence.

Born mixed race and with veryfairskin and straight hair, White was able to “pass” for white. He leveraged this ambiguity as a reporter, bringing to light the darkest crimes in America and helping to plant the seeds of the civil rights movement. White’s risky career led him to lead a double life. He was simultaneously a second-class citizen subject to Jim Crow laws at home and a widely respected professional with full access to the white world at work. His life was fraught with internal and external conflict—much like the story of race in America. Starting out as an obscure activist, White ultimately became Black America’s most prominent leader.

A character study of White’s life and career with all these complexities has never been rendered, until now. By the award-winning, best-selling author of The Accidental President, Dewey Defeats Truman, and The Arsenal of Democracy, White Lies uncovers the life of a civil rights leader unlike any other.


Click for more detail about Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour Black Buck

by Mateo Askaripour
Mariner Books (Jan 22, 2022)
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“Askaripour closes the deal on the first page of this mesmerizing novel, executing a high wire act full of verve and dark, comic energy.”
Colson Whitehead, author of The Nickel Boys

“A hilarious, gleaming satire as radiant as its author. Askaripour has announced himself as a major talent of the school of Ralph Ellison, Paul Beatty, Fran Ross, and Ishmael Reed. Full of quick pacing, frenetic energy, absurd—yet spot on—twists and turns, and some of the funniest similes I’ve ever read, this novel is both balm and bomb.”
Nafissa Thompson-Spires, author of Heads of the Colored People

For fans of Sorry to Bother You and The Wolf of Wall Street—a crackling, satirical debut novel about a young man given a shot at stardom as the lone Black salesman at a mysterious, cult-like, and wildly successful startup where nothing is as it seems.

There’s nothing like a Black salesman on a mission.

An unambitious twenty-two-year-old, Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with his mother, who wants nothing more than to see him live up to his potential as the valedictorian of Bronx Science. But Darren is content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Midtown office building, hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya, and eating his mother’s home-cooked meals. All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, NYC’s hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the thirty-sixth floor.

After enduring a “hell week” of training, Darren, the only Black person in the company, reimagines himself as “Buck,” a ruthless salesman unrecognizable to his friends and family. But when things turn tragic at home and Buck feels he’s hit rock bottom, he begins to hatch a plan to help young people of color infiltrate America’s sales force, setting off a chain of events that forever changes the game.

Black Buck is a hilarious, razor-sharp skewering of America’s workforce; it is a propulsive, crackling debut that explores ambition and race, and makes way for a necessary new vision of the American dream.


Click for more detail about The Undertakers by Nicole Glover The Undertakers

by Nicole Glover
John Joseph Adams Books (Nov 09, 2021)
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Nicole Glover delivers the second book in her exciting Murder & Magic series of historical fantasy novels featuring Hetty Rhodes and her husband Benjy, magic practitioners and detectives living in post-Civil War Philadelphia.


Click for more detail about The Last Chance for Logan County by Lamar Giles The Last Chance for Logan County

by Lamar Giles
Versify (Oct 19, 2021)
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In this third Legendary Alston Boys adventure from Edgar-nominated author Lamar Giles, Otto and Sheed have to team up with the Ellison twins to take down a corporation obsessed with the weirdness of Logan County and who’s turning its residents into Money-Zombies.


Click for more detail about The Best American Short Stories 2021 by Jesmyn Ward The Best American Short Stories 2021

by Jesmyn Ward
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Oct 12, 2021)
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A collection of the year’s best stories selected by celebrated two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward

"One of the most searing and singularly gifted writers working today" (Entertainment Weekly), Jesmyn Ward, selects twenty stories out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.


Click for more detail about The Crossover Series Boxed Set by Kwame Alexander The Crossover Series Boxed Set

by Kwame Alexander
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Sep 28, 2021)
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For the first time, the Crossover series, three explosive novels in verse about sports and family, is available in one paperback boxed set. From Newbery Medal winner Kwame Alexander.

The Crossover series is now available as a paperback boxed set!

Follow Chuck Bell during a pivotal childhood summer when he discovers basketball and learns about his family’s past; fly down the court with twins Josh and Jordan Bell as they discover the crossovers between basketball, love, and life; race across the field with Nick Hall as he learns the power of words, wrestles with problems at home, and navigates coming-of-age with all the action and emotion of a World Cup.

Celebrate this masterful, rhythmic, and heartfelt contribution to children’s literature and rediscover Kwame’s electric poetry with this paperback boxed set which includes Rebound, The Crossover, and Booked.


Click for more detail about Lullaby for a Black Mother by Langston Hughes Lullaby for a Black Mother

by Langston Hughes
Clarion Books (Sep 28, 2021)
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This beloved poem by Langston Hughes, illustrated by the award-winning Sean Qualls, is an irresistible celebration of the love between mother and baby, now available in board book format.


Click for more detail about Three Rooms by Jo Hamya Three Rooms

by Jo Hamya
Mariner Books (Aug 31, 2021)
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A piercing howl of a novel and "a tart pleasure…with echoes of Zadie Smith and Sally Rooney," about one young woman’s endless quest for an apartment of her own and the aspirations and challenges faced by the Millennial generation as it finds its footing in the world, from a shockingly talented debut author (Kirkus, starred review).

“A woman must have money and a room of one’s own.” So said Virginia Woolf in her classic A Room of One’s Own, but in this scrupulously observed, gorgeously wrought debut novel, Jo Hamya pushes that adage powerfully into the twenty-first century, to a generation of people living in rented rooms. What a woman needs now is an apartment of her own, the ultimate mark of financial stability, unattainable for many.

Set in one year, Three Rooms follows a young woman as she moves from a rented room at Oxford, where she’s working as a research assistant; to a stranger’s sofa, all she can afford as a copyediting temp at a society magazine; to her childhood home, where she’s been forced to return, jobless, even a room of her own out of reach. As politics shift to nationalism, the streets fill with protestors, and news drip-feeds into her phone, she struggles to live a meaningful life on her own terms, unsure if she’ll ever be able to afford to do so.


Click for more detail about Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter by Veronica Chambers Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter

by Veronica Chambers
Versify (Aug 17, 2021)
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Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter is a broad and powerful exploration of the history of Black Lives Matter told through photographs, quotes, and informative text by New York Times best-selling authors Veronica Chambers and Jennifer Harlan.

In 2020, the world watched history being made in the streets of America. The rallying cry of Black Lives Matter captured global attention and spurred thousands of people of all ages, races, genders, and backgrounds to stand up for major progressive social reform. The widespread protests, rooted in the call-and-response tradition of the Black community, were fueled by a growing understanding for many that systemic racism undermines the very nature of democracy. But where did this movement begin? And why, after years of work by everyday people, did the world finally begin to take notice?

Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter covers the rise of Black Lives Matter and how it has been shaped by U.S. history. From the founders of the movement—Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi—to the watershed moments that challenged people to take action, this book tells the story of how a hashtag became a movement. It follows the activists and organizers on their journeys, examines some of the ways that protest has been fundamental to American history, and shows how marches, rallies, and demonstrations can be vital tools for making meaningful change.

In this essential history, New York Times editors Veronica Chambers and Jennifer Harlan explore Black Lives Matter through striking photographs, in-depth reporting, stunning visual timelines and graphics, and compelling quotes. Call and Response is perfect for young readers who need an introduction to this impactful movement—and for any reader looking for concrete information on this timely topic.


Click for more detail about Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir by Brian Broome Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir

by Brian Broome
Mariner Books (May 18, 2021)
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Punch Me Up to the Gods introduces a powerful new talent in Brian Broome, whose early years growing up in Ohio as a dark-skinned Black boy harboring crushes on other boys propel forward this gorgeous, aching, and unforgettable debut. Brian’s recounting of his experiences—in all their cringe-worthy, hilarious, and heartbreaking glory—reveal a perpetual outsider awkwardly squirming to find his way in. Indiscriminate sex and escalating drug use help to soothe his hurt, young psyche, usually to uproarious and devastating effect. A no-nonsense mother and broken father play crucial roles in our misfit’s origin story. But it is Brian’s voice in the retelling that shows the true depth of vulnerability for young Black boys that is often quietly near to bursting at the seams.

Cleverly framed around Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool,” the iconic and loving ode to Black boyhood, Punch Me Up to the Gods is at once playful, poignant, and wholly original. Broome’s writing brims with swagger and sensitivity, bringing an exquisite and fresh voice to ongoing cultural conversations about Blackness in America.

“Black, dark, queer, and poor. These are the vectors of Punch Me Up to the Gods. Brian Broome, literary son of the Black modernist giant Gwendolyn Brooks, writes from the center as one declared wrong among the wronged, one cast out of those cast aside, and one who desperately seeks tenderness. And on the hard road of growing up he finds wisdom, poetry, and love. This spectacular, unforgettable, and wholly innovative book is an ethical reckoning that tears us away from cruelty and invites us to witness real beauty.”
Imani Perry, author of Looking for Lorraine and Breathe

Praise For Punch Me Up To The Gods: A Memoir
One of Lithub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2021
One of BuzzFeed’s 75 Books to Add to Your 2021 TBR List
One of The Temper’s 12 Recovery Memoirs You Need to Read
One of BookRiot’s 6 Stunning LBGTQ+ Books from Debut Authors to Read in 2021
One of Bustle’s 51 Best Debuts for Spring
One of Beyond the Bookends’ 75 Books for Spring
One of Shondaland’s 5 Best Books for May
One of Chicago Review of Books’ 12 Must Read Books for May
One of Entertainment Weekly’s 20 Best New Books to Read in May
One of Saturday Evening Post’s 10 Books to Enjoy This Spring


Click for more detail about Dewey Defeats Truman  by A. J. Baime Dewey Defeats Truman

by A. J. Baime
Mariner Books (Apr 27, 2021)
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From the New York Times best-selling author of The Accidental President comes the thrilling storyof the 1948 presidential election, one of the greatest election stories of all time, as Truman mounted a history-making comeback and staked a claim for a new course for America. On the eve of the 1948 election, America was a fractured country. Racism was rampant, foreign relations were fraught, and political parties were more divided than ever. Americans were certain that President Harry S. Truman’s political career was over. “The ballots haven’t been counted,” noted political columnist Fred Othman, “but there seems to be no further need for holding up an affectionate farewell to Harry Truman.” Truman’s own staff did not believe he could win. Nor did his wife, Bess. The only man in the world confident that Truman would win was Mr. Truman himself. And win he did. The year 1948 was a fight for the soul of a nation. In Dewey Defeats Truman, A. J. Baime sheds light on one of the most action-packed six months in American history, as Truman both triumphs and oversees watershed events—the passing of the Marshall plan, the acknowledgement of Israel as a new state, the careful attention to the origins of the Cold War, and the first desegregation of the military. Not only did Truman win the election, he succeeded in guiding his country forward at a critical time with high stakes and haunting parallels to the modern day.


Click for more detail about Your Mama by NoNieqa Ramos Your Mama

by NoNieqa Ramos
Versify (Apr 06, 2021)
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A sweet twist on the age-old “yo mama” joke, celebrating fierce moms everywhere with playful lyricism and gorgeous illustrations. Perfect for Mother’s Day.


Click for more detail about The Conductors by Nicole Glover The Conductors

by Nicole Glover
John Joseph Adams Books (Mar 02, 2021)
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From a bold new voice comes a vibrant historical fantasy of magic and murder set in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Hetty Rhodes and her husband, Benjy, were Conductors on the Underground Railroad, ferrying dozens of slaves to freedom with daring, cunning, and magic that draws its power from the stars. With the war over, those skills find new purpose as they solve mysteries and murders in their community that white authorities would otherwise ignore.

In the heart of Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward, everyone knows that when there’s a strange death or magical curses causing trouble, Hetty and Benjy are the only ones that can solve the case. But when an old friend is murdered their investigation stirs up a wasp nest of intrigue, lies, and long-buried secrets—and a mystery unlike anything they’ve handled before. A clever, cold-blooded killer is on the prowl, and as death draws near, testing their magic and placing their lives at risk, Hetty and Benjy will discover how little they really know about their neighbors … and themselves.

In the proud tradition of Victor LaValle and Zen Cho, Nicole Glover speaks truth to history in the language of the fantastic.


Click for more detail about The Year I Flew Away by Marie Arnold The Year I Flew Away

by Marie Arnold
Versify (Feb 02, 2021)
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In this magical middle-grade novel, ten-year-old Gabrielle finds out that America isn’t the perfect place she imagined when she moves from Haiti to Brooklyn. With the help of a clever witch, Gabrielle becomes the perfect American — but will she lose herself in the process? Perfect for fans of HURRICANE CHILD and FRONT DESK.

It’s 1985 and ten-year-old Gabrielle is excited to be moving from Haiti to America. Unfortunately, her parents won’t be able to join her yet and she’ll be living in a place called Brooklyn, New York, with relatives she has never met. She promises her parents that she will behave, but life proves to be difficult in the United States, from learning the language to always feeling like she doesn’t fit in to being bullied. So when a witch offers her a chance to speak English perfectly and be "American," she makes the deal. But soon she realizes how much she has given up by trying to fit in and, along with her two new friends (one of them a talking rat), takes on the witch in an epic battle to try to reverse the spell.

Gabrielle is a funny and engaging heroine you won’t soon forget in this sweet and lyrical novel that’s perfect for fans of Hurricane Child and Front Desk.


Click for more detail about Light for the World to See: A Thousand Words on Race and Hope by Kwame Alexander Light for the World to See: A Thousand Words on Race and Hope

by Kwame Alexander
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Nov 17, 2020)
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From NPR correspondent and New York Times bestselling author, Kwame Alexander, comes a powerful and provocative collection of poems that cut to the heart of the entrenched racism and oppression in America and eloquently explores ongoing events. A book in the tradition of James Baldwin’s "A Report from Occupied Territory," Light for the World to See is a rap session on race. A lyrical response to the struggles of Black lives in our world … to America’s crisis of conscience… to the centuries of loss, endless resilience, and unstoppable hope. Includes an introduction by the author and a bold, graphically designed interior.


Click for more detail about The Last Mirror on the Left by Lamar Giles The Last Mirror on the Left

by Lamar Giles
Versify (Oct 20, 2020)
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b>In this new Legendary Alston Boys adventure from Edgar-nominated author Lamar Giles, Otto and Sheed must embark on their most dangerous journey yet, bringing a fugitive to justice in a world that mirrors their own but has its own rules to play by.

Unlike the majority of Logan County’s residents, Missus Nedraw of the Rorrim Mirror Emporium remembers the time freeze from The Last Last-Day-of-Summer, and how Otto and Sheed took her mirrors without permission in order to fix their mess. Usually that’s an unforgivable offense, punishable by a million-year sentence. However, she’s willing to overlook the cousins’
misdeeds if they help her with a problem of her own. One of her worst prisoners has escaped, and only the Legendary Alston Boys of Logan County can help bring the fugitive to justice.

This funny and off-the-wall adventure is perfect for readers of Jonathan Auxier and Lemony Snicket.


Click for more detail about Finish the Fight!: The Brave and Revolutionary Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote by Veronica Chambers Finish the Fight!: The Brave and Revolutionary Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote

by Veronica Chambers
Versify (Aug 18, 2020)
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Who was at the forefront of women’s right to vote? We know a few famous names, like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, but what about so many others from diverse backgrounds—black, Asian, Latinx, Native American, and more—who helped lead the fight for suffrage? On the hundredth anniversary of the historic win for women’s rights, it’s time to celebrate the names and stories of the women whose stories have yet to be told.

Gorgeous portraits accompany biographies of such fierce but forgotten women as Yankton Dakota Sioux writer and advocate Zitk�la-S�, Mary Eliza Church Terrell, who cofounded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), and Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, who, at just sixteen years old, helped lead the biggest parade in history to promote the cause of suffrage.

FINISH THE FIGHT will fit alongside important collections that tell the full story of America’s fiercest women. Perfect for fans of GOOD NIGHT STORIES FOR REBEL GIRLS and BAD GIRLS THROUGHOUT HISTORY.


Click for more detail about The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story by Joy-Ann Reid The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story

by Joy-Ann Reid
Mariner Books (Aug 11, 2020)
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THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

MSNBC’S Joy-Ann Reid calculates the true price of the Trump presidency, now updated with a new afterword on the events of 2020.

“The host of [The ReidOut] on MSNBC argues that President Trump’s administration is characterized by grift and venality that demeans the office and diminishes America.” —New York Times Book Review

Is Donald Trump running the “longest con” in U.S. history? How did we get here? What will be left of America when he leaves office?

Candidate Trump sold Americans a vision that was seemingly at odds with their country’s founding principles. Now in office, he’s put up a “for sale” sign—on the prestige of the presidency, on America’s global stature, and on our national identity. At what cost have these deals come? Joy-Ann Reid’s essential new book, The Man Who Sold America, delivers an urgent accounting of our national crisis from one of our foremost political commentators.

Three years ago, Donald Trump pitched millions of voters on the idea that their country was broken, and that the rest of the world was playing us “for suckers.” All we needed to fix this was Donald Trump, who rebranded prejudice as patriotism, presented diversity as our weakness, and promised that money really could make the world go ’round.

Trump made the sale to enough Americans in three key swing states to win the Electoral College. As president, Trump’s raft of self-dealing, scandal, and corruption has overwhelmed the national conversation. And with prosecutors bearing down on Trump and his family business, the web of criminality is circling closer to the Oval Office. All this while Trump seemingly makes his administration a pawn for the ultimate villain: an autocratic former KGB officer in Russia who found in the untutored and eager forty-fifth president the perfect “apprentice.”

What is the hidden impact of Trump, beyond the headlines? Through interviews with American and international thought leaders and in-depth analysis, Reid situates the Trump era within the context of modern history, examining the profound social changes that led us to this point.

Providing new context and depth to our understanding, The Man Who Sold America reveals the causes and consequences of the Trump presidency and contends with the future that awaits us.


Click for more detail about Swashby and the Sea by Beth Ferry Swashby and the Sea

by Beth Ferry
Houghton Mifflin Books for Children (May 05, 2020)
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From New York Times bestselling author Beth Ferry and Caldecott Honor–winner Juana Martinez-Neal comes a sweet-and-salty friendship story perfect for pirate-lovers and fans of The Night Gardener.

Captain Swashby loves the sea, his oldest friend. And he loves his life by the sea just as it is: salty and sandy and serene.
One day, much to Swashby’s chagrin, a young girl and her granny commandeer the empty house next door. All Swashby wants is for his new neighbors to GO AWAY and take their ruckus with them.

When Swashby begins to leave notes in the sand for his noisy neighbors, however, the beach interferes with the messages that are getting across. Could it be that the captain’s oldest friend, the sea, knows what Swashby needs even better than he knows himself


Click for more detail about The Last Negroes at Harvard: The Class of 1963 and the 18 Young Men Who Changed Harvard Forever by Kent Garrett and Jeanne Ellsworth The Last Negroes at Harvard: The Class of 1963 and the 18 Young Men Who Changed Harvard Forever

by Kent Garrett and Jeanne Ellsworth
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Feb 11, 2020)
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The untold story of the Harvard class of ’63, whose Black students fought to create their own identities on the cusp between integration and affirmative action.

In the fall of 1959, Harvard recruited an unprecedented eighteen "Negro" boys as an early form of affirmative action. Four years later they would graduate as African Americans. Some fifty years later, one of these trailblazing Harvard grads, Kent Garrett, would begin to reconnect with his classmates and explore their vastly different backgrounds, lives, and what their time at Harvard meant.

Garrett and his partner Jeanne Ellsworth recount how these eighteen youths broke new ground, with ramifications that extended far past the iconic Yard. By the time they were seniors, they would have demonstrated against national injustice and grappled with the racism of academia, had dinner with Malcolm X and fought alongside their African national classmates for the right to form a Black students’ organization.

Part memoir, part group portrait, and part narrative history of the intersection between the civil rights movement and higher education, this is the remarkable story of brilliant, singular boys whose identities were changed at and by Harvard, and who, in turn, changed Harvard.


Click for more detail about The Street by Ann Petry The Street

by Ann Petry
Mariner Books (Jan 07, 2020)
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WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION FROM NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR TAYARI JONES

"How can a novel’s social criticism be so unflinching and clear, yet its plot moves like a house on fire? I am tempted to describe Petry as a magician for the many ways that The Street amazes, but this description cheapens her talent … Petry is a gifted artist." — Tayari Jones, from the Introduction

The Street follows the spirited Lutie Johnson, a newly single mother whose efforts to claim a share of the American Dream for herself and her young son meet frustration at every turn in 1940s Harlem. Opening a fresh perspective on the realities and challenges of black, female, working-class life, The Street became the first novel by an African American woman to sell more than a million copies.


Click for more detail about It All Comes Down to This by Karen English It All Comes Down to This

by Karen English
Clarion Books (Dec 17, 2019)
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A powerful middle grade coming-of-age novel set in a slowly integrating upper middle class Los Angeles neighborhood in the summer of 1965, from a Coretta Scott King Honor Award-winning author. Perfect for fans of Rita Williams-Garcia and Sharon M. Draper.

It’s 1965, Los Angeles. Sophie is the new black kid in a nearly all-white neighborhood; her beloved sister, Lily, is going away to college soon; and her parents’ marriage is rocky. Plus, there’s her family’s new, disapproving housekeeper to deal with. Then riots erupt in nearby Watts and a friend is unfairly arrested, and Sophie learns that life—and her own place in it—is even more complicated than she’d once thought.

"Honest, witty … relatable. Unfairness and race-consciousness run through the story—so do surprises. Bigotry wears many guises. Kindness does too." —Wall Street Journal

"Thoughtful and well-wrought … . Compassionate, pointed, and empowering." —Booklist, starred review

"An impressive coming-of-age story." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Reveals how an impressionable and intelligent child learns from the injustices that touch her, her family, and her friends." —Publishers Weekly, starred review


Click for more detail about The Color Purple by Alice Walker The Color Purple

by Alice Walker
Mariner Books (Dec 10, 2019)
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A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery and Sofia and their experience. The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, Alice Walker’s epic carries readers on a spirit-affirming journey towards redemption and love.

  • Now a Broadway musical
  • Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
  • Winner of the National Book Award

Published to unprecedented acclaim, The Color Purple established Alice Walker as a major voice in modern fiction. This is the story of two sisters—one a missionary in Africa and the other a child wife living in the South—who sustain their loyalty to and trust in each other across time, distance, and silence. Beautifully imagined and deeply compassionate, this classic novel of American literature is rich with passion, pain, inspiration, and an indomitable love of life.

“Intense emotional impact… Indelibly affecting… Alice Walker is a lavishly gifted writer.” — New York Times Book Review

“Places Walker in the company of Faulkner.” — The Nation

“Superb… A work to stand beside literature of any time and place.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“A novel of permanent importance.” — Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek

Book Review

Click for more detail about El Crossover (Spanish Edition) by Kwame Alexander El Crossover (Spanish Edition)

by Kwame Alexander
Clarion Books (Sep 24, 2019)
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Ganador de la Medalla Newbery · Ganador del Premio Coretta Scott King · New York Times Bestseller · 2015 YALSA 2015 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults· 2015 YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers · Publishers Weekly Best Book · School Library Journal Best Book· Kirkus Reviews Best Book

“Una hermosa novela medida entre la vida y sus líneas.”—New York Times Book Review

Un rayo de luz en mis kicks …

La cancha está QUEMANDO.

Mi sudor está LLOVIZNANDO.

Ya ’stuvo con eso de estar temblando.

Es que esta noche voy entregando.

El fenómeno del básquetbol, Josh Bell, y su hermano gemelo, Jordan, son los reyes de la cancha, con esos crossovers inesperados que hacen llorar a los jugadores más duros. Pero cuando Jordan conoce a la nueva chica del colegio, lazos entre los gemelos se empiezan a desanudar. El baloncesto y la hermandad se entrelazan para mostrarles a Josh y Jordan que la vida no viene con un manual de jugadas y que, a veces, el asunto no es ganar.

Now in Spanish! Winner of the Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Award, and a New York Times bestseller. Basketball and heartache share the court in this slam-dunk novel in verse.

A bolt of lightning on my kicks …

The court is SIZZLING.

My sweat is DRIZZLING.

Stop all that quivering.

Cuz tonight I’m delivering.

Basketball phenom Josh Bell and his twin brother, Jordan, are kings on the court, with crossovers that make even the toughest ballers cry. But when Jordan meets the new girl in school, the twins’ bond unravels. Basketball and brotherhood intertwine to show Josh and Jordan that life doesn’t come with a playbook and, sometimes, it’s not about winning.


Click for more detail about The Crossover Graphic Novel Signed Edition by Kwame Alexander The Crossover Graphic Novel Signed Edition

by Kwame Alexander
Clarion Books (Sep 24, 2019)
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The Crossover is now a graphic novel, and this collector’s item is autographed by both the author and illustrator!

Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers

Kwame Alexander’s New York Times bestseller and Newbery Medal-winning The Crossover is vividly brought to life as a graphic novel with stunning illustrations by star talent Dawud Anyabwile.

“A beautifully measured novel of life and line.” —New York Times Book Review

“With a bolt of lightning on my kicks … The court is SIZZLING. My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering. ’Cuz tonight I’m delivering,” raps twelve-year-old Josh Bell. Thanks to their dad, he and his twin brother, Jordan, are kings on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood—he’s got mad beats, too, which help him find his rhythm when it’s all on the line.

See the Bell family in a whole new light through Dawud Anyabwile’s dynamic illustrations as the brothers’ winning season unfolds, and the world as they know it begins to change.


Click for more detail about 
Acoustic Rooster’s Barnyard Boogie Starring Indigo Blume by Kwame Alexander Acoustic Rooster’s Barnyard Boogie Starring Indigo Blume

by Kwame Alexander
Clarion Books (Sep 24, 2019)
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On the eve of singing at a community festival, a bout of stage fright threatens a little girl’s confidence. As Indigo Blume drifts off to sleep, she isn’t sure she’s brave enough to take the stage. But once she falls asleep, Indigo finds herself in a dream world with the characters of her favorite book, Acoustic Rooster and his Barnyard Band. The band’s members, including Miss Dairy Parton and Chickee Minaj, are rehearsing, and they invite Indigo to join the group. But when a storm destroys their barn, the animals are left with almost nothing. Can Indigo rally the band to work together and save their home? And will she find her voice in time for the festival?


Click for more detail about Nya’s Long Walk: A Step at a Time by Linda Sue Park Nya’s Long Walk: A Step at a Time

by Linda Sue Park
Clarion Books (Sep 03, 2019)
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In this picture book companion to the bestseller A Long Walk to Water, a young South Sudanese girl goes on a journey that requires determination, persistence, and compassion.

Young Nya takes little sister Akeer along on the two-hour walk to fetch water for the family. But Akeer becomes too ill to walk, and Nya faces the impossible: her sister and the full water vessel together are too heavy to carry. As she struggles, she discovers that if she manages to take one step, then another, she can reach home and Mama’s care. Bold, impressionistic paintings by Caldecott and Coretta Scott King Homor winner Brian Pinkney evoke the dry, barren landscape and the tenderness between the two sisters.An afterword discusses the process of providing clean water in South Sudan, reducing waterborne illness.


Click for more detail about Here and Now by Julia Denos Here and Now

by Julia Denos
Houghton Mifflin Books for Children (Sep 03, 2019)
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Illustrations and easy-to-read text celebrate mindfulness and the connectedness of everything on Earth.


Click for more detail about Beyoncé Shine Your Light by Sarah Warren Beyoncé Shine Your Light

by Sarah Warren
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Jun 04, 2019)
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Powerful text and beautiful illustrations make this dazzling picture book biography the perfect read for everyone ready to get in touch with and shine their inner light like Beyoncé.

Beyoncé was quiet.
A push-an-empty-swing kind of quiet.
That’s how most of the world saw her, until …

She can sing! Do you know she can sing?

one teacher looked closer.

Onstage, Beyoncé became a different person.
Dazzling!
Confident
Bold
This was where she belonged.

Beyoncé is bold, talented, confident, and an inspiring voice and power to millions of people all around the world. This captivating picture book biography celebrates the icon’s rise from a shy little girl to a world-famous superstar. Discover the story of Beyoncé as she finds her voice, through trials and triumphs, and understand that you, too, can shine your light like Beyoncé.


Click for more detail about Hot Day on Abbott Avenue by Karen English Hot Day on Abbott Avenue

by Karen English
Clarion Books (Jun 04, 2019)
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It’s the hottest, stickiest day of the summer. A fat-sun-in-the-sky day. An eating-ice-pops-on-the-porch day. And for Kishi and Ren�e, it’s a best-friends-breakup day. Each girl sits on her own front porch, waiting for the other to apologize, even though they know they’ll never speak to each other again, no matter how bored they get. But then the sounds of feet slapping the pavement and voices chanting double-dutch rhymes drift up the avenue, and neither one can resist going out in the street to play.

This lyrical friendship story, the first collaboration of two outstanding artists, pairs a rhythmic text with distinctive collage illustrations. Its subtle message about sharing and forgiveness will resonate with anyone who has ever experienced the ups and downs of being, and having, a best friend.


Click for more detail about The Last Last-Day-of-Summer by Lamar Giles The Last Last-Day-of-Summer

by Lamar Giles
Versify (Apr 02, 2019)
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"The Last Last-Day-of-Summer reminds me that all children deserve to exist in magical spaces where their imaginations and familial bonds will them into heroism. Every single child should have the freedom to be one of The Legendary Alstons. And I, for one, am grateful to Giles, and this brilliant story, for that reminder. " Jason Reynolds, author of Newbery Honoree Long Way Down

“The legendary heroes of this legendary book are already legendary when the story begins! From there things can only get legendary-er!” Tom Angleberger, author of the Origami Yoda series

"Lamar Giles has written an instant classic—readers won’t want their time with the Legendary Alston Boys of Logan County to end." Gwenda Bond, author of the Lois Lane series
TheHardyBoysmeets The Phantom Tollbooth, in the new century! When two adventurous cousins accidentally extend the last day of summer by freezing time, they find the secrets hidden between the unmoving seconds, minutes, and hours are not the endless fun they expected.

Otto and Sheed are the local sleuths in their zany Virginia town, masters of unraveling mischief using their unmatched powers of deduction. And as the summer winds down and the first day of school looms, the boys are craving just a little bit more time for fun, even as they bicker over what kind of fun they want to have. That is, until a mysterious man appears with a camera that literally freezes time. Now, with the help of some very strange people and even stranger creatures, Otto and Sheed will have to put aside their differences to save their town—and each other—before time stops for good.

Book Review

Click for more detail about The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander The Undefeated

by Kwame Alexander
Versify (Apr 02, 2019)
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The Newbery Award-winning author of THE CROSSOVER pens an ode to black American triumph and tribulation, with art from a two-time Caldecott Honoree.
Originally performed for ESPN’s The Undefeated, this poem is a love letter to black life in the United States. It highlights the unspeakable trauma of slavery, the faith and fire of the civil rights movement, and the grit, passion, and perseverance of some of the world’s greatest heroes. The text is also peppered with references to the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and others, offering deeper insights into the accomplishments of the past, while bringing stark attention to the endurance and spirit of those surviving and thriving in the present.

Book Review

Click for more detail about A Pocketful of Poems by Nikki Grimes A Pocketful of Poems

by Nikki Grimes
HMH Books for Young Readers (Dec 18, 2018)
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Tiana has a pocketful of words: green words like spring, night words like moon, and words with wings, like angel. Each word is the inspiration for a pair of poems—one, lyrical free verse and the other, haiku. The paired poems reflect Tiana’s lively spirit and urban outlook and are showcased in Javaka Steptoe’s inventive collages, which include a wide range of materials, from faucet handles to pumpkin seeds to a hand-sculpted, gilded alphabet. A fusion of two remarkable creative talents, A Pocketful of Poems is an engaging portrait of a down-to-earth girl who has a way with words, as well as a tantalizing introduction to poetry. Author’s note on haiku.


Click for more detail about Pizza Party: The Carver Chronicles, Book Six by Karen English Pizza Party: The Carver Chronicles, Book Six

by Karen English
Clarion Books (Dec 18, 2018)
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A new title in a chapter book series featuring African American and Latino boys that’s full of kid-friendly charm and universal appeal.

Third-grader Richard and his friends are just four days away from setting a record forexcellent behavior and earning a classroom pizza party when disaster strikes—their beloved teacher is out sick, and the strictest, meanest substitute has taken her place! Will their dreams of pizza be dashed when the sub suspects that some of them have been cheating?

This gently humorous installment in a chapter-book series about a diverse group of elementary schoolers by Coretta Scott King honoree Karen English offers spot-on storytelling, relatable characters and situations, and plenty of action.


Click for more detail about The New Kid: The Carver Chronicles, Book Five by Karen English The New Kid: The Carver Chronicles, Book Five

by Karen English
Clarion Books (Dec 18, 2018)
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Third-grader Gavin and his friends aren’t sure what to make of the new boy in their class, Khufu. He sure doesn’t look or act like the other kids … and they suspect that he stole Gavin’s bike! Meanwhile, Gavin’s great-aunt Myrtle is coming to stay with his family again, and Gavin is sure she’ll be teaming up with his big sister to boss him around the whole time.

Offering spot-on storytelling, relatable characters and situations, and plenty of action, this gently humorous story about a diverse group of elementary-schoolers shows that even someone who seems strange can turn out to be a good friend, if you give them a chance.


Click for more detail about Monument: Poems New and Selected by Natasha Trethewey Monument: Poems New and Selected

by Natasha Trethewey
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Nov 06, 2018)
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Longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Poetry

“[Trethewey’s poems] dig beneath the surface of history—personal or communal, from childhood or from a century ago—to explore the human struggles that we all face.” —James H. Billington, 13th Librarian of Congress

Layering joy and urgent defiance—against physical and cultural erasure, against white supremacy whether intangible or graven in stone—Trethewey’s work gives pedestal and witness to unsung icons. Monument, Trethewey’s first retrospective, draws together verse that delineates the stories of working class African American women, a mixed-race prostitute, one of the first black Civil War regiments, mestizo and mulatto figures in Casta paintings, Gulf coast victims of Katrina. Through the collection, inlaid and inextricable, winds the poet’s own family history of trauma and loss, resilience and love.

In this setting, each section, each poem drawn from an “opus of classics both elegant and necessary,”* weaves and interlocks with those that come before and those that follow. As a whole, Monument casts new light on the trauma of our national wounds, our shared history. This is a poet’s remarkable labor to source evidence, persistence, and strength from the past in order to change the very foundation of the vocabulary we use to speak about race, gender, and our collective future.

*Academy of American Poets’ chancellor Marilyn Nelson


Click for more detail about Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah Friday Black

by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Mariner Books (Oct 23, 2018)
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“An excitement and a wonder: strange, crazed, urgent and funny…The wildly talented Adjei-Brenyah has made these edgy tales immensely charming, via his resolute, heartful, immensely likeable narrators, capable of seeing the world as blessed and cursed at once.”
—George Saunders

“This book is dark and captivating and essential…A call to arms and a condemnation. Adjei-Brenyah offers powerful prose as parable. The writing in this outstanding collection will make you hurt and demand your hope. Read this book.”
—Roxane Gay

A piercingly raw debut story collection from a young writer with an explosive voice; a treacherously surreal, and, at times, heartbreakingly satirical look at what it’s like to be young and black in America.

From the start of this extraordinary debut, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s writing will grab you, haunt you, enrage and invigorate you. By placing ordinary characters in extraordinary situations, Adjei-Brenyah reveals the violence, injustice, and painful absurdities that black men and women contend with every day in this country.

These stories tackle urgent instances of racism and cultural unrest, and explore the many ways we fight for humanity in an unforgiving world. In “The Finkelstein Five,” Adjei-Brenyah gives us an unforgettable reckoning of the brutal prejudice of our justice system. In “Zimmer Land,” we see a far-too-easy-to-believe imagining of racism as sport. And “FridayBlack” and “How to Sell a Jacket as Told by Ice King” show the horrors of consumerism and the toll it takes on us all.

Entirely fresh in its style and perspective, and sure to appeal to fans of Colson Whitehead, Marlon James, and George Saunders,FridayBlackconfronts readers with a complicated, insistent, wrenching chorus of emotions, the final note of which, remarkably, is hope.


Click for more detail about Be Bold, Baby: Michelle Obama by Alison Oliver Be Bold, Baby: Michelle Obama

by Alison Oliver
Clarion Books (Oct 16, 2018)
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Celebrate Michelle Obama’s most motivational and powerful moments, with quotes from the former First Lady, and vibrant illustrations by Alison Oliver (Moon; BabyLit series.)

Be encouraging. Be brilliant. Be you. Each book ends with a mirror! Look for the companion volume, Be Bold, Baby: Oprah.


Click for more detail about The Best American Short Stories 2018 by Roxane Gay and Heidi Pitlor The Best American Short Stories 2018

by Roxane Gay and Heidi Pitlor
Mariner Books (Oct 02, 2018)
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Best-selling, award-winning, pop culture powerhouse Roxane Gay guest edits this year’s Best American Short Stories, the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction.

“I am looking for the artful way any given story is conveyed,” writes Roxane Gay in her introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2018, “but I also love when a story has a powerful message, when a story teaches me something about the world.” The artful, profound, and sometimes funny stories Gay chose for the collection transport readers from a fraught family reunion to an immigration detention center, from a psychiatric hospital to a coed class sleepover in a natural history museum. We meet a rebellious summer camper, a Twitter addict, and an Appalachian preacher—all characters and circumstances that show us what we “need to know about the lives of others.”


Click for more detail about The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 by N. K. Jemisin The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018

by N. K. Jemisin
Mariner Books (Oct 02, 2018)
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Today’s readers of science fiction and fantasy have an appetite for stories that address a wide variety of voices, perspectives, and styles. There is an openness to experiment and pushing boundaries, combined with the classic desire to read about space ships and dragons, future technology and ancient magic, and the places where they intersect. Contemporary science fiction and fantasy looks to accomplish the same goal as everto illuminate what it means to be human. With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor N. K. Jemisin, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 explores the ever-expanding and changing world of SFF today, with Jemisin bringing her lyrical, endlessly curious point of view to the series’ latest edition.


Click for more detail about The Funniest Man in Baseball: The True Story of Max Patkin by Audrey Vernick The Funniest Man in Baseball: The True Story of Max Patkin

by Audrey Vernick
Clarion Books (Apr 03, 2018)
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A hilarious picture book biography about Max Patkin, a professional ballplayer turned legendary baseball clown,from the author of the acclaimed Brothers at Bat and other baseball nonfiction.

Max Patkin was pitching in the minor leagues when he was injured and had to leave his dreams behind. He joined the Navy andeventuallywas able to play again while in the military …and this time he got to pitch against superstar Joe DiMaggio. When Joe hit one of Max’s throws out of the park, Max threw down his glove, left the mound, and chased Joe around the bases, making faces and imitating his every move. The crowd loved it! And a baseball clown was born.

This inspiring and comical biography carries an important message: Life doesn’t always turn out exactly as you hope … but moving in a new direction can sometimes bring happy surprises.


Click for more detail about Rebound by Kwame Alexander Rebound

by Kwame Alexander
HMH Books for Young Readers (Apr 02, 2018)
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From the New York Times bestselling author Kwame Alexander comes Rebound, a dynamic novel in verse and companion to his Newbery Award-winner, The Crossover, illustrated with striking graphic novel panels. Before Josh and Jordan Bell were streaking up and down the court, their father was learning his own moves. In this prequel to Newbery Medal winner The Crossover,Chuck Bell takes center stage, as readers get a glimpse of his childhood and how he became thejazz music worshiping, basketball star his sons look up to. A novel in verse with all the impact and rhythm readers have come to expect from Kwame Alexander,Reboundwill go back in time to visit the childhood of Chuck "Da Man" Bell during one pivotal summer when young Charlie is sent to stay with his grandparents where he discovers basketball and learns more about his family’s past.


Click for more detail about Trouble Next Door by Karen English Trouble Next Door

by Karen English
Clarion Books (Mar 13, 2018)
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Featuring African American and Latino boys, The Carver Chronicles are high-interest, low reading-level stories from an award-winning author and former elementary school teacher full of kid-friendly charm and universal appeal.

"A pleasing addition to a series in which diverse readers can recognize themselves in starring roles." —Kirkus Reviews

"Another warm and approachable outing with the [Carver School] gang." —The Bulletin

Third-grader Calvin is dealing with his next-door neighbors moving away—and the school bully moving in. Meanwhile, competition at the school science fair is heating up, and Calvin must decide what to do when his data doesn’t prove his theory. This lively installment in a chapter book series about a diverse group of elementary schoolers offers spot-on storytelling, relatable characters and situations, and plenty of action.


Click for more detail about Let the Children March by Monica Clark-Robinson Let the Children March

by Monica Clark-Robinson
HMH Books for Young Readers (Jan 02, 2018)
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  • I couldn’t play on the same playground as the white kids.
  • I couldn’t go to their schools.
  • I couldn’t drink from their water fountains.
  • There were so many things I couldn’t do.

In 1963 Birmingham, Alabama,thousands of African American children volunteered to march for their civil rights after hearing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak. They protested the laws that kept black people separate from white people. Facing fear, hate, and danger, these children used their voices to changethe world. Frank Morrison’s emotiveoil-on-canvas paintingsbringthishistorical event to life, while Monica Clark-Robinson’s moving and poetic words document this remarkable time.


Click for more detail about A Sky Full of Stars by Linda Williams Jackson A Sky Full of Stars

by Linda Williams Jackson
HMH Books for Young Readers (Jan 02, 2018)
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After the murder of Emmett Till, thirteen-year-old Rose is struggling with her decision to stay in Mississippi. Torn between the opinions of Shorty, a boy who wants to meet violence with violence, and Hallelujah, her best friend who believes in the power of peaceful protests, Rose is scared of the mounting racial tension and is starting to lose hope. But when Rose helps Aunt Ruthie start her own business, she begins to see how she can make a difference in her community. Life might be easier in the North, but Mississippi is home and that’s worth fighting for. Mid-Century Mississippi comes alive in this sequel to Midnight Without a Moon.


Click for more detail about March Forward, Girl: From Young Warrior to Little Rock Nine by Melba Pattillo Beals March Forward, Girl: From Young Warrior to Little Rock Nine

by Melba Pattillo Beals
HMH Books for Young Readers (Jan 02, 2018)
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From the legendary civil rights activist and author of the million-copy selling Warriors Don’t Cry comes an ardent and profoundchildhood memoirof growing up while facing adversity in the Jim Crow South.

Long before she was one of the Little Rock Nine, Melba Pattillo Beals was a warrior. Frustrated by the laws that kept African-Americans separate but very much unequal to whites, she had questions. Why couldn’t she drink from a "whites only" fountain? Why couldn’t she feel safe beyond home—or even within the walls of church? Adults all told her: Hold your tongue. Be patient. Know your place. But Beals had the heart of a fighter—and the knowledge that her true place was a free one.

Combined with emotive drawings and photos, this memoir paints a vivid picture of Beals’ powerful early journey on the road to becoming a champion for equal rights, an acclaimed journalist, a best-selling author, and the recipient of this country’s highest recognition, the Congressional Gold Medal.


Click for more detail about A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 by Claire Hartfield A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919

by Claire Hartfield
Clarion Books (Jan 02, 2018)
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On a hot day in July 1919, five black youths went swimming in Lake Michigan, unintentionally floating close to the "white" beach. An angry white man began throwing stones at the boys, striking and killing one. Racial conflict on the beach erupted into days of urban violence that shook the city of Chicago to its foundations. This mesmerizing narrative draws on contemporary accounts as it traces the roots of the explosion that had been building for decades in race relations, politics, business, and clashes of culture. Archival photos and prints, source notes, bibliography, index.


Click for more detail about Natalie’s Hair Was Wild! by Laura Freeman Natalie’s Hair Was Wild!

by Laura Freeman
Clarion Books (Jan 02, 2018)
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Natalie’s hair is really wild—and she likes it that way! A host of friendly animals agree, and they move right in. At first it’s just butterflies and birds that take up residence atop Natalie’s head, but soon there are zebras, elephants, even a tiger! With all the roaring and squawking and snorting and burping, poor Natalie can hardly sleep. She needs to find someone to help coax those critters out … but who?

Inspired by the author’s own childhood adventures with her hair, this playful fantasy will delight all girls and boys who resist having their tresses tamed.


Click for more detail about It All Comes Down to This by Karen English It All Comes Down to This

by Karen English
Clarion Books (Jul 11, 2017)
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It’s 1965, Los Angeles. All twelve-year-old Sophie wants to do is write her book, star in the community play, and hang out with her friend Jennifer. But she’s the new black kid in a nearly all-white neighborhood; her beloved sister, Lily, is going away to college soon; and her parents’ marriage is rocky. There’s also her family’s new, disapproving housekeeper to deal with. When riots erupt in nearby Watts and a friend is unfairly arrested, Sophie learns that life—and her own place in it—is even more complicated than she’d once thought.
Leavened with gentle humor, this story is perfect for fans of Rita Williams-Garcia.


Click for more detail about This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare by Gabourey Sidibe This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare

by Gabourey Sidibe
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (May 01, 2017)
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Gabourey Sidibe—“Gabby” to her legion of fans—skyrocketed to international fame in 2009 when she played the leading role in Lee Daniels’s acclaimed movie Precious. In This is Just My Face, she shares a one-of-a-kind life story in a voice as fresh and challenging as many of the unique characters she’s played onscreen. With full-throttle honesty, Sidibe paints her Bed-Stuy/Harlem family life with a polygamous father and a gifted mother who supports her two children by singing in the subway. Sidibe tells the engrossing, inspiring story of her first job as a phone sex “talker.” And she shares her unconventional (of course!) rise to fame as a movie star, alongside “a superstar cast of rich people who lived in mansions and had their own private islands and amazing careers while I lived in my mom’s apartment.”

Sidibe’s memoir hits hard with self-knowing dispatches on friendship, depression, celebrity, haters, fashion, race, and weight (“If I could just get the world to see me the way I see myself,” she writes, “would my body still be a thing you walked away thinking about?”). Irreverent, hilarious, and untraditional, This Is Just My Face takes its place and fills a void on the shelf of writers from Mindy Kaling to David Sedaris to Lena Dunham.


Click for more detail about The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

by Andrés Reséndez
Mariner Books (Apr 18, 2017)
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NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST | WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE. A landmark history—the sweeping story of the enslavement of tens of thousands of Indians across America, from the time of the conquistadors up to the early twentieth century.

Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates in his myth-shattering The Other Slavery, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There was no abolitionist movement to protect the tens of thousands of Natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadors.

Reséndez builds the incisive case that it was mass slavery—more than epidemics—that decimated Indian populations across North America. Through riveting new evidence, including testimonies of courageous priests, rapacious merchants, and Indian captives, The Other Slavery reveals nothing less than a key missing piece of American history.

For over two centuries we have fought over, abolished, and tried to come to grips with African American slavery. It is time for the West to confront an entirely separate, equally devastating enslavement we have long failed truly to see.

The Other Slavery is nothing short of an epic recalibration of American history, one that’s long overdueIn addition to his skills as a historian and an investigator, Résendez is a skilled storyteller with a truly remarkable subject. This is historical nonfiction at its most important and most necessary.” — Literary Hub, 20 Best Works of Nonfiction of the Decade

““One of the most profound contributions to North American history.”—Los Angeles Times


Click for more detail about The Playbook: 52 Rules to Aim, Shoot, and Score in This Game Called Life by Kwame Alexander The Playbook: 52 Rules to Aim, Shoot, and Score in This Game Called Life

by Kwame Alexander
HMH Books for Young Readers (Feb 14, 2017)
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You gotta know the rules to play the game. Ball is life. Take it to the hoop. Soar. What can we imagine for our lives? What if we were the star players, moving and grooving through the game of life? What if we had our own rules of the game to help us get what we want, what we aspire to, what will enrich our lives?

Illustrated with photographs by Thai Neave, The Playbook is intended to provide inspiration on the court of life. Each rule containswisdom from inspiring athletes and role models such as Nelson Mandela, Serena Williams, LeBron James, Carli Lloyd, Steph Curry and Michelle Obama. Kwame Alexander also provides his own poetic and uplifting words, as he shares stories of overcoming obstacles andwinning games in this motivational and inspirational book just right for graduates of any age and anyone needing a little encouragement.


Click for more detail about Midnight Without a Moon by Linda Williams Jackson Midnight Without a Moon

by Linda Williams Jackson
HMH Books for Young Readers (Jan 03, 2017)
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Washington Post 2017 KidsPost Summer Book Club selection!

It’s Mississippi in the summer of 1955, and Rose Lee Carter can’t wait to move north. But for now, she’s living with her sharecropper grandparents on a white man’s cotton plantation.

Then, one town over, an AfricanAmerican boy, Emmett Till, is killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. When Till’s murderers are unjustly acquitted, Rose realizes that the South needs a change … and that she should be part of the movement.

Linda Jackson’s moving debut seamlessly blends a fictional portrait of an AfricanAmerican family and factual events from a famous trial that provoked change in race relations in the United States.


Click for more detail about Trouble Next Door: The Carver Chronicles, Book Four by Karen English Trouble Next Door: The Carver Chronicles, Book Four

by Karen English
Clarion Books (Dec 06, 2016)
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In the fourth book in the Carver Chronicles series, third grader Calvin is dealing with his next door neighbors moving away—and the school bully moving in. Meanwhile, competition at the school science fair is heating up, and Calvin must decide what to do when his data doesn’t prove his theory. This lively installment in a chapter book series about a diverse group of elementary schoolers by Coretta Scott King Honoree Karen English offers spot-on storytelling, relatable characters and situations, and plenty of action.


Click for more detail about Don’t Feed the Geckos!: The Carver Chronicles, Book 3 by Karen English Don’t Feed the Geckos!: The Carver Chronicles, Book 3

by Karen English
HMH Books for Young Readers (Nov 08, 2016)
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Carlos isn’t sure how he feels about the news that his cousin Bernardo will be joining his class at Carver Elementary. But when Bernardo comes to live with him temporarily, taking over Carlos’s top bunk, his spot on the school soccer team, and even his Papi’s attention, Carlos knows he isn’t happy. Worse, Bernardo starts messing with Carlos’s pet geckos! Carlos tries to see past his cousin’s annoying ways, but Bernardo sure doesn’t make it easy. Will Carlos—and his geckos—survive Bernardo’s visit? Can he keep the peace for his family’s sake? Emerging and newly independent readersare sure to recognize themselves in this humorous school and family story.


Click for more detail about The Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem by Marcus Samuelsson The Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem

by Marcus Samuelsson
Rux Martin Books (Oct 18, 2016)
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Southern comfort food and multicultural recipes from the New York Times best-selling superstar chef Marcus Samuelsson’s iconic Harlem restaurant.

When the James Beard Award-winning chef Marcus Samuelsson opened Red Rooster on Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem, he envisioned more than a restaurant. It would be the heart of his neighborhood and a meet-and-greet for both the downtown and the uptown sets, serving Southern black and cross-cultural food. It would reflect Harlem’s history. Ever since the 1930s, Harlem has been a magnet for more than a million African Americans, a melting pot for Spanish, African, and Caribbean immigrants, and a mecca for artists.

These traditions converge on Rooster’s menu, with Brown Butter Biscuits, Chicken and Waffle, Killer Collards, and Donuts with Sweet Potato Cream. They’re joined by global-influenced dishes such as Jerk Bacon and Baked Beans, Latino Pork and Plantains, and Chinese Steamed Bass and Fiery Noodles. Samuelsson’s Swedish-Ethiopian background shows in Ethiopian Spice-Crusted Lamb, Slow-Baked Blueberry Bread with Spiced Maple Syrup, and the Green Viking, sprightly Apple Sorbet with Caramel Sauce.

Interspersed with lyrical essays that convey the flavor of the place and stunning archival and contemporary photos, The Red Rooster Cookbook is as layered as its inheritance.


Click for more detail about The Best American Short Stories 2016 by Junot Diaz The Best American Short Stories 2016

by Junot Diaz
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Oct 04, 2016)
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“The literary ‘Oscars’ featurestwenty outstanding examples of the best of the best in American short stories.” —Shelf Awareness for Readers

The Best American Short Stories 2016 will be selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Daz. He brings "one of the most distinctive and magnetic voices in contemporary fiction: limber, streetwise, caffeinated and wonderfully eclectic" (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times) to the collection.


Click for more detail about Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide by Joy-Ann Reid Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide

by Joy-Ann Reid
Mariner Books (Sep 27, 2016)
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Barack Obama’s speech on the Edmund Pettus Bridge to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches should have represented the culmination of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of racial unity. Yet, in Fracture, MSNBC national correspondent Joy-Ann Reid shows that, despite the progress we have made, we are still a nation divided—as seen recently in headline-making tragedies such as police killings of Black citizens and uprisings across the country.

With President Obama’s election, Americans expected an open dialogue about race but instead discovered the irony of an African American president who seemed hamstrung when addressing racial matters, leaving many of his supporters disillusioned and his political enemies sharpening their knives. To understand why that is so, Reid examines the complicated relationship between Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton, and how their varied approaches to the race issue parallel the challenges facing the Democratic party itself: the disparate parts of its base and the whirl of shifting allegiances among its power players—and how this shapes the party and its hopes of retaining the White House.

Fracture traces the party’s makeup and character regarding race from the civil rights days to the Obama presidency. Filled with key political players such as Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, John Lewis, and Al Sharpton, it provides historical context while addressing questions arising as we head into the next national election: Will Hillary Clinton’s campaign represent an embrace of Obama’s legacy or a repudiation of it? How is Hillary Clinton’s stand on race both similar to and different from Obama’s, or from her husband’s? How do minorities view Mrs. Clinton, and will they line up in huge numbers to support her—and what will happen if they don’t?

Veteran reporter Joy-Ann Reid investigates these questions and more, offering breaking news, fresh insight, and experienced insider analysis, mixed with fascinating behind-the-scenes drama, to illuminate three of the most important figures in modern political history, and how race can affect the crucial 2016 election and the future of America itself.


Click for more detail about Jubilee by Margaret Walker Jubilee

by Margaret Walker
Mariner Books (Sep 06, 2016)
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Here is the classic—and true—story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his black mistress, a Southern Civil War heroine to rival Scarlett O’Hara. Vyry bears witness to the South’s prewar opulence and its brutality, to its wartime ruin and the subsequent promise of Reconstruction. It is a story that Margaret Walker heard as a child from her grandmother, the real Vyry’s daughter. The author spent thirty years researching the novel so that the world might know the intelligent, strong, and brave black woman called Vyry. The phenomenal acclaim this best-selling book has achieved from readers black and white, young and old, attests to her success.


Click for more detail about Booked by Kwame Alexander Booked

by Kwame Alexander
HMH Books for Young Readers (Apr 05, 2016)
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Like lightning/you strike/fast and free/legs zoom/down field/eyes fixed/on the checkered ball/on the goal/ten yards to go/can’t nobody stop you/
can’t nobody cop you…
In this follow-up to the Newbery-winning novel THE CROSSOVER, soccer, family, love, and friendship, take center stage as twelve-year-old Nick learns the power of words as he wrestles with problems at home, stands up to a bully, and tries to impress the girl of his dreams.Helping him along are his best friend and sometimes teammate Coby, and The Mac, a rapping librarian who gives Nick inspiring books to read.
This electric and heartfelt novel-in-verse by poet Kwame Alexander bends and breaks as it captures all the thrills and setbacks, action and emotion of a World Cup match!


Click for more detail about The Kid from Diamond Street: The Extraordinary Story of Baseball Legend Edith Houghton by Audrey Vernick The Kid from Diamond Street: The Extraordinary Story of Baseball Legend Edith Houghton

by Audrey Vernick
Clarion Books (Mar 29, 2016)
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Audrey Vernick and Steven Salerno have again collaborated to bring us a captivating picture book about a compelling but little-known piece of baseball history. Beginning in 1922, when Edith Houghton was only ten years old, she tried out for a women’s professional baseball team, the Philadelphia Bobbies. Though she was the smallest on the field, soon reporters were talking about “The Kid” and her incredible skill, and crowds were packing the stands to see her play. Her story reminds us that baseball has never been about just men and boys. Baseball is also about talented girls willing to work hard to play any way they can.


Click for more detail about The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America by Michael Eric Dyson The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America

by Michael Eric Dyson
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Feb 02, 2016)
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A provocative and lively deep dive into the meaning of America’s first black presidency, from “one of the most graceful and lucid intellectuals writing on race and politics today” (Vanity Fair).

Michael Eric Dyson explores the powerful, surprising way the politics of race have shaped Barack Obama’s identity and groundbreaking presidency. How has President Obama dealt publicly with race—as the national traumas of Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and Walter Scott have played out during his tenure? What can we learn from Obama’s major race speeches about his approach to racial conflict and the black criticism it provokes?

Dyson explores whether Obama’s use of his own biracialism as a radiant symbol has been driven by the president’s desire to avoid a painful moral reckoning on race. And he sheds light on identity issues within the black power structure, telling the fascinating story of how Obama has spurned traditional black power brokers, significantly reducing their leverage.

President Obama’s own voice—from an Oval Office interview granted to Dyson for this book—along with those of Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, and Maxine Waters, among others, add unique depth to this profound tour of the nation’s first black presidency.


Click for more detail about Skateboard Party: The Carver Chronicles, Book Two by Karen English Skateboard Party: The Carver Chronicles, Book Two

by Karen English
HMH Books for Young Readers (Dec 01, 2015)
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Richard can’t waitto show off hisflat-ground Olliesata friend’sbirthday party at the skate park, but a note home from his teacher threatens to ruin his plans. He really meant to finish his assignment on howler monkeys, but he just got … distracted. If only he could focus on his schoolwork, he wouldn’t get into this kind of trouble! CanRichard manage to put off getting the note signed (and facing the consequences)until after the party, or willthe deception makethings even worse? Nikki and Deja fans and their male peers are sure to recognize themselves and their classmates in this humorous school story.


Click for more detail about Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta Under the Udala Trees

by Chinelo Okparanta
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Sep 22, 2015)
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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).


Click for more detail about Hoodoo by Ronald L. Smith Hoodoo

by Ronald L. Smith
Clarion Books (Sep 01, 2015)
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Twelve-year-old Hoodoo Hatcher was born into a family with a rich tradition of practicing folk magic: hoodoo, as most people call it. But even though his name is Hoodoo, he can’t seem to cast a simple spell.

When a mysterious man called the Stranger comes to town, Hoodoo starts dreaming of the dead rising from their graves. Even worse, he soon learns the Stranger is looking for a boy. Not just any boy. A boy named Hoodoo. The entire town is at risk from the Stranger’s black magic, and only Hoodoo can defeat him. He’ll just need to learn how to conjure first.

Set amid the swamps, red soil, and sweltering heat of small town Alabama in the 1930s, Hoodoo is infused with a big dose of creepiness leavened with gentle humor.


Click for more detail about These Hands by Margaret H. Mason These Hands

by Margaret H. Mason
Clarion Books (Sep 01, 2015)
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In this powerful intergenerational story of African-American history, Joseph learns from his grandfather that people joined their hands together to fight discrimination so that one day, their hands—Joseph’s hands—could do anything at all in this whole wide world.


Click for more detail about First Grade Dropout by Audrey Vernick First Grade Dropout

by Audrey Vernick
Clarion Books (Jul 07, 2015)
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The first grade narrator of this book has been lots of things: Hungry. Four years old. Crazy bored. Soaking wet. Pretty regular kid … until he makes a mistake so big that he’s sure he will never be able to go back to Lakeview Elementary School. All readers, even those not in first grade, will find the narrator’s feelings familiar, and discover that even though embarrassing things happen, they’re usually not as bad as they seem. And sometimes they’re even funny!


Click for more detail about The Arsenal Of Democracy  by A. J. Baime The Arsenal Of Democracy

by A. J. Baime
Mariner Books (May 05, 2015)
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. The story of the dramatic transformation of Detroit from "motortown" to the "arsenal of democracy," featuring Edsel Ford, who rebelled against his pacifist father, Henry Ford, to build a manufacturing complex that was crucial to winning WWII.As the United States entered World War II, the military was in desperate need of tanks, jeeps, and, most important, airplanes. Germany had been amassing weaponry and airplanes for five years—the United States for only months. So President Roosevelt turned to the American auto industry, specifically the Ford Motor Company, where Edsel Ford made the outrageous claim that he would construct the largest airplane factory in the world, a plant that could build a “bomber an hour.” And so began one of the most fascinating and overlooked chapters in American history. Drawing on unique access to archival material and exhaustive research, A. J. Baime has crafted a riveting narrative that hopscotches from Detroit to Washington to Normandy, from the assembly lines to the frontlines, and from the depths of professional and personal failure to the heights that Ford Motor Company and the American military ultimately achieved in the sky.“A touching and absorbing portrait of one of the forgotten heroes of World War II … A. J. Baime has given us a memorable portrait not just of an industry going to war but of a remarkable figure who helped to make victory possible.” — Wall Street Journal “Fast-paced … the story certainly entertains.” — New York Times


Click for more detail about The Turner House by Angela Flournoy The Turner House

by Angela Flournoy
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Apr 14, 2015)
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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.


Click for more detail about Screaming at the Ump by Audrey Vernick Screaming at the Ump

by Audrey Vernick
HMH Books for Young Readers (Apr 07, 2015)
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Twelve-year-old Casey Snowden knows everything about being an umpire. His dad and grandfather run a New Jersey umpire school, Behind the Plate, and Casey lives and breathes baseball. Casey’s dream, however, is to be a reporter—objective, impartial, and fair, just like an ump. But when he stumbles upon a sensational story involving a former major league player in exile, he finds that the ethics of publishing it are cloudy at best. This emotionally charged coming-of-age novel about baseball, divorce, friendship, love, and compassion challenges its readers to consider all the angles before calling that strike.


Click for more detail about Marcus Off Duty: The Recipes I Cook at Home by Marcus Samuelsson Marcus Off Duty: The Recipes I Cook at Home

by Marcus Samuelsson
Rux Martin Books (Oct 21, 2014)
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The award-winning celebrity chef and New York Times best-selling author unwinds at home, sharing 150 relaxed, multicultural dishes For two decades, Marcus Samuelsson has captivated food lovers with his brilliant culinary interpretations. Born in Ethiopia, raised in Sweden, and trained in European kitchens, he is a world citizen turned American success story. Not only was Samuelsson the youngest chef ever to receive three stars from the New York Times, he is also a five-time James Beard Award recipient, a winner of Top Chef Masters, and a judge on Chopped. Chosen by President Obama to cook the first state dinner, he is now a charismatic TV host. In this book, the chef who former President Bill Clinton says “has reinvigorated and reimagined what it means to be American” serves up the dishes he makes at his Harlem home for his wife and friends. The recipes blend a rainbow of the flavors he experienced in his travels—Ethiopian, Swedish, Mexican, Caribbean, Italian, and Southern soul. His eclectic, casual food includes dill-spiced salmon; coconut-lime curried chicken; mac, cheese, and greens; chocolate pie spiced with Indian garam masala; and for kids, peanut noodles with slaw. This is an inside glimpse into how one of the world’s top chefs cooks in his home kitchen for those nearest and dearest to him.


Click for more detail about Fire Shut Up In My Bones by Charles M. Blow Fire Shut Up In My Bones

by Charles M. Blow
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Sep 23, 2014)
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A gorgeous, moving memoir of how one of America’s most innovative and respected journalists found his voice by coming to terms with a painful past

New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow mines the compelling poetry of the out-of-time African-American Louisiana town where he grew up—a place where slavery’s legacy felt astonishingly close, reverberating in the elders’ stories and in the near-constant wash of violence.

Blow’s attachment to his mother—a fiercely driven woman with five sons, brass knuckles in her glove box, a job plucking poultry at a nearby factory, a soon-to-be-ex husband, and a love of newspapers and learning—cannot protect him from secret abuse at the hands of an older cousin. It’s damage that triggers years of anger and searing self-questioning.

Finally, Blow escapes to a nearby state university, where he joins a black fraternity after a passage of brutal hazing, and then enters a world of racial and sexual privilege that feels like everything he’s ever needed and wanted, until he’s called upon, himself, to become the one perpetuating the shocking abuse.

A powerfully redemptive memoir that both fits the tradition of African-American storytelling from the South, and gives it an indelible new slant.


Click for more detail about Nikki and Deja Substitute Trouble by Karen English Nikki and Deja Substitute Trouble

by Karen English
HMH Books for Young Readers (Jul 08, 2014)
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Deja is dismayed to learn that her teacher has had an accident and a substitute will be taking her place. Under the new sub’s care, nothing is the same in Room Ten. A few of the class troublemakers plot to take advantage of the clueless teacher, and soon other students join in. Should Nikki and Deja go along with the rest of the kids in tormenting him? Should they help him out by tattling on their classmates? Or is there another way to handle the situation? Here is another charming entry in a chapter book series about African American girls praised for its accessibility, authenticity, and humor.


Click for more detail about Edgar’s Second Word by Audrey Vernick Edgar’s Second Word

by Audrey Vernick
Clarion Books (Jun 03, 2014)
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Hazel can’t wait for her baby brother to be born so she can talk and read with him! But when, at last, he arrives, he just sits there. More disappointing yet, when he finally speaks, his first word is a resounding NO! But Hazel resolves to wait somemore—despite the ever-increasing NOs—and she keeps on reading aloud to him. Will Edgar ever say anything else? And if he does, what will his second word be?
The magic of sharing books is at the center of this hilarious new baby story that will resonate with book lovers and any child who has trouble waiting.


Click for more detail about Stand Up Straight and Sing! by Jessye Norman Stand Up Straight and Sing!

by Jessye Norman
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (May 06, 2014)
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One of America’s most admired and decorated artists tells her amazing story, from her childhood in the South to the world’s greatest stages. Jessye Norman is not only one of the world’s most admired and beloved singers, she is an American icon whose life story is as moving and dramatic as the great operatic roles she has performed on stage. Born and raised in Augusta, Georgia, nurtured in a close family and tight-knit community centered around the church, she studied the piano and sang the songs of her childhood, not dreaming that this passion for music might lead to her life’s profession. In Stand Up Straight and Sing!, Jessye Norman recalls in rich detail the strong women who were her role models, from her ancestors to family friends, relatives, and teachers. She hails the importance of her parents in her early learning and experiences in the arts. And she describes coming face-to-face with racism, not just as a child living in the segregated South, but also as an adult out and about in the world. She speaks of the many who have inspired her and taught her essential life lessons. A special interlude on her key relationship with the pioneering African American singer Marian Anderson reveals the lifelong support that this great predecessor provided through her example of dignity and grace at all times. The story of one woman’s astonishing life, Stand Up Straight And Sing! is not just for lovers of music, but for everyone.


Click for more detail about Water Balloon by Audrey Vernick Water Balloon

by Audrey Vernick
HMH Books for Young Readers (May 06, 2014)
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Marley’s life is as precarious as an overfull water balloon—one false move and everything will burst. Her best friends are pulling away from her, and her parents, newly separated, have decided she should spend the summer with her dad in his new house, with a job she didn’t ask for and certainly doesn’t want. On the upside is a cute boy who loves dogs as much as Marley does … but young love has lots of opportunity for humiliation and misinterpreted signals. Luckily Marley is a girl who trusts her instincts and knows the truth when she sees it, making her an immensely appealing character and her story funny, heartfelt, and emotionally true.


Click for more detail about Raven in a Dove House by Andrea Davis Pinkney Raven in a Dove House

by Andrea Davis Pinkney
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Apr 15, 2014)
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It’s summer vacation, and twelve-year-old Nell has gone upstate to spend a month with Aunt Ursa and Cousin Foley. Seeing Foley’s best friend, Slade, puts a smile on Nell’s face, even when she tries to stay cool. Nell is enjoying the lazy days of summer, especially Foley’s antics and Slade’s flirty talk … until the boys surprise her with a frightening request. They want her to hide a pistol in her old dollhouse. Nell doesn’t know what to do. Suddenly, she doesn’t trust anyone, even herself. But when tragedy strikes, she knows she can’t handle it on her own.


Click for more detail about The Crossover by Kwame Alexander The Crossover

by Kwame Alexander
HMH Books for Young Readers (Mar 18, 2014)
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“With a bolt of lightning on my kicks…The court is SIZZLING. My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering. Cuz tonight I’m delivering,” announces dread-locked, 12-year old Josh Bell. He and his twin brother Jordan are awesome on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood, he’s got mad beats, too, that tell his family’s story in verse, in this fast and furious middle grade novel of family and brotherhood from Kwame Alexander (He Said, She Said 2013).

Josh and Jordan must come to grips with growing up on and off the court to realize breaking the rules comes at a terrible price, as their story’s heart-stopping climax proves a game-changer for the entire family.


Click for more detail about Dog Days: The Carver Chronicles, Book One by Karen English Dog Days: The Carver Chronicles, Book One

by Karen English
Clarion Books (Dec 17, 2013)
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It’s tough being the new kid at Carver Elementary. Gavin had lots of friends at his old school, but the kidshere don’t even know that he’s pretty good at skateboarding, or how awesome he is at soccer.And when hisclassmate Richard comes over and the boys end upin trouble, not only does Gavin risk losing his one new friend, he has to take care ofhis great aunt Myrtle’s horrible little dog as punishment.
To make matters worse, Gavin seems to have attracted the attention of the school bully.Will he be able toavoid getting poundedat the skate park?And how is heever going to prove he’s coolwitha yappy little Pomeranian wearing a pink bow at his side?


Click for more detail about Happiness, Like Water by Chinelo Okparanta Happiness, Like Water

by Chinelo Okparanta
Mariner Books (Aug 13, 2013)
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"Astonishing. Okparanta’s narrators render their stories with such strength and intimacy, such lucidity and composure, that in each and every case the truths of their lives detonate deep inside the reader’s heart, with the power and force of revelation."—Paul Harding

Here are Nigerian women at home and transplanted to the United States, building lives out of longing and hope, faith and doubt, the struggle to stay and the mandate to leave, the burden and strength of love. Here are characters faced with dangerous decisions, children slick with oil from the river, a woman in love with another despite the penalties. Here is a world marked by electricity outages, lush landscapes, folktales, buses that break down and never start up again. Here is a portrait of Nigerians that is surprising, shocking, heartrending, loving, and across social strata, dealing in every kind of change. Here are stories filled with language to make your eyes pause and your throat catch. Happiness, Like Water introduces a true talent, a young writer with a beautiful heart and a capacious imagination.

"Intricate, graceful prose propels Okparanta’s profoundly moving and illuminating book. I devoured these stories and immediately wanted more. This is an arrival."—NoViolet Bulawayo

"Okparanta’s prose is tender, beautiful and evocative. These powerful stories of contemporary Nigeria are told with compassion and a certain sense of humor. What a remarkable new talent."—Chika Unigwe

"A haunting and startlingly original collection of short stories about the lives of Nigerians both at home and in America. Happiness, Like Water is a deeply affecting literary debut, the work of a sure and gifted new writer."—Julie Otsuka


Click for more detail about Mister And Lady Day: Billie Holiday And The Dog Who Loved Her by Amy Novesky Mister And Lady Day: Billie Holiday And The Dog Who Loved Her

by Amy Novesky
HMH Books for Young Readers (Jun 18, 2013)
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Billie Holiday—also known as Lady Day—had fame, style, a stellar voice, big gardenias in her hair, and lots of dogs. She had a coat-pocket poodle, a beagle, Chihuahuas, a Great Dane, and more, but her favorite was a boxer named Mister. Mister was always there to bolster her courage through good times and bad, even before her legendary appearance at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Newton’s stylish illustrations keep the simply told story focused on the loving bond between Billie Holiday and her treasured boxer. An author’s note deals more directly with the singer’s troubled life, and includes a little-known photo of Mister and Lady Day!

Book Review

Click for more detail about Lullaby: For a Black Mother by Langston Hughes Lullaby: For a Black Mother

by Langston Hughes
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Mar 19, 2013)
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"Hughes’ classic lullaby gets a loving lift with Quall’s graceful artwork."
Booklist

"A wonderful celebration of both love and poetry."
School Library Journal

"A quiet but welcome introduction to the writer’s work for the very young."
Publishers Weekly

"Share with little ones needing a gentle lullaby."
Kirkus

"Not all poems make for great picture book texts, but this one has just the right cadence and all the right line breaks for smooth page turns, especially when accompanied by Qualls’s superb art showing the deep bond between a mother and her baby at bedtime."
Horn Book


Click for more detail about Nikki and Deja Wedding Drama by Karen English Nikki and Deja Wedding Drama

by Karen English
Clarion Books (Mar 19, 2013)
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Wedding drama brews when Nikki and Deja’s beloved teacher announces her plans to be married!

Ms. Shelby is getting married! As the girls in Nikki and Deja’s class compete over who can plan the best imaginary wedding for their teacher, Nikki excitedly throws herself into preparations for the real thing.

But Deja is not so enthusiastic. Her Auntie Dee has been temporarily laid off from her job, and Deja is worried. What will happen now that Deja can no longer afford a new dress and special hairdo? Will Nikki leave her best friend behind while she shops and primps? Will Deja be able to get over her jealousy and enjoy the celebration anyway?

This accessible chapter book series shines with emotional depth and humor, perfectly capturing the complexities and joys of elementary school girls’ friendships.


Click for more detail about Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters by Andrea Davis Pinkney Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters

by Andrea Davis Pinkney
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Jan 08, 2013)
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Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus and sparked a boycott that changed America. Harriet Tubman helped more than three hundred slaves escape the South on the Underground Railroad. Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
The lives these women led are part of an incredible story about courage in the face of oppression; about the challenges and triumphs of the battle for civil rights; and about speaking out for what you believe in—even when it feels like no one is listening. Andrea Davis Pinkney’s moving text and Stephen Alcorn’s glorious portraits celebrate the lives of ten bold women who lit the path to freedom for generations. Includes biographies of Sojournor Truth, Biddy Mason, Harriet Tubman, Ida B.Wells-Barnett, Mary McLeod Bethune, Ella Josephine Baker, Dorothy Irene Height, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Shirley Chisholm.


Click for more detail about Spirit Seeker: John Coltrane’s Musical Journey by Gary Golio Spirit Seeker: John Coltrane’s Musical Journey

by Gary Golio
Clarion Books (Oct 23, 2012)
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Growing up, John was a seeker. He wondered about spirit, and the meaning of life. And whether music could be a key to unlocking those mysteries. Like his grandfather’s preaching and his parents’ songs, could John’s music bring people closer to God?
Told in moving prose and powerfully illustrated, this is the story of a shy, curious boy from a deeply religious family who grew up to find solace and inspiration in his own unique approach to both spirituality and music. John Coltrane—a legendary jazz musician whose work shattered boundaries and continues to influence countless artists to this day.

Book Review

Click for more detail about Nikki and Deja  Election Madness by Karen English Nikki and Deja Election Madness

by Karen English
HMH Books for Young Readers (Sep 04, 2012)
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When the students in Nikki and Deja’s class find out that their school is going to hold its first-ever election for student body president, some kids are more excited than others. But none is as excited as Deja, who figures she’s a shoo-in for the third grade nomination. Deja decides that Nikki will be her campaign manager, of course, and puts her to work right away. But will Deja’s tendency to rush into things and boss people around alienate her best friend when she needs her most, and spoil her chances of becoming president of Carver Elementary?This is a charming new entry in a chapter book series praised for its humor and authentic characters.


Click for more detail about Thrall: Poems by Natasha Trethewey Thrall: Poems

by Natasha Trethewey
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Aug 28, 2012)
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The stunning follow-up volume to her 2007 Pulitzer Prizewinning Native Guard, by America’s new Poet Laureate

Natasha Trethewey’s poems are at once deeply personal and historical—exploring her own interracial and complicated roots—and utterly American, connecting them to ours. The daughter of a black mother and white father, a student of history and of the Deep South, she is inspired by everything from colonial paintings of mulattos and mestizos to the stories of people forgotten by history. Meditations on captivity, knowledge, and inheritance permeate Thrall, as she reflects on a series of small estrangements from her poet father and comes to an understanding of how, as father and daughter, they are part of the ongoing history of race in America.

Thrall confirms not only that Natasha Trethewey is one of our most gifted and necessary poets but that she is also one of our most brilliant and fearless.


Click for more detail about Brothers at Bat: The True Story of an Amazing All-Brother Baseball Team by Audrey Vernick Brothers at Bat: The True Story of an Amazing All-Brother Baseball Team

by Audrey Vernick
Clarion Books (Apr 03, 2012)
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The Acerra family had sixteen children, including twelve ball-playing boys. It was the
1930s, and many families had lots of kids. But only one had enough to field a baseball
team … with three on the bench! The Acerras were the longest-playing all-brother
team in baseball history. They loved the game, but more important, they cared for
and supported each other and stayed together as a team. Nothing life threw their way
could stop them.
Full of action, drama, and excitement, this never-before-told true story is vividly
brought to life by Audrey Vernick’s expert storytelling and Steven Salerno’s stunning
vintage-style art.


Click for more detail about We the Animals by Justin Torres We the Animals

by Justin Torres
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Aug 30, 2011)
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An exquisite, blistering debut novel. Three brothers tear their way through childhood smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from trash, hiding out when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the house as their mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn he’s Puerto Rican, she’s white and their love is a serious, dangerous thing that makes and unmakes a family many times. Life in this family is fierce and absorbing, full of chaos and heartbreak and the euphoria of belonging completely to one another. From the intense familial unity felt by a child to the profound alienation he endures as he begins to see the world, this beautiful novel reinvents the coming-of-age story in a way that is sly and punch-in-the-stomach powerful. Written in magical language with unforgettable images, this is a stunning exploration of the viscerally charged landscape of growing up, how deeply we are formed by our earliest bonds, and how we are ultimately propelled at escape velocity toward our futures.


Click for more detail about Experiments with Magnets and Metals (My Science Investigations) by Christine Taylor Butler Experiments with Magnets and Metals (My Science Investigations)

by Christine Taylor Butler
Heinemann (Aug 01, 2011)
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This book uses simple, hands-on experiments with magnets and metals to teach readers how the scientific method works.


Click for more detail about Experiments with Plants (My Science Investigations) by Christine Taylor Butler Experiments with Plants (My Science Investigations)

by Christine Taylor Butler
Heinemann (Aug 01, 2011)
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This book uses simple, hands-on experiments with plants to teach readers how the scientific method works.


Click for more detail about Experiments with Liquids (My Science Investigations) by Christine Taylor Butler Experiments with Liquids (My Science Investigations)

by Christine Taylor Butler
Heinemann (Jul 01, 2011)
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This book uses simple, hands-on experiments with liquids to teach readers how the scientific method works.


Click for more detail about My Science Investigations by Christine Taylor Butler My Science Investigations

by Christine Taylor Butler
Heinemann (Jul 01, 2011)
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Learn the scientific method while engaging in fun, exciting experiments with these books.


Click for more detail about Jamaica Tag-Along Book and CD by Juanita Havill Jamaica Tag-Along Book and CD

by Juanita Havill
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Jan 03, 2011)
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Jamaica doesn’t want a younger child to play with her, until she remembers how she felt when her older brother excluded her from his games.


Click for more detail about Nikki and Deja The Newsy News Newsletter: Book Three by Karen English Nikki and Deja The Newsy News Newsletter: Book Three

by Karen English
HMH Books for Young Readers (Jan 03, 2011)
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Newsy news is not just regular news. It’s news that’s interesting and exciting. Nikki and Deja know that there’s plenty of newsy news happening on their block andat Carver Elementary, just waiting to be reported. Luckily, Nikki has herspecial pen and notepad, Deja has the use ofAuntie Dee’s computer, andthey both have lots of ideas. Before long, the Fulton Street Newsy News Newsletter is born. At first, everyone wants to read what the girls have written. But after justone issue, some unexpected problems arise. Will Nikki and Deja’s plans to become celebrated journalists succeed? Like the first two Nikki and Deja stories, this accessible chapter book shines with emotional depth and humor, perfectly capturing the complexities and joys of elementary school girls’ friendships.


Click for more detail about Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong

by Terry Teachout
Mariner Books (Oct 07, 2010)
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Louis Armstrong is widely known as the greatest jazz musician of the twentieth century.He was aphenomenally gifted and imaginative artist, and an entertainer so irresistibly magnetic that he knocked the Beatles off the top of the charts four decades after he cut his first record. Offstage he was witty, introspective, and unexpectedly complex, a beloved colleague with an explosive temper whose larger-than-life personality was tougher and more sharp-edged than his worshiping fans ever knew.Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout has drawn on a cache of important new sources unavailable to previous biographers, including hundreds of candid after-hours recordings made by Armstrong himself, to craft a sweeping new narrative biography. Certain to be the definitive word on Armstrong for our generation, Pops paints a gripping portrait of the man, his world, and his music that will stand alongside Gary Giddins’sBing Crosby and Peter Guralnick’s Last Train to Memphis as a classic biography of a major American musician.


Click for more detail about Jimi: Sounds Like A Rainbow: A Story Of The Young Jimi Hendrix by Gary Golio Jimi: Sounds Like A Rainbow: A Story Of The Young Jimi Hendrix

by Gary Golio
Clarion Books (Oct 04, 2010)
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Jimi Hendrix was many things: a superstar, a rebel, a hero, an innovator. But first, he was a boy named Jimmy who loved to draw and paint and listen to records. A boy who played air guitar with a broomstick and longed for a real guitar of his own. A boy who asked himself a question: Could someone paint pictures with sound?

This a story of a talented child who learns to see, hear, and interpret the world around him in his own unique way. It is also a story of a determined kid with a vision, who worked hard to become a devoted and masterful artist. Jimi Hendrix—a groundbreaking performer whose music shook the very foundations of rock ’n’ roll.

Book Review

Click for more detail about The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker The Temple of My Familiar

by Alice Walker
Mariner Books (Sep 03, 2010)
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First published in 1990, The Temple of My Familiar, Alice Walker’s follow-up novel to her iconic The Color Purple, spent more than four months on the New York Times Bestseller list and was hailed by critics as a “major achievement” (Chicago Tribune). Described by the author as “a romance of the last 500,000 years,” The Temple of My Familiar follows a cast of interrelated characters, most of African descent, and each representing a different ethnic strain—ranging from diverse African tribes to the mixed bloods of Latin America—that contribute to the black experience in America.


Click for more detail about Go Like Hell  by A. J. Baime Go Like Hell

by A. J. Baime
Mariner Books (Jun 17, 2010)
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As told in the film Ford v. Ferrari, Go Like Hell transports readers to a risk-filled, glorious time in this brilliant portrait of a rivalry between two industrialists, the cars they built, and the "pilots" who would drive them to victory, or doom.By the early 1960s, the Ford Motor Company, built to bring automobile transportation to the masses, was falling behind. Young Henry Ford II, who had taken the reins of his grandfather’s company with little business experience to speak of, knew he had to do something to shake things up. Baby boomers were taking to the road in droves, looking for speed not safety, style not comfort. Meanwhile, Enzo Ferrari, whose cars epitomized style, lorded it over the European racing scene. He crafted beautiful sports cars, "science fiction on wheels," but was also called "the Assassin" because so many drivers perished while racing them. Go Like Hell tells the remarkable story of how Henry Ford II, with the help of a young visionary named Lee Iacocca and a former racing champion turned engineer, Carroll Shelby, concocted a scheme to reinvent the Ford company. They would enter the high-stakes world of European car racing, where an adventurous few threw safety and sanity to the wind. They would design, build, and race a car that could beat Ferrari at his own game at the most prestigious and brutal race in the world, something no American car had ever done.


Click for more detail about The Little Piano Girl: The Story of Mary Lou Williams, Jazz Legend by Ann Ingalls The Little Piano Girl: The Story of Mary Lou Williams, Jazz Legend

by Ann Ingalls
HMH Books for Young Readers (Jan 18, 2010)
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What if you loved music more than anything? Suppose you had just learned to play the piano. Imagine that your family has to move to a new city and you have to leave your piano behind.People don’t like you in the new citybecause of what you look like. How will you make yourself feel better? Mary Lou Williams, like Mozart, began playing thepiano when she was four; at eight she became a professional musician.She wrote and arranged music for Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and was one of the most powerful women injazz. This is the story of Mary Lou’s childhood in Pittsburgh, where she played the piano for anyone who would listen.


Click for more detail about Nikki and Deja Birthday Blues by Karen English Nikki and Deja Birthday Blues

by Karen English
HMH Books for Young Readers (Jan 18, 2010)
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The second book about Nikki and Deja, two African American third-grade girls who are best friends.Deja’s birthday is coming up, and she’s been talking about it for weeks. But just before the big day, Auntie Dee gets called away on a business trip and Deja must stay with an elderly neighbor … who cooks turnips for dinner and doesn’t even have a color TV! Worse, the machinations of spoiled Antonia, Deja’s new nemesis, threaten to ruin Deja’s birthday party plans. Like the first book, this story captures with subtlety and humor all the small betrayals and triumphs of young girls’ relationships. Readers will get a wider view of the girls’ diverse urban neighborhood, and will recognize themselves and their classmates in the colorful, deftly drawn school scenes. A more serious theme is also introduced (with a light touch) in a subplot concerning Deja’s absent father.


Click for more detail about New American Table by Marcus Samuelsson New American Table

by Marcus Samuelsson
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Oct 09, 2009)
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An award-winning chef and author celebrates the regional flavors and the diverse ethnic influences that have shaped modern American cuisine, in an illustrated full-color collection of over 300 recipes, such as Mussels With Yucca Fries and Jerk-Spiced Catf
Title: New American Table
Author: Samuelsson, Marcus/ Walters, Heidi Sacko/ Brissman, Paul (PHT)
John Wiley & Sons Inc
2009/10/26
Number of 356
Binding Type: HARDCOVER
Library of Congress: 2009001878


Click for more detail about Jamaica Is Thankful by Juanita Havill Jamaica Is Thankful

by Juanita Havill
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Oct 01, 2009)
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Jamaica’s friend Kristin cannot keep her new kitten and hopes that Jamaica will be able to give her a good home. There’s one problem—Jamaica’s brother Ossie is allergic to cats. She wants to keep the kitten, but she also wants her brother to be healthy. In the end Jamaica and Kristin realize they should be thankful for everything they already have.
Juanita Havill s down-to-earth storytelling, complemented by Anne Sibley O Brien s warm watercolors, once again bring the inner lives of children to life and show there is a lot to be thankful for."


Click for more detail about Brianna, Jamaica, and the Dance of Spring by Juanita Havill Brianna, Jamaica, and the Dance of Spring

by Juanita Havill
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Apr 01, 2009)
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Brianna and Jamaica both want to be the butterfly queen in their spring dance performance. When Brianna’s older sister gets the part, the sisters must try to be gracious about it. Full color.


Click for more detail about A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson A Wreath for Emmett Till

by Marilyn Nelson
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Jan 12, 2009)
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A Coretta Scott King and Printz honor book now in paperback. A Wreath for Emmett Till is "A moving elegy," says The Bulletin.

In 1955 people all over the United States knew that Emmett Louis Till was a fourteen-year-old African American boy lynched for supposedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. The brutality of his murder, the open-casket funeral held by his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, and the acquittal of the men tried for the crime drew wide media attention. In a profound and chilling poem, award-winning poet Marilyn Nelson reminds us of the boy whose fate helped spark the civil rights movement.


Click for more detail about Nikki and Deja: Book One by Karen English Nikki and Deja: Book One

by Karen English
HMH Books for Young Readers (Jan 12, 2009)
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Meet Nikki and Deja, who live next door to each other and are best friends. They do everything together—watch Saturday morning cartoons, play jacks, jump double Dutch at recess, and help each other with their homework for Mrs. Shelby’s third-grade class. But when an arrogant new girl arrives and Nikki and Deja form a club that would exclude her, the results are not what they expect. This warm, easy-to-read chapter book from an award-winning author captures all the joys and complexities of elementary school life—particularly friendships and cliques—with finesse and humor.


Click for more detail about Most Loved in All the World by Tonya Cherie Hegamin Most Loved in All the World

by Tonya Cherie Hegamin
HMH Books for Young Readers (Dec 20, 2008)
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An authentic and powerful account of slavery and how a handmade quilt helps a little girl leave home for freedom.

With a poet’s keen ear, Tonya Hegamin tells the account of a little girl whose mother is a secret agent on the Underground Railroad. Before sending her daughter north to freedom, the mother sews a quilt for her daughter, not only to guide her with its symbols of moss and the north star, but also to remind her always that the smiling girl in the center of the quilt is "most loved in all the world." Strikingly illustrated in unique textile collaging and expressive acrylic paintings.


Click for more detail about Reaching Out by Francisco Jiménez Reaching Out

by Francisco Jiménez
HMH Books for Young Readers (Aug 25, 2008)
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From the perspective of the young adult he was then, Francisco Jiménez describes the challenges he faced in his efforts to continue his education. During his college years, the very family solidarity that allowed Francisco to survive as a child is tested. Not only must he leave his family behind when he goes to Santa Clara University, but while Francisco is there, his father abandons the family and returns to Mexico. This is the story of how Francisco coped with poverty, with his guilt over leaving his family financially strapped, with his self-doubt about succeeding academically, and with separation. Once again his telling is honest, true, and inspiring.


Click for more detail about The River Between by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o The River Between

by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Heinemann (Aug 11, 2008)
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Christian missionaries attempt to outlaw the female circumcision ritual and in the process create a terrible rift between the two Kikuyu communities on either side of the river.


Click for more detail about Zahrah The Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor Zahrah The Windseeker

by Nnedi Okorafor
HMH Books for Young Readers (Feb 18, 2008)
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In the Ooni Kingdom, children born dada?with vines growing in their hair?are rumored to have special powers. Zahrah Tsami doesn’t know anything about that. She feels normal. Others think she’s different?they fear her. Only Dari, her best friend, isn’t afraid of her. But then something begins to happen?something that definitely marks Zahrah as different?and the only person she can tell is Dari. He pushes her to investigate, edging them both closer and closer to danger. Until Dari’s life is on the line. Only Zahrah can save him, but to do so she’ll have to face her worst fears alone, including the very thing that makes her different.


Click for more detail about Fanon by John Edgar Wideman Fanon

by John Edgar Wideman
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Feb 07, 2008)
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A philosopher, psychiatrist, and political activist, Frantz Fanon was a fierce, acute critic of racism and oppression. Born of African descent in Martinique in 1925, Fanon fought in defense of France during World War II but later against France in Algeria’s war for independence. His last book, The Wretched of the Earth, published in 1961, inspired leaders of diverse liberation movements: Steve Biko in South Africa, Che Guevara in Latin America, the Black Panthers in the States.
Wideman’s novel is disguised as the project of a contemporary African American novelist, Thomas, who undertakes writing a life of Fanon. The result is an electrifying mix of perspectives, traveling from Manhattan to Paris to Algeria to Pittsburgh. Part whodunit, part screenplay, part love story, Fanon introduces the French film director Jean-Luc Godard to the ailing Mrs. Wideman in Homewood and chases the meaning of Fanon’s legacy through our violent, post-9/11 world, which seems determined to perpetuate the evils Fanon sought to rectify.


Click for more detail about Missy Violet and Me by Barbara Hathaway Missy Violet and Me

by Barbara Hathaway
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Jan 14, 2008)
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Winner of the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award

“This appealingly nostalgic tale conveys the tenor of the time as well as the affable narrator’s growth during one momentous summer.”—Publishers Weekly “Realistic and exciting… . Great for reading aloud.”—Booklist

The summer that Viney is eleven years old is extraordinary. It takes her out of school and puts her under the wing of Missy Violet, a well-loved midwife whose wise and warm ways help teach Viney about the business of catchin’ babies. At turns scary, funny, and exhilarating, the rhythm of Viney’s rural life in the South quickens as she embraces her apprenticeship and finds her own special place as Missy Violet’s “best helper girl.”


Click for more detail about World Geography Today: Student Edition Grades 9-12 2008 by Robert Sager and David Helgren World Geography Today: Student Edition Grades 9-12 2008

by Robert Sager and David Helgren
Holt Rinehart & Winston (Jan 01, 2008)
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Good w/scuffed/dinged edges. Few folded pages. School stamp and number, a student name inside front cover, Number written on bottom page end. No markings noticed on content pages.


Click for more detail about Mother Goose Numbers on the Loose by Leo & Diane Dillon Mother Goose Numbers on the Loose

by Leo & Diane Dillon
Harcourt Children’s Books (Oct 01, 2007)
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The numbers are on the loose—hiding and dancing, skipping and laughing through the rhymes of Mother Goose! It’s a good thing Caldecott Medal-winning artists Leo and Diane Dillon have helped gather up all these mischievous numbers in a stunning celebration of counting, rhymes, and imagination. The rhymes, both familiar and lesser known,are ordered from simple (1, 2, 3) tomore complex numbers, making this acollection to grow with. The illustrations are filled with surprising wit and whimsy.And this vibrant, playfulvolume is irresistible as an introduction to Mother Goose or as a new delight for her longtime fans. Includes a note from the illustrators.


Click for more detail about Thunder Rose by Jerdine Nolen Thunder Rose

by Jerdine Nolen
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Sep 01, 2007)
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Thunder Rose vows to grow up to be more than just big and strong, thank you very kindly—and boy, does she ever! But when a whirling storm on a riotous rampage threatens, has Rose finally met her match?


Click for more detail about Black and White Airmen: Their True History by John Fleischman Black and White Airmen: Their True History

by John Fleischman
HMH Books for Young Readers (Jun 18, 2007)
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Here is the true history of a friendship that almost wasn’t.

John Leahr and Herb Heilbrun grew up in the same neighborhood and were in the same third grade class together. They were classmates”not friends”because Herb was white and John was black.

John and Herb were twenty-one when the United States entered WWII. Herb became an Army Air Forces B-17 bomber pilot. John flew P-51 fighters. Both were thrown into the brutal high-altitude bomber war against Nazi Germany, though they never met because the army was rigidly segregated”only in the air were black and white American fliers allowed to mix.

Both came safely home but it took Herb and John another fifty years to meet again and discover that their lives had run almost side by side through war and peace. Old friends at last, Herb and John launched a mission to tell young people why race once made all the difference and why it shouldn’t anymore.


Click for more detail about Pretty Salma: A Little Red Riding Hood Story from Africa by Niki Daly Pretty Salma: A Little Red Riding Hood Story from Africa

by Niki Daly
Clarion Books (Apr 01, 2007)
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When Granny asks Pretty Salma to go to the market one day, she warns her not to talk to strangers. But cunning Mr. Dog tricks Salma, and before she knows it, he’s wearing her stripy ntama, her pretty white beads, and her yellow sandals. And he’s on his way to Granny’s house! African culture and flavor infuse this inventive retelling of a favorite fairy tale, and the vibrant lively illustrations bring it to life. The result is a story that combines new and old and spans cultures as successfully as it has spanned the centuries.


Click for more detail about The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why by Jabari Asim The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why

by Jabari Asim
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Mar 26, 2007)
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A renowned cultural critic untangles the twisted history and future of racism through its most volatile word.

The N Word reveals how the term "nigger" has both reflected and spread the scourge of bigotry in America over the four hundred years since it was first spoken on our shores. Asim pinpoints Thomas Jefferson as the source of our enduring image of the ?nigger.” In a seminal but now obscure essay, Jefferson marshaled a welter of pseudoscience to define the stereotype of a shiftless child-man with huge appetites and stunted self control. Asim reveals how nineteenth-century ?science” then colluded with popular culture to amplify this slander. What began as false generalizations became institutionalized in every corner of our society: the arts and sciences, sports, the law, and on the streets.

Asim’s conclusion is as original as his premise. He argues that even when uttered with the opposite intent by hipsters and hip-hop icons, the slur helps keep blacks at the bottom of America’s socioeconomic ladder. But Asim also proves there is a place for the word in the mouths and on the pens of those who truly understand its twisted history — from Mark Twain to Dave Chappelle to Mos Def. Only when we know its legacy can we loosen this slur’s grip on our national psyche.


Click for more detail about What Your Mama Never Told You: True Stories About Sex and Love by Tara Roberts What Your Mama Never Told You: True Stories About Sex and Love

by Tara Roberts
HMH Books for Young Readers (Jan 29, 2007)
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Like big sisters sharing secrets, these everyday young adult black women bravely open their arms and bare their souls. Their intimate and insightful memoirs about sexual coming-of-age experiences reveal that the most personal moments are often, surprisingly, the most universal. Find out what your mama never told you—and let your sisters’ stories wrap you up in a big hug.


Click for more detail about Time And The River (Caribbean Writers Series) by Zee Edgell Time And The River (Caribbean Writers Series)

by Zee Edgell
Heinemann (Jan 01, 2007)
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This is a new addition to the "Caribbean Writers Series" from award-winning author, Zee Edgell. "Time and the River" is about freedom and slavery, hope and betrayal. It tells the story of people who don’t won their own land or time, or even their own bodies. Leah Lawson is the daughter of a slave owner and a slave woman in Belize. In dreaming of a better future, Leah must make some difficult choices. Her life takes drastic turns, change her from slave into mistress, and forcing her to take the lives of her family and best friend into her own hands.


Click for more detail about Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits

by Laila Lalami
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Oct 02, 2006)
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In her exciting debut, Laila Lalami evokes the grit and enduring grace that is modern Morocco and offers an authentic look at the Muslim immigrant experience today.The book begins as four Moroccans illegally cross the Strait of Gibraltar in an inflatable boat headed for Spain. There’s Murad, a gentle, educated man who’s been reduced to hustling tourists around Tangier; Halima, who’s fleeing her drunken husband and the slums of Casablanca; Aziz, who must leave behind his devoted wife to find work in Spain; and Faten, a student and religious fanatic whose faith is at odds with an influential man determined to destroy her future.

What has driven these men and women to risk their lives? And will the rewards prove to be worth the danger? Sensitively written with beauty and boldness, this is a gripping book about people in search of a better future.


Click for more detail about Third Girl from the Left by Martha Southgate Third Girl from the Left

by Martha Southgate
Mariner Books (Sep 05, 2006)
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At the center of this dazzling novel is Angela, a twenty-year-old beauty who leaves the stifling conformity of Oklahoma to search for fame during the rise of blaxploitation cinema in Los Angeles. But for her mother, Mildred, a strait-laced survivor of the 1921 Tulsa race riots, Angela’s acting career is unforgivable, and the distance between them grows into a silence that lasts for years. It is only when Angela’s daughter, Tamara, a filmmaker, sets out to close the rift between them that the women are forced to confront all that has been left unspoken in their lives.

Bold and beautifully written, Third Girl from the Left deftly explores the bonds of family and the inextricable pull of the movies.


Click for more detail about The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa by Marcus Samuelsson The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa

by Marcus Samuelsson
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Sep 01, 2006)
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"For as long as I can remember, I’ve had Africa on my mind." Award-winning chef Marcus Samuelsson may be best known for his innovative take on Scandinavian cuisine at New York’s Restaurant Aquavit, but his story begins thousands of miles away, in Africa. Born in Ethiopia and raised in Sweden by adoptive parents, his life transcends national boundaries, and his individual approach to cuisine is a global yet personal one that draws freely from many ethnic and cultural influences.In The Soul of a New Cuisine, Marcus returns to the land of his birth to explore the continent’s rich diversity of cultures and cuisines through recipes and stories from his travels in Africa. Stunning color images by award-winning photographer Gediyon Kifle bring the breadth of the African experience to life, from fishermen at sunset off the coast of Zanzibar to French baguettes loaded onto a bicycle in Senegal.Marcus shares more than 200 enticing recipes, including his own African-inspired creations and traditional dishes from all parts of Africa. You can delight in spicy stews and Barbequed Snapper from West Africa and the familiar Mediterranean flavors of dishes like Moroccan Lemon-Olive Chicken, or make your way east and south for the irresistible taste combinations of dishes such as Curried Trout with Coconut-Chili Sauce from Kenya and Apple-Squash Fritters from South Africa’s Cape Malay. Using ingredients that are readily available in American markets, the recipes are doable as well as delicious.Of course, one of the keys to authentic African cooking is the use of spice blends and rubs, which elevate simple cooking techniques to an excitingly varied and intense level. Marcus includes his favorites here, with blends that go from sweet to spicy and feature everything from hot chili peppers and peppermint leaves to sesame seeds and ginger.As he says, Africa is "a state of mind that I hope this book will help you tap into wherever you are." By cooking with a handful of this and a pinch of that, trying new foods and enjoying old ones in a new way, and lingering over meals with family and friends, you will bring the free, relaxed spirit of African cooking to your table and discover for yourself the soul of a "new" cuisine.


Click for more detail about God’s Gym: Stories by John Edgar Wideman God’s Gym: Stories

by John Edgar Wideman
Mariner Books (Aug 10, 2006)
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In God’s Gym, the celebrated author John Edgar Wideman offers stories that pulse with emotional electricity. The ten pieces here explore strength, both physical and spiritual. The collection opens with a man paying tribute to the quiet fortitude of his mother, a woman who "should wear a T-shirt: God’s Gym." In the stories that follow, Wideman delivers powerful riffs on family and fate, basketball and belief. His mesmerizing prose features guest appearances by cultural luminaries as diverse as the Harlem Globetrotters, Frantz Fanon, Thelonious Monk, and Marilyn Monroe. As always, Wideman astounds with writing that moves from the intimate to the political, from shock to transcendence.


Click for more detail about If the Creek Don’t Rise: My Life Out West with the Last Black Widow of the Civil War by Rita Williams If the Creek Don’t Rise: My Life Out West with the Last Black Widow of the Civil War

by Rita Williams
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (May 01, 2006)
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When Rita Williams was four, her mother died in a Denver boarding house. This death delivered Rita into the care of her aunt Daisy, the last surviving African American widow of a Union soldier and a maverick who had spirited her sharecropping family out of the lynching South and reinvented them as ranch hands and hunting guides out West. But one by one they slipped away, to death or to an easier existence elsewhere, leaving Rita as Daisy’s last hope to right the racial wrongs of the past and to make good on a lifetime of thwarted ambition. If the Creek Don’t Rise tells how Rita found her way out from under this crippling legacy and, instead of becoming "a perfect credit to her race," discovered how to become herself.

Set amid the harsh splendor of the Colorado Rockies, this is a gorgeous, ruthless, and unique account of the lies families live-and the moments of truth and beauty that save us.


Click for more detail about Native Guard: Poems by Natasha Trethewey Native Guard: Poems

by Natasha Trethewey
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Jan 01, 2006)
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Growing up in the Deep South, Natasha Trethewey was never told that in her hometown of Gulfport, Mississippi, black soldiers had played a pivotal role in the Civil War. Off the coast, on Ship Island, stood a fort that had once been a Union prison housing Confederate captives. Protecting the fort was the second regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards — one of the Union’s first official black units. Trethewey’s new book of poems pays homage to the soldiers who served and whose voices have echoed through her own life.

The title poem imagines the life of a former slave stationed at the fort, who is charged with writing letters home for the illiterate or invalid POWs and his fellow soldiers. Just as he becomes the guard of Ship Island’s memory, so Trethewey recalls her own childhood as the daughter of a black woman and a white man. Her parents’ marriage was still illegal in 1966 Mississippi. The racial legacy of the Civil War echoes through elegiac poems that honor her own mother and the forgotten history of her native South. Native Guard is haunted by the intersection of national and personal experience.


Click for more detail about Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves by Adam Hochschild Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves

by Adam Hochschild
Mariner Books (Dec 01, 2005)
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Adam Hochschild’s Bury the Chains is the taut, gripping account of one of the most brilliantly organized social justice campaigns in history—the fight to free the slaves of the British Empire.

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History
A National Book Award Finalist
A San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller

In early 1787, twelve men—a printer, a lawyer, a clergyman, and others united by their hatred of slavery—came together in a London printing shop and began the world’s first grassroots movement, battling for the rights of people on another continent. Masterfully stoking public opinion, the movement’s leaders pioneered a variety of techniques that have been adopted by citizens’ movements ever since, from consumer boycotts to wall posters and lapel buttons to celebrity endorsements. A deft chronicle of this groundbreaking antislavery crusade and its powerful enemies, Bury the Chains gives a little-celebrated human rights watershed its due at last.

"Bury the Chains is by far the most readable and rounded account we have of British antislavery, a campaign that…helped to change the world and can be seen as a prototype of the modern social justice movement"—Los Angeles Times Book Review


Click for more detail about Open the Unusual Door: True Life Stories of Challenge, Adventure, and Success by Black Americans by Barbara Summers Open the Unusual Door: True Life Stories of Challenge, Adventure, and Success by Black Americans

by Barbara Summers
HMH Books for Young Readers (Nov 28, 2005)
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Sometimes life offers us chances to change our direction. These opportunities can be obvious, but many times they come as a surprise and, if we’re not paying close attention, we can miss the door leading to change. All of the authors in this inspiring collection took advantage of the hand they were dealt—a chance to triumph, make a comeback, or, in some cases, simply survive. Barbara Summers has selected an intriguing collection of autobiographical essays and edited them into a thought-provoking anthology that teaches us how to recognize the right door, open it, and find the strength to walk through it.


Click for more detail about Pushkin And The Queen Of Spades: A Novel by Alice Randall Pushkin And The Queen Of Spades: A Novel

by Alice Randall
Mariner Books (May 02, 2005)
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Windsor Armstrong is a polished, Harvard-educated African American professor of Russian literature. Her son, Pushkin X, is an exceedingly famous pro football player, an achievement that impresses his mother not at all. Even more distressing, however, her beloved son has just become engaged to a gorgeous white Russian émigré who also happens to be a lap dancer.
For Windsor this predicament is no laughing matter. Determined to get to the bottom of it, she embarks on a journey into her own rich past: to her Motown childhood, where the Temptations danced across the stage and love came disguised as a sharply dressed gangster; to Harvard, where she endured the humiliation of being an unwed black teen mother; to St. Petersburg, where the verses of the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, great-grandson of an African slave, moved through her head as she made love to her own white Russian. The urge to protect her son has been Windsor’s only goal, but as she draws ever closer to the secret that has cast a shadow over her life, the identity of her son’s father, she discovers that the half-lies she has fed her boy don’t add up to the beauty of the truth.
Balancing sharp-witted humor with profundity, sexiness with psychological depth, this is an exhilarating ride straight through the racially divided heart of contemporary America , which also probes the universal question of what it means to be a good mother. Pushkin and the Queen of Spades is a provocative, enormously entertaining novel that will change the landscape of literary fiction.


Click for more detail about A Season for Mangoes by Regina Hanson A Season for Mangoes

by Regina Hanson
Clarion Books (Apr 18, 2005)
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Sareen is attending her first sit-up, a Jamaican tradition that celebrates the life of a loved one who has died. The whole village has come to share memories of Sareen’s Nana. Sareen wants to tell her stories of Nana’s last mango season and their search for the perfect mango, but she’s afraid the words won’t come or that she’ll begin to cry. It’s only when Sareen faces her fear that she realizes it’s not the sadness of Nana’s death that she’ll remember best but the joy of Nana’s life.

Set amid the rich culture and lush scenery of Jamaica, this moving book offers the hope of rediscovering joy after a loss and pays tribute to the remarkable power of story: to touch, to connect, and to heal.


Click for more detail about Little Stevie Wonder by Quincy Troupe Little Stevie Wonder

by Quincy Troupe
HMH Books for Young Readers (Apr 04, 2005)
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Eleven-year-old Stevland Judkins Morris Hardaway hit the big time when he signed a Motown recording contract. At the age of thirteen, Little Stevie Wonder had millions of fans dancing to the number-one song in the nation.

Little Stevie Wonder is the true story of a boy who lost his sight shortly after birth, grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and became one of the twentieth century’s most creative and influential musicians—an instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, musical innovator, and cultural activist.

Here in Quincy Troupe’s joyful poem and Lisa Cohen’s vibrant art is an uplifting celebration of life, peace, and music.


Click for more detail about Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart: A Novel by Alice Walker Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart: A Novel

by Alice Walker
HMH Books for Young Readers (Mar 29, 2005)
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The Pulitzer Prizewinning author of The Color Purple, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and The Temple of My Familiar now gives us a beautiful new novel that is at once a deeply moving personal story and a powerful spiritual journey. In Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart, Alice Walker has created a work that ranks among her ?nest achievements: the story of a woman’s spiritual adventure that becomes a passage through time, a quest for self, and a collision with love. Kate has always been a wanderer. A well-published author, married many times, she has lived a life rich with explorations of the natural world and the human soul. Now, at fifty-seven, she leaves her lover, Yolo, to embark on a new excursion, one that begins on the Colorado River, proceeds through the past, and flows, inexorably, into the future. As Yolo begins his own parallel voyage, Kate encounters celibates and lovers, shamans and snakes, memories of family disaster and marital discord, and emerges at a place where nothing remains but love. Told with the accessible style and deep feeling that are its author’s hallmarks, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart is Alice Walker’s most surprising achievement.From the Hardcover edition.


Click for more detail about The Sun’s Daughter by Pat Sherman The Sun’s Daughter

by Pat Sherman
Clarion Books (Mar 28, 2005)
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"A moving tale of selfishness and bravery…suitable for readalouds…a folkloric look at the seasons." BCCB Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

"Authentic, even majestic…will sow the seeds for discussions about myths and the role they play." PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Publishers Weekly

"Evocative, unusual offering…particularly in the context of comparative studies of world folklore." BOOKLIST Booklist, ALA

"The authentically detailed narrative has a nice lilt and flow, making it appropriate for sharing aloud." THE HORN BOOK Horn Book

"Charmingly told with eloquent phrasing and vocabulary…folk-art style is energetic and exuberant…will work comfortably as a read-aloud." SLJ School Library Journal


Click for more detail about Brothers and Keepers: A Memoir by John Edgar Wideman Brothers and Keepers: A Memoir

by John Edgar Wideman
Mariner Books (Jan 26, 2005)
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A haunting portrait of lives arriving at different destinies, Brothers and Keepers is John Edgar Wideman’s seminal memoir about two brothers ? one an award-winning novelist, the other a fugitive wanted for robbery and murder. Wideman recalls the capture of his younger brother Robby, details the subsequent trials that resulted in a sentence of life in prison, and provides vivid views of the American prison system.
A gripping, unsettling account, Brothers and Keepers weighs the bonds of blood, tenderness, and guilt that connect Wideman to his brother and measures the distance that lies between them.


Click for more detail about Philadelphia Fire: A Novel by John Edgar Wideman Philadelphia Fire: A Novel

by John Edgar Wideman
Mariner Books (Jan 26, 2005)
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From “one of America’s premier writers of fiction” (New York Times) comes this novel inspired by the 1985 police bombing of a West Philadelphia row house owned by the back-to-nature, Afrocentric cult known as Move. The bombing killed eleven people and started a fire that destroyed sixty other houses. At the center of the story is Cudjoe, a writer and exile who returns to his old neighborhood after spending a decade fleeing from his past, and his search for the lone survivor of the fire — a young boy who was seen running from the flames.
An impassioned, brutally honest journey through the despair and horror of life in urban America, "Philadelphia Fire isn’t a book you read so much as one you breathe" (San Francsisco Chronicle).


Click for more detail about The Power of One: Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine (Golden Kite Honors) by Dennis Brindell Fradin and Judith Bloom Fradin The Power of One: Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine (Golden Kite Honors)

by Dennis Brindell Fradin and Judith Bloom Fradin
Clarion Books (Dec 20, 2004)
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The life of civil rights leader Daisy Bates is vividly detailed in this stirring new biography by an acclaimed husband-wife team. Throughout her life, Daisy Bates worked tirelessly for civil rights as an activist, journalist, and organizer. She first captured national attention as the mentor of the nine black students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock in 1957. During this crisis President Dwight Eisenhower was forced to use federal troops to insure the admission of the students, who became known as the Little Rock Nine. In 1999, just hours after her funeral, President Bill Clinton bestowed the Congressional Gold Medal on the Little Rock Nine, and two years later Daisy Bates was honored by a state holiday in Arkansas. In this noteworthy companion to their other distinguished biographies of African Americans, Dennis and Judith Fradin have drawn upon a trove of archival material including papers, correspondence, and photographs of her life and work. They also interviewed some of her living relatives and members of the Little Rock Nine. The result is a compelling, inspiring book about the courage and determination of one woman in the face of prejudice and intolerance. Endnotes, bibliography, index.


Click for more detail about The Voice That Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights by Russell Freedman The Voice That Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights

by Russell Freedman
Clarion Books (May 25, 2004)
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”A voice like yours,” celebrated conductor Arturo Toscanini told contralto Marian Anderson, “is heard once in a hundred years.” This insightful account of the great African American vocalist considers her life and musical career in the context of the history of civil rights in this country. Drawing on Anderson’s own writings and other contemporary accounts, Russell Freedman shows readers a singer pursuing her art despite the social constraints that limited the careers of black performers in the 1920s and 1930s. Though not a crusader or a spokesperson by nature, Marian Anderson came to stand for all black artists — and for all Americans of color — when, with the help of such prominent figures as Eleanor Roosevelt, she gave her landmark 1939 performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which signaled the end of segregation in the arts.Carefully researched, expertly told, and profusely illustrated with contemporary photographs, this Newbery Honor and Sibert Medal-winning book is a moving account of the life of a talented and determined artist who left her mark on musical and social history. Through her story, Newbery Medal-winning author Russell Freedman, one of today’s leading authors of nonfiction for young readers, illuminates the social and political climate of the day and an important chapter in American history. Notes, bibliography, discography, index.


Click for more detail about Remember: The Journey to School Integration  by Toni Morrison Remember: The Journey to School Integration

by Toni Morrison
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (May 17, 2004)
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Toni Morrison has collected a treasure chest of archival photographs that depict the historical events surrounding school desegregation. These unforgettable images serve as the inspiration for Ms. Morrison’s text—a fictional account of the dialogue and emotions of the children who lived during the era of “separate but equal” schooling. Remember is a unique pictorial and narrative journey that introduces children to a watershed period in American history and its relevance to us today.


Click for more detail about Feast for 10 by Cathryn Falwell Feast for 10

by Cathryn Falwell
Clarion Books (Oct 20, 2003)
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A counting book that features an African-American family shopping for food, preparing dinner, and sitting down to eat. Lively read-aloud text paired with bright collage illustrations.


Click for more detail about Shining by Sterling Brown, Arthur P. Davis, Ulysses Lee, and Julius Lester Shining

by Sterling Brown, Arthur P. Davis, Ulysses Lee, and Julius Lester
Harcourt Children’s Books (Oct 01, 2003)
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In a small mountain village, a young girl named Shining is born. As she grows, Shining runs, plays, and smiles like other children, but she does so silently. The villagers fear and shun her, but Shining remains silent and waits for the right moment, and for the right sound, to come—a sound so true, it will win the hearts of her people … and win Shining her rightful place as their leader.
Newbery Honor author Julius Lester has created a powerful tale about the importance of remaining true to one’s self and finding one’s voice. John Clapp’s luminous paintings add a breathtaking dimension to Shining, a character as distinct and enchanting as the world she inhabits.
Notes by the author and the illustrator supplement the text.


Click for more detail about Jamaica’s Blue Marker by Juanita Havill Jamaica’s Blue Marker

by Juanita Havill
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Aug 25, 2003)
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Jamaica is friends with everyone in school except for Russell, who’s mean to other kids. Jamaica is not sorry to learn that Russell is moving away—until she learns why. Full color.


Click for more detail about Cloudy Day Sunny Day (1-Simul) by Donald Crews Cloudy Day Sunny Day (1-Simul)

by Donald Crews
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Aug 01, 2003)
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The day is gray and cloudy. It’s a good day to snuggle up with a book, a fine day for make-believe, until … the sun bursts through the clouds! Now it’s a great day to fly a kite, the perfect day to ride a bike. No matter what the weather, each new day is a fresh opportunity to stretch and to explore. Caldecott Honor recipient Donald Crews celebrates the familiar activities that keep two siblings and their parents busy—and happy—from sunrise to bedtime.


Click for more detail about Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and Its Legacy by James S. Hirsch Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and Its Legacy

by James S. Hirsch
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Jun 06, 2003)
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A best-selling author investigates the causes of the twentieth century’s deadliest race riot and how its legacy has scarred and shaped a community over the past eight decades. On a warm night in May 1921, thousands of whites, many deputized by the local police, swarmed through the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing scores of blacks, looting, and ultimately burning the neighborhood to the ground. In the aftermath, as many as 300 were dead, and 6,000 Greenwood residents were herded into detention camps. James Hirsch focuses on the de facto apartheid that brought about the Greenwood riot and informed its eighty-year legacy, offering an unprecedented examination of how a calamity spawns bigotry and courage and how it has propelled one community’s belated search for justice. Tulsa’s establishment and many victims strove to forget the events of 1921, destroying records pertaining to the riot and refusing even to talk about it. This cover-up was carried through the ensuing half-century with surprising success. Even so, the riot wounded Tulsa profoundly, as Hirsch demonstrates in a compelling combination of history, journalism, and character study. White Tulsa thrived, and the city became a stronghold of Klan activity as workingmen and high civic officials alike flocked to the Hooded Order. Meanwhile, Greenwood struggled as residents strove to rebuild their neighborhood despite official attempts to thwart them. As the decades passed, the economic and social divides between white and black worlds deepened. Through the 1960s and 1970s, urban renewal helped to finish what the riot had started, blighting Greenwood. Paradoxically, however, the events of 1921 saved Tulsa from the racial strife that befell so many other American cities in the 1960s, as Tulsans white and black would do almost anything to avoid a reprise of the riot. Hirsch brings the riot’s legacy up to the present day, tracing how the memory of the massacre gradually revived as academics and ordinary citizens of all colors worked tirelessly to uncover evidence of its horrors. Hirsch also highlights Tulsa’s emergence at the forefront of the burgeoning debate over reparations. RIOT AND REMEMBRANCE shows vividly, chillingly, how the culture of Jim Crow caused not only the grisly incidents of 1921 but also those of Rosewood, Selma, and Watts, as well as less widely known atrocities. It also addresses the cruel irony that underlies today’s battles over affirmative action and reparations: that justice and reconciliation are often incompatible goals. Finally, Hirsch details how Tulsa may be overcoming its horrific legacy, as factions long sundered at last draw together.

Book Review

Click for more detail about When Dad Killed Mom by Julius Lester When Dad Killed Mom

by Julius Lester
HMH Books for Young Readers (Jun 01, 2003)
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Jenna and Jeremy knew their parents’ marriage was in trouble. But no one could have predicted what would come next. Now with Mom dead and Dad in jail, Jenna and Jeremy must re-create a family of their own. But each guards a secret that could send their fragile new lives into a tailspin.
Newbery Honor winner Julius Lester paints a dramatic portrait of a family forced to confront the unimaginable.
Reader’s guide included.


Click for more detail about Meridian by Alice Walker Meridian

by Alice Walker
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (May 26, 2003)
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Meridian Hill is a young woman at an Atlanta college attempting to find her place in the revolution for racial and social equality. She discovers the limits beyond which she will not go for the cause, but despite her decision not to follow the path of some of her peers, she makes significant sacrifices in order to further her beliefs. Working in a campaign to register African American voters, Meridian cares broadly and deeply for the people she visits, and, while her coworkers quit and move to comfortable homes, she continues to work in the deep South despite a paralyzing illness. Meridian’s nonviolent methods, though seemingly less radical than the methods of others, prove to be an effective means of furthering her beliefs.


Click for more detail about The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker The Third Life of Grange Copeland

by Alice Walker
Mariner Books (May 26, 2003)
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Despondent over the futility of life in the South, black tenant farmer Grange Copeland leaves his wife and son in Georgia to head North. After meeting an equally humiliating existence there, he returns to Georgia, years later, to find his son, Brownfield, imprisoned for the murder of his wife. As the guardian of the couple’s youngest daughter, Grange Copeland is looking at his third — and final — chance to free himself from spiritual and social enslavement.


Click for more detail about You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down by Alice Walker You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down

by Alice Walker
Mariner Books (May 19, 2003)
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Anatural evolution from the earlier, much-acclaimed collection In Love& Trouble, these fourteen provocative and often humorous stories showwomen oppressed but not defeated.These are hopeful stories about love,lust, fame, and cultural thievery, the delight of new lovers, and therediscovery of old friends, affirmed even across self-imposed color lines.


Click for more detail about In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women by Alice Walker In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women

by Alice Walker
Mariner Books (May 19, 2003)
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Admirers of The Color Purple will find in these stories more evidenceof Walker’s power to depict black women—women who varygreatly in background yet are bound together by what they share incommon.Taken as a whole, their stories form an enlightening,disturbing view of life in the South.


Click for more detail about In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose by Alice Walker In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose

by Alice Walker
Mariner Books (May 19, 2003)
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In this, her first collection of nonfiction, Alice Walker speaks out as a
black woman, writer, mother, and feminist in thirty-six pieces ranging
from the personal to the political. Among the contents are essays about
other writers, accounts of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the
antinuclear movement of the 1980s, and a vivid memoir of a scarring
childhood injury and her daughter’s healing words.


Click for more detail about Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez by Kathleen Krull Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez

by Kathleen Krull
HMH Books for Young Readers (Mar 01, 2003)
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Cesar Chavez is known as one of America’s greatest civil rights leaders. When he led a 340-mile peaceful protest march through California, he ignited a cause and improved the lives of thousands of migrant farmworkers. But Cesar wasn’t always a leader. As a boy, he was shy and teased at school. His family slaved in the fields for barely enough money to survive. Cesar knew things had to change, and he thought that—maybe—he could help change them. So he took charge. He spoke up. And an entire country listened. An author’s note provides historical context for the story of Cesar Chavez’s life.


Click for more detail about Hoop Roots by John Edgar Wideman Hoop Roots

by John Edgar Wideman
Mariner Books (Feb 06, 2003)
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A multilayered memoir of basketball, family, home, love, and race, John Edgar Wideman"s Hoop Roots brings "a touch of Proust to the blacktop" (Time) as it tells of the author’s love for a game he can no longer play. Beginning with the scruffy backlot playground he discovered in Pittsburgh some fifty years ago, Wideman works magical riffs that connect black music, language, culture, and sport. His voice modulates from nostalgic to outraged, from scholarly to streetwise, in describing the game that has sustained his passion throughout his life.


Click for more detail about Songs of Silence by Curdella Forbes Songs of Silence

by Curdella Forbes
Heinemann Educational Books (Jan 17, 2003)
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A sequence of beautifully crafted tales, Songs of Silence is a colourful patchwork of observations of life in rural Jamaica, as seen through the eyes of a young girl. Held together by the sure and simple voice of a child, this powerful collection is interspersed with the whisper of adult reflection, rendering the accounts at once sensuous and disarmingly honest.

Inhabiting an elusive space between what is said and what is felt, what is conveyed and what is perceived, silence becomes a metaphor of rage and fear, of loneliness and contentment, confusion and clarification in these songs that explore social change and individual growth.

Oscillating between Creole and Standard English, Songs of Silence is an accomplished piece of writing distinguished by an extraordinary sophistication of language and stylistic confidence. Relayed with a rare intimacy and detail, recollections are translated into a series of tales in which the narrator becomes a mouthpiece for a multiplicity of voices, each with their own story to tell.

This novel comprises a series of eight linked episodes, all of which focus on different members of a rural community in Jamaica, seen through the eyes of a young girl growing up and remembered by the adult she became.


Click for more detail about Remembering Manzanar: Life in a Japanese Relocation Camp by Michael L. Cooper Remembering Manzanar: Life in a Japanese Relocation Camp

by Michael L. Cooper
Clarion Books (Nov 25, 2002)
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In this close look at the first relocation camp built for Japanese evacuees living on the West Coast after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, social historian Michael Cooper makes extensive use of the actual words”from diaries, journals, memoirs, and news accounts”of the people who were held behind barbed wire in the high California desert. Many were American citizens who felt betrayed by their country. They had to leave their jobs, their homes, and their friends and go live in crowded barracks, eat in noisy mess halls, and do without supplies or books for work or schooling. They showed remarkable bravery and resilience as they tried to lead normal lives, starting their own schools, playing baseball, attending Saturday night dances, and publishing their own newspaper. Archival photographs, some by Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange, augment the informative text. Manzanar is now a National Historic Site and hosts an annual pilgrimage that is attended by former internees, their families, and friends. Endnotes, Internet resources, index.


Click for more detail about If I Only Had a Horn: Young Louis Armstrong by Roxane Orgill If I Only Had a Horn: Young Louis Armstrong

by Roxane Orgill
HMH Books for Young Readers (Aug 25, 2002)
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Roxane Orgill’s vivid words and Leonard Jenkins’s dramatic pictures combine to tell the story of a boy who grew up to be a giant of jazz?the legendary and beloved Louis Armstrong. As a poor boy in New Orleans, where music was everywhere?dancing out of doorways, singing on street corners, crying from the cornet of the great Joe Oliver for all to hear?Louis longed for a horn so that he too could sing, bring home pennies, and, most of all, tap happy-feet blues till the sun rose. It wasn’t going to be easy. Many things, not all of them good, had to happen before he got his horn. But when at last he did, he sent music spiraling up into the New Orleans night sky like a spinning top gone crazy.


Click for more detail about Harcourt School Publishers Trophies: Advanced-Level  Grade 2 G. Hopper’s Summer Fun by Evelyn Coleman Harcourt School Publishers Trophies: Advanced-Level Grade 2 G. Hopper’s Summer Fun

by Evelyn Coleman
Harcourt Children’s Books (Jan 01, 2002)
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Click for more detail about MIM’s Christmas Jam by Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney MIM’s Christmas Jam

by Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Oct 01, 2001)
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The best part of Christmas is the whole family savoring Mim’s belly-hum jam "together." But this Christmas, Pap is far away in New York City, digging a hole for something called the subway, and his family is missing him something awful. Pap aches to be home, but the heartless foremen of his dig site have decided there will be no break, not even for Christmas. It looks like it’s going to be one lonely holiday for everyone … until young Saraleen and Royce send their pap a gift that may just inspire a Christmas miracle.
The recipient of a Coretta Scott King Author Honor and a two-time Caldecott Honor illustrator have created a warm and magical holiday classic about the power of love, complete with the recipe for Mim’s Christmas jam.


Click for more detail about Jamaica and the Substitute Teacher by Juanita Havill Jamaica and the Substitute Teacher

by Juanita Havill
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Sep 24, 2001)
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The appealing young heroine of four previous picture books, Jamaica here thoroughly enjoys a busy day with an imaginative substitute teacher who appreciates her quick intelligence and enthusiasm. All is well until spelling-test time, when Jamaica can’t spell a word and, seeing her friend Briana’s paper, copies it. Conscience wins out and Jamaica confesses. The teacher’s response is a sotto voce lesson to all. "You know, Jamaica, you don’t have to be perfect to be special in my class. All my students are special. I’m glad you’re one of them." A good and special book. A 1999 Parents’ Choice(R) Recommendation.
Parent’s Choice (R)

Doing her best to impress her admirable new substitute teacher, Jamaica earns praise for finding a hidden object, reading aloud, and correctly completing a math puzzle. When it comes time for the spelling test, however, she realizes that she has forgotten to study-and so she copies. When her conscience prompts her to confess what she has done, the teacher helps her to understand that she doesn’t have to be perfect to be special. As she has in her other books about Jamaica, Havill treats the moral dilemmas of childhood with sensitivity and respect. Jamaica may behave badly, but she’s a thoroughly likable child learning to take responsibility for her own actions. Somewhat stiff but warmly colored illustrations depict a cheerful, diverse, contemporary classroom and a sympathetic main character.
Horn Book

Jamaica (Jamaica and Brianna, 1993, etc.) is back in another a gentle story, and in for another moral dilemma. Her class has a calm, smiling substitute teacher, Mrs. Duval, who explains that while the regular teacher is absent, ``I plan for us to work hard, but we’ll have fun, too.’’ Jamaica earns high praise for her reading aloud, for finding the hidden penguin, and for answering math puzzles, but when she gets to the spelling test, she can’t remember how to spell ``calf.’’ Yielding to temptation, she looks at her friend’s paper. The tests are corrected, and she gets 100%, but Jamaica knows she copied and doesn’t turn the paper in, later confessing (unprompted) to her behavior. The teacher praises Jamaica’s courage in admitting she cheated, and says, ``You don’t have to be perfect to be special in my class. All my students are special. I’m glad you’re one of them.’’ The softly colored pastel drawings show Jamaica, her range of emotions, appealing classmates, and the teacher’s kindly nature. This sensitive treatment of the topic makes the book ideal for group discussion.
Kirkus Reviews


Click for more detail about The Wind Done Gone: A Novel by Alice Randall The Wind Done Gone: A Novel

by Alice Randall
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Jun 01, 2001)
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In a brilliant rejoinder and an inspired act of literary invention, Alice Randall explodes the world created in Margaret Mitchell’s famous 1936 novel, the work that more than any other has defined our image of the antebellum South. Imagine simply that the black characters peopling that world were completely different, not egregious, one-dimensional stereotypes but fully alive, complex human beings. And then imagine, quite plausibly, that at the center of this world moves an illegitimate mulatto woman, and that this woman, Cynara, Cinnamon, or Cindy — beautiful and brown — gets to tell her story.

Cindy is born into a world in which she is unacknowledged by her plantation-owning father and passed over by her mother in favor of her white charges. Sold off like so much used furniture, she eventually makes her way back to Atlanta to take up with a prominent white businessman, only to leave him for an aspiring politician of her own color. Moving from the Deep South to the exhilarating freedom of Reconstruction Washington, with its thriving black citizenry of statesmen, professionals, and strivers of every persuasion, Cindy experiences firsthand the promise of the new era at its dizzying peak, just before it begins to slip away.

Alluding to events in Mitchell’s novel but ingeniously and ironically transforming them, THE WIND DONE GONE is an exquisitely written, emotionally complex story of a strong, resourceful black woman breaking away from the damaging world of the Old South to emerge into her own, a person capable of not only receiving but giving love, as daughter, lover, and mother. A passionate love story, a wrenching portrait of a tangled mother-daughter relationship, and a book that gives a voice to those history has silenced, THE WIND DONE GONE is an elegant literary achievement of significant political force and a novel whose time has finally come.


Click for more detail about Rails Under My Back by Jeffery Renard Allen Rails Under My Back

by Jeffery Renard Allen
Mariner Books (Mar 19, 2001)
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A dazzling family saga that brilliantly reflects the reality of the African-American experience in the United States

Hatch and Jesus Jones are cousins on their fathers’ side and on their mothers’ side, and you can’t have a family much more bound than that. And family is the most important entity for these young men, even when family seems to be defined by abandonment. Rails Under My Back traces these two men from one form of bondage or freedom to another, from one job to another, as they face down danger and try to come to terms with their family’s past.

This ambitious novel, which has been hailed by critics nationwide as a rare achievement on the level of fiction by Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Richard Wright, is the communal expression of a century of African-American life in America, with its imagery of exodus and exile, departure and destiny. It wields extraordinary literary, religious, and historical power, and announces the triumphant debut of a most powerful and utterly original voice.


Click for more detail about A Pocketful of Poems by Nikki Grimes A Pocketful of Poems

by Nikki Grimes
Clarion Books (Jan 22, 2001)
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Tiana has a pocketful of words: green words like spring, night words like moon, and words with wings, like angel. Each word is the inspiration for a pair of poems—one, lyrical free verse and the other, haiku. The paired poems reflect Tiana’s lively spirit and urban outlook and are showcased in Javaka Steptoe’s inventive collages, which include a wide range of materials, from faucet handles to pumpkin seeds to a hand-sculpted, gilded alphabet. A fusion of two remarkable creative talents, A Pocketful of Poems is an engaging portrait of a down-to-earth girl who has a way with words, as well as a tantalizing introduction to poetry. Author’s note on haiku.


Click for more detail about The New Tribe by Buchi Emecheta The New Tribe

by Buchi Emecheta
Heinemann (Dec 29, 2000)
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When a baby girl is abandoned at birth, Reverend Arlington and his wife Ginny are only too happy to adopt her. The media cover this moving story, and a Nigerian woman living in England takes more than a passing interest in the Arlingtons. She decides that they world provide the right Christian home for her own baby, Chester. Shortly afterwards, Chester is delivered to social services with a letter explaining that the Arlingtons should be his new parents. So young Chester enters the vicarage of the sleepy seaside village of St Simon. He is the only black child for miles around.

"The New Tribe" tells the story of Chester’s long search for his true identity, and the challenges he faces as a black child in a white family.


Click for more detail about Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters by Andrea Davis Pinkney Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters

by Andrea Davis Pinkney
Gulliver Books (Sep 01, 2000)
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Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus and sparked a boycott that changed America. Harriet Tubman helped more than three hundred slaves escape the South on the Underground Railroad. Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. The lives these women led are part of an incredible story about courage in the face of oppression; about the challenges and triumphs of the battle for civil rights; and about speaking out for what you believe in—even when it feels like no one is listening. Andrea Davis Pinkney’s moving text and Stephen Alcorn’s glorious portraits celebrate the lives of ten bold women who lit the path to freedom for generations.


Click for more detail about Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World’s Fastest Woman by Kathleen Krull Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World’s Fastest Woman

by Kathleen Krull
HMH Books for Young Readers (Feb 01, 2000)
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Before Wilma Rudolph was five years old, polio had paralyzed her left leg. Everyone said she would never walk again. But Wilma refused to believe it. Not only would she walk again, she vowed, she’d run. And she did run—all the way to the Olympics, where she became the first American woman to earn three gold medals in a single olympiad. This dramatic and inspiring true story is illustrated in bold watercolor and acrylic paintings by Caldecott Medal-winning artist David Diaz.


Click for more detail about Africans In America: America’s Journey Through Slavery by Charles Johnson and Patricia Smith, Africans In America: America’s Journey Through Slavery

by Charles Johnson and Patricia Smith,
Mariner Books (Nov 11, 1999)
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A riveting narrative history of America, from the 1607 landing in Jamestown to the brink of the Civil War, Africans in America tells the shared history of Africans and Europeans as seen through the lens of slavery. It is told from the point of view of the Africans who arrived in shackles and endured the terrible dichotomy of this new land founded on the ideal of liberty but dedicated to the perpetuation of slavery. Meticulously researched, this book weaves together the experiences of the colonists, slaves, free and fugitive blacks, and abolitionists to present an utterly original document, a startling and moving drama of the effects of slavery and racism on our conflicted national identity. The result transcends history as we were taught it and transforms the way we see our past.


Click for more detail about Two Cities: A Love Story by John Edgar Wideman Two Cities: A Love Story

by John Edgar Wideman
Mariner Books (Sep 30, 1999)
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A redemptive, healing novel, Two Cities brings to brilliant culmination the themes John Edgar Wideman has developed in fourteen previous acclaimed books. It is a story of bridges — bridges spanning the rivers of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, bridges arching over the rifts that have divided our communities, our country, our hearts. Narrated in the bluesy voices of its three main characters, Two Citiesis a simple love story, but it is also about the survival of an endangered black urban community and the ways that people discover for redeeming themselves in a society that is failing them. With its indelible images of confrontation and outrage, matched in equal measure by lasting impressions of hope, Two Cities is a compassionate, lacerating, and nourishing novel.


Click for more detail about King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

by Adam Hochschild
Mariner Books (Sep 03, 1999)
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In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million—all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. Heroic efforts to expose these crimes eventually led to the first great human rights movement of the twentieth century, in which everyone from Mark Twain to the Archbishop of Canterbury participated.

King Leopold’s Ghost is the haunting account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries, travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found themselves witnesses to a holocaust.

Adam Hochschild brings this largely untold story alive with the wit and skill of a Barbara Tuchman. Like her, he knows that history often provides a far richer cast of characters than any novelist could invent. Chief among them is Edmund Morel, a young British shipping agent who went on to lead the international crusade against Leopold. Another hero of this tale, the Irish patriot Roger Casement, ended his life on a London gallows.

Two courageous black Americans, George Washington Williams and William Sheppard, risked much to bring evidence of the Congo atrocities to the outside world. Sailing into the middle of the story was a young Congo River steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And looming above them all, the duplicitous billionaire King Leopold II. With great power and compassion, King Leopold’s Ghost will brand the tragedy of the Congo—too long forgotten—onto the conscience of the West.


Click for more detail about My Rows and Piles of Coins by Tololwa M. Mollel My Rows and Piles of Coins

by Tololwa M. Mollel
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Aug 28, 1999)
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"I emptied my secret money box, arranged the coins in piles and the piles in rows …" The market is full of wonderful things, but Saruni is saving his precious coins for a red and blue bicycle. How happy he will be when he can help his mother carry heavy loads to market on his very own bicycle—and how disappointed he is to discover that he hasn’t saved nearly enough! Determination and generosity are at the heart of this satisfying tale, set in Tanzania and illustrated with glowing watercolors that capture the warmth of Saruni’s family and the excitement of market day.


Click for more detail about The Street: A Novel by Ann Petry The Street: A Novel

by Ann Petry
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Mar 28, 1999)
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THE STREET tells the poignant, often heartbreaking story of Lutie Johnson, a young black woman, and her spirited struggle to raise her son amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of Harlem in the late 1940s. Originally published in 1946 and hailed by critics as a masterwork, The Street was Ann Petry’s first novel, a beloved bestseller with more than a million copies in print. Its haunting tale still resonates today.


Click for more detail about When the Beginning Began: Stories about God, the Creatures, and Us by Julius Lester When the Beginning Began: Stories about God, the Creatures, and Us

by Julius Lester
HMH Books for Young Readers (Mar 15, 1999)
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This book is astonishing, daring, compelling, and confirms Lester??s preeminence among storytellers. ?—Jane Yolen

If we weren’??t there, how can we really know how the world began? Could it be that God even made a mistake or two when creating the world? Using Jewish legend and his own translations from the Book of Genesis, master storyteller Julius Lester has created a collection of Bible stories like no other. Written especially for readers who might not make their way to the stories of the Bible otherwise, these tales are a welcome opening to a glorious world that will touch the spirit of all readers—no matter what religion guides them.


Click for more detail about Damballah (Homewood Trilogy) by John Edgar Wideman Damballah (Homewood Trilogy)

by John Edgar Wideman
Mariner Books (Jul 06, 1998)
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This collection of interrelated stories spans the history of Homewood, a Pittsburgh community founded by a runaway slave. With stunning lyricism, Wideman sings of "dead children in garbage cans, of gospel and basketball, of lost gods and dead fathers" (John Leonard). It is a celebration of people who, in the face of crisis, uphold one another—with grace, courage, and dignity.


Click for more detail about Sent for You Yesterday by John Edgar Wideman Sent for You Yesterday

by John Edgar Wideman
Mariner Books (Apr 15, 1998)
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Reimagining the black neighborhood of his youth Homewood, Pittsburgh -Wideman creates a dazzling and evocative milieu. From the wild and uninhibited 1920s to the narcotized 1970s, "he establishes aamythological and symbolic link between character and landscape, language and plot, that in the hands of a less visionary writer might be little more than stale sociology" (New York Times Book Review).


Click for more detail about The Great Migrations 1880S-1912 (History of Multicultural America) by William L. Katz The Great Migrations 1880S-1912 (History of Multicultural America)

by William L. Katz
Steck-Vaughn Publishing (Apr 01, 1998)
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Describes the massive wave of immigration experienced by the United States between 1880 and World War I and the experiences of the immigrants from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia


Click for more detail about Amistad Rising: A Story of Freedom by Veronica Chambers Amistad Rising: A Story of Freedom

by Veronica Chambers
Harcourt Children’s Books (Mar 01, 1998)
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Joseph Cinqué is afraid he’ll never see his family again. Kidnapped by slave traders and sold at auction, he finds himself chained in the hull of a cramped ship, Amistad, with more than fifty other Africans—including a few children. Cinqué must do something. But what? In this truly epic adventure, Joseph Cinqué wants only one thing: freedom. But what he achieves, with the help of former president John Quincy Adams, is far, far greater—Joseph Cinqué makes history.


Click for more detail about Shake Shake Shake by Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney Shake Shake Shake

by Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Oct 01, 1997)
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Help boil the greens, flip the fish, and slice the pie for a mouth-watering family meal in I Smell Honey, then join the fun as a baby boy discovers the unique features that make his face so special in Pretty Brown Face. In Shake Shake Shake and Watch Me Dance, explore the joys of rhythm and movement. These spirited board books celebrate the loving closeness of an African American family.


Click for more detail about Trespassing: My Sojourn in the Halls of Privilege by Gwendolyn M. Parker Trespassing: My Sojourn in the Halls of Privilege

by Gwendolyn M. Parker
Houghton Mifflin (Oct 01, 1997)
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In this autobiographical work, Parker describes her childhood in a middle-class black neighborhood in Durham, North Carolina, her encounters with black militancy at Radcliffe University, the prejudice she experienced working as an attorney at a conservative Wall Street firm and at American Express, and her decision to leave her high-paying, corporate career in 1986 and pursue her dream of being a novelist.


Click for more detail about The Cattle Killing by John Edgar Wideman The Cattle Killing

by John Edgar Wideman
Mariner Books (Sep 15, 1997)
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In plague-ridden eighteenth-century Philadelphia, a young itinerant black preacher searches for a mysterious, endangered African woman. His struggle to find her and save them both plummets them both into the nightmare of a society violently splitting itself into white and black. Spiraling outward from the core image of a cattle killing—the Xhosa people’s ritual destruction of their herd in a vain attempt to resist European domination—the novel expands its narrator’s search for meaning and love into the America, Europe and South Africa of yesterday and today.


Click for more detail about Don’t Erase Me: Stories by Carolyn Ferrell Don’t Erase Me: Stories

by Carolyn Ferrell
Houghton Mifflin (Jun 01, 1997)
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The first collection of short stories by a noted black writer portrays the lives of Black teenagers in New York’s South Bronx, where, in the title story, a woman recounts her life after learning she has AIDS.

This remarkable debut collection introduces a wholly new original young voice to fiction by and about African Americans. Ferrell’s remarkable stories show young people on the verge of being erased from society—but determined to endure. They are black or biracial, poor or from broken families, almost-adults navigating a treacherous world. Yet their voices—incandescently street-smart—speak of passion, of connection, of hope wherever they can find it.


Click for more detail about The Haygoods Of Columbus: A Love Story by Wil Haygood The Haygoods Of Columbus: A Love Story

by Wil Haygood
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Apr 27, 1997)
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Wil Haygood’s memoir of his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, is an uplifting and unsparing celebration of the ties that bind all loving American families. The lives of the Haygood clan - grandmother a hotel cook, mother a nightlife-loving waitress, father mostly absent, one brother a legendary pimp, the other a star-crossed dreamer, sisters whose fates included very little disposable income - were intertwined with that of Mount Vernon Avenue, a seductive street of shops, juke joints, and speakeasies at the epicenter of Columbus’s black community. Wil loved that avenue. Gifted and ambitious, he eventually found his first reporting terrain there, writing for the local paper, The Call & Post, while the first waves of urban renewal began to shake and shift the city of his childhood. Haygood tells here of his early passions: his fierce love for his restless mother, his enthusiasm for fishing in the Olentangy River, his adolescent love of basketball, which drove him to ride buses surreptitiously


Click for more detail about Working Cotton by Sherley Anne Williams Working Cotton

by Sherley Anne Williams
HMH Books for Young Readers (Feb 15, 1997)
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This child’s view of the long day’s work in the cotton fields, simply expressed in a poet’s resonant language, is a fresh and stirring look at migrant family life. “With its restrained poetic text and impressionist paintings, this is a picture book for older readers, too.”—Booklist


Click for more detail about Pretty Brown Face: Family Celebration Board Books by Andrea Davis Pinkney Pretty Brown Face: Family Celebration Board Books

by Andrea Davis Pinkney
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Feb 01, 1997)
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Help boil the greens, flip the fish, and slice the pie for a mouth-watering family meal in I Smell Honey, then join the fun as a baby boy discovers the unique features that make his face so special in Pretty Brown Face. In Shake Shake Shake and Watch Me Dance, explore the joys of rhythm and movement. These spirited board books celebrate the loving closeness of an African American family.


Click for more detail about And All Our Wounds Forgiven by Julius Lester And All Our Wounds Forgiven

by Julius Lester
Mariner Books (Jan 17, 1996)
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A novel about the civil rights movement told in four voices-those of assassinated leader John Calvin Marshall; his passionate white mistress, Lisa Adams; his widow, Andrea; and his chief lieutenant, Bobby Card. Harvest American Writing series


Click for more detail about The Multicultural Math Classroom: Bringing in the World by Claudia Zaslavsky The Multicultural Math Classroom: Bringing in the World

by Claudia Zaslavsky
Heinemann (Dec 04, 1995)
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All over the world, in all eras of history, people have developed mathematical ideas to meet their needs and interests. They count objects, measure quantities, invent calendars, plan buildings, design works of art, and even play games involving math. Although each society solves these problems in its own way, the concepts are common to all. Claudia Zaslavsky’s new book introduces a multi- cultural perspective to the elementary and middle grade math curriculum, revealing how such a perspective can enrich the learning of all students-whatever their gender, ethnic/racial heritage, or socioeconomic status. Students learn that mathematics was created by real people attempting to solve real problems. They’re asked to solve the same kinds of problems and to extend their problem solving skills to issues within their communities. Zaslavsky begins by presenting a rationale for multicultural math education and describing the work of several educators. Then, she focuses on the activities themselves, providing practical suggestions and real life applications. Children have the opportunity to learn counting words in different languages and locations of the societies under discussion. The book provides background information on each topic’s history and development, as well as references for both teachers and students. The Multicultural Math Classroom inspires cooperation, creativity, and critical thinking. Students of diverse interests and achievement levels will take pride in the contributions of their people and learn to appreciate the accomplishments of others.


Click for more detail about Jamaica’s Blue Marker by Juanita Havill Jamaica’s Blue Marker

by Juanita Havill
Harcourt Brace and Company (Sep 25, 1995)
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Jamaica was friends with everyone in school—except for Russell. No wonder—Russell was a mean brat. He spoiled her picture in art class. At recess, he threw sand and chased little kids. So Jamaica wasn’t sorry to learn that Russell was going to move away. Until she learned something that changed her mind.


Click for more detail about Tap-Tap by Karen Lynn Williams Tap-Tap

by Karen Lynn Williams
Clarion Books (Sep 18, 1995)
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After helping her mother sell fruit all day in the hot marketplace, Sasifi uses her newly earned coins for a coveted ride home in a tap-tap, a Haitian jitney… . The smoothly written text is enhanced by beautiful watercolor paintings, done in the tranquil and shimmering hues of the Caribbean, that capture the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and textures of the vibrant Haitian countryside and its distinctive populace. A satisfying journey. Booklist, ALA

Add this simple story about Haiti to the growing list of high-quality picture books set in the Caribbean. Kirkus Reviews

Lively storytelling and illustrations … There are many humorous moments in this sweet slice-of-life story; its brisk pace will keep youngsters engaged. School Library Journal


Click for more detail about World War II to the New Frontier, 1940-1963 (History of Multicultural America) by William L. Katz World War II to the New Frontier, 1940-1963 (History of Multicultural America)

by William L. Katz
Steck-Vaughn Publishing (May 01, 1995)
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Chronicles the tumultous era from World War II to John F. Kennedy, covering such events as Japanese Americans in internment camps, post-war women’s roles, the communist scare, and the battle for civil rights.


Click for more detail about Ugly Ways by Tina McElroy Ansa Ugly Ways

by Tina McElroy Ansa
Mariner Books (Jan 17, 1995)
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The bestselling tale-powerful, compassionate, humorous-of the three Lovejoy sisters reunited in their hometown of Mulberry, Georgia, on the occasion of their mother’s death. As the emotionally scarred Lovejoys prepare for their mother’s funeral, the spirit of the selfish and manipulative Mudear hovers above them, complaining about her daughters’ “ugly ways” in death as she did in life.


Click for more detail about Dear Benjamin Banneker by Andrea Davis Pinkney Dear Benjamin Banneker

by Andrea Davis Pinkney
Gulliver Books (Oct 31, 1994)
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Throughout his life Banneker was troubled that all blacks were not free. And so, in 1791, he wrote to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who had signed the Declaration of Independence. Banneker attacked the institution of slavery and dared to call Jefferson a hypocrite for owning slaves. Jefferson responded. This is the story of Benjamin Banneker—his science, his politics, his morals, and his extraordinary correspondence with Thomas Jefferson.


Click for more detail about Essays on African Writing, I: A Re-Evaluation by Abdulrazak Gurnah Essays on African Writing, I: A Re-Evaluation

by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Heinemann Educational Books (Sep 01, 1994)
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This collection of essays takes a fresh look at major literary figures from the world of African writing in the late 20th century. It reappraises literary criticism to date, and challenges readers’ assumptions.


Click for more detail about These Same long Bones by Gwendolyn M. Parker These Same long Bones

by Gwendolyn M. Parker
Houghton Mifflin (Apr 01, 1994)
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After bank president Sirus McDougald’s daughter dies, he must recover from grief in time to prevent white power brokers from destroying the cohesion of his middle-class, segregated, southern black community.

In this somber debut, Parker considers community loyalty, racism and the grieving process. The three-part narrative, incorporating flashbacks and flash-forwards, concerns a middle-class black neighborhood in Durham, N.C. The story opens in 1947 with funeral preparations for young Mattie, killed in a fall from her backyard slide. Mattie’s father, Sirus McDougald, is a respected local banker and insurance man who is light-skinned enough to pass for white but has recently rebuffed a proposition from white businessmen seeking to profit from a housing project for blacks.

Looking ahead, Parker reveals a debilitated Sirus who, having accepted the project, has discovered substandard buildings on the site. Sirus knows that going through with the deal means abandoning his heritage and honor. There is no appeal for racial harmony here; Parker’s characters are given no cause to trust white folk, a narrative fact reflected in their blunt observations and readiness to suspect that whites may be behind Mattie’s death. But the circumstances of Mattie’s death turn out to be incidental in this story that never takes flight and in which events and characters are used mainly as devices to prompt reflections on larger issues. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Click for more detail about Kehinde by Buchi Emecheta Kehinde

by Buchi Emecheta
Heinemann (Feb 22, 1994)
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Kehinde is a Nigerian woman, unsure of herself, not quite certain she has the right to be happy. With her husband, Albert, she has made a home in London, and has a promising career when Albert decides they should return to Nigeria. Kehinde is loath to do so, and joins him later, reluctantly, only to discover that he has taken a second, younger wife. Her years in England have left Kehinde unwilling and unprepared to reembrace Nigerian social mores; and unable to accept the situation, she returns to London.


Click for more detail about Great Society to the Reagan Era (History of Multicultural America) 1964-1990 by William L. Katz Great Society to the Reagan Era (History of Multicultural America) 1964-1990

by William L. Katz
Steck-Vaughn Publishing (Jan 01, 1993)
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Click for more detail about Exploration to the War of 1812 (A History of Multicultural America) by William L. Katz Exploration to the War of 1812 (A History of Multicultural America)

by William L. Katz
Steck-Vaughn Publishing (Oct 01, 1992)
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A look at American history from "discovery" to the War of 1812 discusses the clash between native American and European cultures, the forced arrival of Africans, the opening of the southwest, and more.


Click for more detail about The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond by Biyi Bandele The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond

by Biyi Bandele
Heinemann Educational Books (Oct 01, 1992)
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Capturing the yearning for something of value as well as the decaying standards, militarism, and poverty of recent Nigeria, this is a novel within a novel. Framed within the story of a relationship between student and literary teacher are the teacher’s own writings about a lover’s former boyfriend.


Click for more detail about Teammates by Peter Golenbock Teammates

by Peter Golenbock
HMH Books for Young Readers (Aug 17, 1992)
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This is the moving story of how Jackie Robinson became the first black player on a Major League baseball team when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s, and how on a fateful day in Cincinnati, Pee Wee Reese took a stand and declared Jackie his teammate. Illustrated with a blend of historic photographs and eloquent watercolors by Paul Bacon.


Click for more detail about Black Pioneers of Science and Invention by Louis Haber Black Pioneers of Science and Invention

by Louis Haber
HMH Books for Young Readers (Jan 02, 1992)
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A readable, perceptive account of the lives of fourteen gifted innovators who have played important roles in scientific and industrial progress. The achievements of Benjamin Banneker, Granville T. Woods, George Washington Carver, and others have made jobs easier, saved countless lives, and in many cases, altered the course of history.
Includes a bibliography and an index.


Click for more detail about Hoang Anh A Vietnamese-American Boy by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith Hoang Anh A Vietnamese-American Boy

by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith
Harcourt Children’s Books (Jan 01, 1992)
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A Vietnamese American boy describes the daily activities of his family in San Rafael, California, and the traditional culture and customs that shape their lives.


Click for more detail about African Religions & Philosophy by John S. Mbiti African Religions & Philosophy

by John S. Mbiti
Heinemann (Jan 01, 1992)
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African Religions and Philosophy is a systematic study of the attitudes of mind and belief that have evolved in the many societies of Africa. In this second edition, Dr Mbiti has updated his material to include the involvement of women in religion, and the potential unity to be found in what was once thought to be a mass of quite separate religions. Mbiti adds a new dimension to the understanding of the history, thinking, and life throughout the African continent. Religion is approached from an African point of view but is as accessible to readers who belong to non-African societies as it is to those who have grown up in African nations. Since its first publication, this book has become acknowledged as the standard work in the field of study, and it is essential reading for anyone concerned with African religion, history, philosophy, anthropology or general African studies.


Click for more detail about Finding the Green Stone by Alice Walker Finding the Green Stone

by Alice Walker
Harcourt Children’s Books (Oct 31, 1991)
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Johnny lives in a town where everyone owns a shiny green stone. He has one, too, until his mean-spirited behavior makes him lose it. His family and the whole town help him search, but to find it, he alone must discover the “bright green sun in his heart.” “A symbolic and sensitive tale about a young boy who discovers that happiness and fulfillment can come from within.”—American Bookseller


Click for more detail about In Times Like These (Caribbean Writers Series) by Zee Edgell In Times Like These (Caribbean Writers Series)

by Zee Edgell
Heinemann (Oct 03, 1991)
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Pavana Leslie returns with her children to her homeland of Belize after many years abroad, and must fight to come to terms with the ghosts of her past. A novel by the recipient of the 1982 Fawcett Society Book Prize for her earlier work, Beka Lamb.


Click for more detail about In The Beginning: Creation Stories From Around The World by Virginia Hamilton In The Beginning: Creation Stories From Around The World

by Virginia Hamilton
HMH Books for Young Readers (Sep 15, 1991)
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A thought-provoking collection of twenty-five stories that reflect the wonder and glory of the origins of the world and humankind. With commentary by the author. “A must for mythology shelves.”—Booklist


Click for more detail about Baby of the Family by Tina McElroy Ansa Baby of the Family

by Tina McElroy Ansa
Mariner Books (May 31, 1991)
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An evocative, delicately comic story of a girl’s coming of age. From the moment of her birth in a rural black hospital in Georgia, Lena McPherson is recognized as a special child, with the power to see ghosts and predict the future. Named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times.


Click for more detail about Silent Day in Tangier by Tahar Ben Jelloun Silent Day in Tangier

by Tahar Ben Jelloun
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (May 01, 1991)
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Click for more detail about Stubborn Hope: New Poems and Selections from China Poems and Strains (African Writers Series) by Dennis Brutus Stubborn Hope: New Poems and Selections from China Poems and Strains (African Writers Series)

by Dennis Brutus
Heinemann (Mar 01, 1991)
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A number of the poems contained in this volume were written after the poet’s exile from South Africa in 1966. By the author of A Simple Lust.


Click for more detail about Fate by Ai Ogawa Fate

by Ai Ogawa
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Jan 10, 1991)
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Ai’s horrific, surreal vision continues to mature with each book. In the 16 long poems that comprise her fourth collection, the lyricism of such earlier volumes as Sin is replaced by relentless eyewitness accounts: haunting, cinematic narratives of the rich and famous that even the tabloids couldn’t dream up. In this sexually empowered world, Mary Jo Kopechne can rise from the dead to state boldly, “Jack or Bobby would have died with me.” The vision and the violence carry over into the lives of unnamed, down-and-out characters as well; in “Eve’s Story,” a battered woman realizes,

The snake and God were only props
she discarded when she left Adam
writhing on the ground.
Male and female characters are equally pitiful, yet the poet’s strength rests in her ability to avoid wallowing in sympathy for them. —Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, Soho Weekly News, New York


Click for more detail about Ian’s pet (Something special read alone book) by Delores Lowe Friedman Ian’s pet (Something special read alone book)

by Delores Lowe Friedman
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Jan 01, 1991)
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Follow the story of a boy who dreams of having a pet frog.


Click for more detail about Aida by Leontyne Price Aida

by Leontyne Price
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Oct 22, 1990)
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With depth and understanding, acclaimed diva Leontyne Price retells this famous opera about the beautiful princess of Ethiopia. “The Dillons magnificently capture the drama with powerful full-page illustrations that resemble stage sets… . Ideal for reading aloud during an Egyptian unit, in music classes, to children attending the opera, or for the pure aesthetic experience.”—Booklist


Click for more detail about Jamaica Tag-Along by Juanita Havill Jamaica Tag-Along

by Juanita Havill
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Sep 24, 1990)
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Jamaica doesn’t want a younger child to play with her, until she remembers how she felt when her older brother excluded her from his games. A sensitive, charming sequel to Jamaica’s Find.


Click for more detail about In Two Worlds: A Yu’pik Eskimo Family by Aylette Jenness In Two Worlds: A Yu’pik Eskimo Family

by Aylette Jenness
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Apr 24, 1989)
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Text and photographs document the life of a Yup’ik Eskimo family, residents of a small Alaskan town on the coast of the Bering Sea, detailing the changes that have come about in the last fifty years.


Click for more detail about Devil On The Cross (Heinemann African Writers Series) by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Devil On The Cross (Heinemann African Writers Series)

by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Heinemann (Oct 23, 1987)
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This remarkable and symbolic novel centers around Wariinga’s tragedy and uses it to tell a story of contemporary Kenya faced with the "satan of capitalism." Ngugi has directed his writing even more firmly towards the commitment that he shows in Writers in Politics and Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary. The novel was written secretly in prison on the only available material — lavatory paper. It was discovered when almost complete but unexpectedly returned to him on his release. Such was the demand for the original Gikuyu edition that it reprinted on publication.


Click for more detail about Jamaica’s Find by Juanita Havill Jamaica’s Find

by Juanita Havill
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Sep 21, 1987)
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Jamaica finds a stuffed dog at the playground and after taking him home without trying to find the owner discovers her conscience as well. Jamaica’s honest and appealing character inspired five more books, each about a childhood ethical dilemma.


Click for more detail about Smell Of It Ibrahim by Lenrie Peters Smell Of It Ibrahim

by Lenrie Peters
Heinemann (Dec 31, 1986)
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Click for more detail about The Wine of Astonishment by Earl Lovelace The Wine of Astonishment

by Earl Lovelace
Heinemann (Dec 17, 1986)
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A powerful and moving chronicle of the different ways in which members of a small Trinidadian community, Bonasse, hold on to their identity as they find themselves caught up in change and corruption. Bolo is a champion stick fighter, tall, good looking, and the fastest, strongest, and bravest of al the young men in Bonasse. When time and time again he sees his people humiliated by American troops, his instincts as a leader prevail. But the stand he makes takes on bizarre and tragic forms. Introduction by Marjorie Thorpe.


The Seasons of Thomas Tebo (African Writers Series)

by John Nagenda
Heinemann (Dec 01, 1986)
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Thomas Tebo is an enchanted, magical youth, who becomes dangerously involved in politics, and is eventually forced into depressing exile. This book provides an account of how a precocious, sensuous child loses his innocence.


Click for more detail about Beka Lamb (Caribbean Writers Series) by Zee Edgell Beka Lamb (Caribbean Writers Series)

by Zee Edgell
Heinemann (Sep 11, 1986)
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Set in Belize, Beka Lamb is the record of a few months in the life of Beka and her family. The politics of the small colony, the influence of the matriarchal society and the dominating presence of the Catholic Church are woven into the fabric of the story to provide a compelling portrait of ordinary life in Belize.


Click for more detail about Sin by Ai Ogawa Sin

by Ai Ogawa
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Jan 01, 1986)
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No contemporary poet penetrates characters like Ai. The farther they are from her personal experience (Jack and Bobby Kennedy, a priest, a holocaust survivor, the Atlanta child murderer) the more vivid the transformation. Bathed in "a harsh and purifying light/that keeps nothing whole," myth, theology and history rise hot as nightmare through her radical imagination. Battered women’s bruises shimmer like stigmata; Joe McCarthy defiles a dead Stalin. Every poem pushes at the boundaries laid down in Cruelty and Killing Floor, the two books that established her singular control, an authority so absolute it looks casual. Violence is Ai’s natural habitat, but blood, she reminds us, "sanctifies and blesses." Essential for academic and larger public libraries. —Rhoda Yerburgh, Adult Degree Program, Vermont Coll., Montpelier

Blue Suede Shoes
Conversation
The Death Of Francisco Pizarro
The Detective
Elegy
The Emigre
The Good Shepherd: Atlanta, 1981
Immortality
The Journalist
Kristallnacht
The Man With The Saxophone
More
The Mother’s Tale
The Priest’s Confession
The Prisoner
Saint Anne’s Reel, 1870
Salome
The Testimony Of J. Robert Oppenheimer
They Shall Not Pass
Two Brothers


Click for more detail about Jestina’s Calypso and Other Plays (Caribbean Writers Series) by Earl Lovelace Jestina’s Calypso and Other Plays (Caribbean Writers Series)

by Earl Lovelace
Heinemann (Sep 01, 1984)
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Contains three plays which have a gift for catching the liveliness of the everyday speech of Trinidadians.


Click for more detail about I Will Marry When I Want (African Writers) by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Ngugi Wa Mirii I Will Marry When I Want (African Writers)

by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Ngugi Wa Mirii
Heinemann (Jan 01, 1982)
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This is the renowned play which was developed with Kikuyu actors at the Kamiriithu Cultural Centre at Limuru. It proved so powerful, especially in its use of song, that it was banned and was probably one of the factors leading to Ngugi’s detention without trial. The original Gikuyu edition went to three printings in the first three months of publication.


Selected Poetry

by Lenrie Peters
Heinemann (Jul 01, 1981)
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Click for more detail about On leaving paradise: A novel by Frank Hercules On leaving paradise: A novel

by Frank Hercules
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (Jan 01, 1980)
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Click for more detail about Women Pioneers of Science by Louis Haber Women Pioneers of Science

by Louis Haber
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Jan 01, 1979)
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Click for more detail about Quiz Book on Black America by Clarence N. Blake and Donald F. Martin Quiz Book on Black America

by Clarence N. Blake and Donald F. Martin
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Oct 01, 1976)
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More than seventy quizzes challenge and increase the reader’s knowledge of the roles played by blacks in American life.

Check out the Black History Quiz on AALBC.com


Prose and Poetry

by Léopold Sédar Senghor
Heinemann Educational Books (Jun 01, 1976)
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Click for more detail about Geography of the Near Past: Poems by Al Young Geography of the Near Past: Poems

by Al Young
Holt Rinehart & Winston (Jan 01, 1976)
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First edition. Black author. Blurbs by Kenneth Rexroth, William Dickey. Spine faded. x, 84 pages. cloth-backed boards, dust jacket.. small 8vo..


Click for more detail about Duey’s Tale by Pearl Bailey Duey’s Tale

by Pearl Bailey
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Jan 01, 1975)
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A maple seedling becomes separated from his mother tree, makes friends with a bottle and a log, and searches for his own place in life.


Click for more detail about A Simple Lust: Collected Poems of South African Jail & Exile including Letters to Martha (African Writers Series) by Dennis Brutus A Simple Lust: Collected Poems of South African Jail & Exile including Letters to Martha (African Writers Series)

by Dennis Brutus
Heinemann (Jun 01, 1973)
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Letters to Martha appears in this book of poetry along with Sirens Knuckles Boots and Poems from Algiers.


A History of Black Americans

by William L. Katz
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Jan 01, 1973)
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“Bill Katz is one of the few members outside of our community who has made a significant, lasting contribution to it. Black Legacy is a good, clear layman’s book on African Americans in New York.” —Dr. John Henrik Clarke

Recounts the history of the American Negro from the days of the African slave trade and the arrival of Negroes in the United States to the 1970’s when blacks still face many problems with a new introduction.


Click for more detail about Beware Soul Brother by Chinua Achebe Beware Soul Brother

by Chinua Achebe
Heinemann (Jun 01, 1972)
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Written during the Nigerian Civil War, this collection of poetry won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1972.


Click for more detail about American society and Black revolution by Frank Hercules American society and Black revolution

by Frank Hercules
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (Jan 01, 1972)
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Born in Trinidad, educated in England, and an American citizen, the author critiques American history and many prominent African-Americans, including James Baldwin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Malcolm X, in an eloquent statement that the Black be seen for what he or she is, and not for the color of his skin.


Click for more detail about The Song Turning Back Into Itself by Al Young The Song Turning Back Into Itself

by Al Young
Holt Rinehart & Winston (Jan 01, 1971)
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Click for more detail about Black Heritage: Slave Trade and Slavery v. 2 by John Henrik Clarke Black Heritage: Slave Trade and Slavery v. 2

by John Henrik Clarke
Holt Rinehart & Winston (Oct 01, 1970)
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Click for more detail about The Voice of the Children by June Jordan The Voice of the Children

by June Jordan
Holt Rinehart & Winston (Jun 01, 1970)
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Twenty black and Puerto Rican children write their poetic impressions of growing up in the ghettos of America.


Click for more detail about Your Hand in Mine by Sam Cornish Your Hand in Mine

by Sam Cornish
Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. (May 26, 1970)
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Click for more detail about Letters to Martha & other Poems from a South African prison (African writers series, 46) by Dennis Brutus Letters to Martha & other Poems from a South African prison (African writers series, 46)

by Dennis Brutus
Heinemann (Jan 31, 1969)
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Poetry written by Brutus on his experiences as a political prisoner on Robben Island off Cape Town.


Click for more detail about The Black Hermit (Heinemann African Writers Series) by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o The Black Hermit (Heinemann African Writers Series)

by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Heinemann (Jan 01, 1968)
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In this play, Remi, the first of his tribe to go to university, ponders whether or not he should return to his people. Or should he continue to be a black hermit in the town?


Click for more detail about Satellites: Poems by Lenrie Peters Satellites: Poems

by Lenrie Peters
Heinemann (Jun 26, 1967)
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This is a selection of poetry from the Gambian poet Lenrie Peters.


Click for more detail about Kaleidoscope; Poems by American Negro Poets by Robert Hayden Kaleidoscope; Poems by American Negro Poets

by Robert Hayden
Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. (Jun 01, 1967)
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Click for more detail about Second Round by Lenrie Peters Second Round

by Lenrie Peters
Heinemann (Jun 01, 1966)
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A novel of the conflicts encountered when a Sierra Leone man returns to Freetown from his higher education in Britain.


Click for more detail about Griffin’s Way by Frank Yerby Griffin’s Way

by Frank Yerby
Heinemann (Jan 01, 1962)
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One of the best novels on the Reconstruction period is Frank Yerby’s Griffin’s WayEugene Stovall

Di Cadwallader. head of the Ku Klux Klan, has determined that in post-war Mississippi there will be no equality between the races even if he must murder women and children, blacks and whites, alike. Even Laurie Griffin, the wife of another man, who Cadwallader claims to love, is not safe from the klansman’s murderous intent. The climate of evil is so compelling that the black man, sent by northern philanthropists to educate the children of ex-slaves, embezzles the black school’s education funds and is planning to escape to the North as a rich man.

Only Paris Griffin can prevent Di Cadwallder from returning Mississippi back to the ’southern way of life’ where darkies know their place. But Paris Griffin, the former confederate officer and owner of Mississippi’a largest plantation, was wounded in battle and returns home without his memory.The only thing Paris Griffin does remember is that he hated Di Cadwallader before the war and he hates him now.

This is one Yerby novel that you will never forget.


Click for more detail about A season in Rihata (Caribbean writers series) by Maryse Conde A season in Rihata (Caribbean writers series)

by Maryse Conde
Heinemann (Jun 10, 1905)
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Click for more detail about Cruelty: Poems by Ai Ogawa Cruelty: Poems

by Ai Ogawa
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (May 26, 1905)
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When Cruelty was published in 1973, I read the collection repeatedly, transported by the mystery in the poems and by the politics of gender on almost every page. The way the first poem in the collection, "Twenty-Year Marriage," opens is a clue to this poet’s psychology: "You keep me waiting in a truck / with its one good wheel stuck in a ditch, / while you piss against the south side of a tree. / Hurry. I’ve got nothing on under my skirt tonight." The speaker’s insinuation is calculated. The intentional, invented tension breathes on the page. She has our attention. But Ai knows-like any great actor-that language and pace are also crucial. Sometimes a poem may seem like personalized folklore, a feeling culled from the imagination. The characters hurt each other out of a fear of being hurt, and often they are doubly hurt. Do we believe her characters because they seem to evolve from some uncharted place beyond us but also inside us? They are of the soil, as if they’ve always been here; but they also reside on borders-spiritually, psychologically, existentially, and emotionally-as if only half-initiated into the muscular terror of ordinary lives. All the contradictions of so-called democracy live in her speakers. Most of the characters in Ai’s poetry are distinctly rural, charged in mind and belly with folkloric signification, always one step or one trope from homespun violence and blasphemy. What first deeply touched me in Cruelty is this: Ai’s images-tinctured by an unknown folklore-seemed to arise from some deep, unsayable place, translated from a pre-language of knowing or dreaming with one’s eyes open, as if something from long ago still beckoned to be put into words Yusef Komunyaka