After their college psychologist father kills their artist mother, young Jenna and Jeremy struggle with the secret each of them keeps.

"This wonderful book should be a first choice for all collections and is strongly recommended as a springboard for discussions about differences.” —School Library Journal (starred review)In this acclaimed book, the author of the Newbery Honor Book To Be a Slave shares his own story as he explores what makes each of us special. A strong choice for sharing at home or in the classroom.Karen Barbour's dramatic, vibrant paintings speak to the heart...

A collective biography of ten African-American blues singers, including Billie Holiday, B.B. King, Little Richard, and Aretha Franklin.

When John Calvin Marshall graduated from Harvard in 1956, he was prepared for a life of teaching and relative tranquility. But history had another plan for him: here, a veteran author re-envisions the Martin Luther King Jr. story in fearful, exciting, and violent terms. Political and provocative, And All Our Wounds Forgiven is both a compelling political fable and a striking and tender love story about one of this century's most charismatic black...

A boy sent by an African god to tend the spirits of the dead struggles to fulfill his duty from within the bonds of slavery in Time's Memory, by National Book Award finalist Julius Lester. Amma is the creator god, the master of life and death, and he is worried. His people have always known how to take care of the spirits of the dead — the nyama — so that they don't become destructive forces among the living. But amid the chaos of the African...

Julius Lester was born the son of a black Methodist minister in the south. His book Lovesong is a beautifully written account of his spiritual journey away from the conventions of his Southern heritage and Methodist upbringing, culminating in his personal self-discovery through a conversion to Judaism. Growing up in the turbulent civil rights era South, Lester was often discouraged by the disconnectedness between the promises of religion and the...

To Be a Slave stands apart from other historical accounts of slavery in one extraordinary way: it is told by the slaves themselves. Their stories will tell you what it felt like to be a slave in the United States-to wear shackles on your ankles, to feel whips lashing your back, and to work under the cruelest conditions. From African villages to Georgian auction blocks, from plantation fields to abolitionist hideaways, To Be a Slave brings one of the...