Sherri L. Smith

In the six lectures of Teenage Wastelands: A Guide to Dystopian Young Adult Fiction, award-winning YA author Sherri L. Smith will show you why dystopian stories have become so successful and why they continue to inspire.

First came the storms. Then came the Fever. And the Wall. After a string of devastating hurricanes and a severe outbreak of Delta Fever, the Gulf Coast has been quarantined....

All Ida Mae Jones wants to do is fly. Her daddy was a pilot, and years after his death she feels closest to him when she's in the air. But as a young black woman in 1940s Louisiana, she knows the sky is off limits to her, until America enters World War II....

"Beautiful clothes, bad habits, ugly secrets: Sherri L. Smith probes the vulnerable underbellies of a lot of toothy sharks in this page-turning California noir."—E. Lockhart, New York Times bestselling author of We Were Liars Bad things happen everywhere. Even in the land of sun and roses...

Relive the moments when African Americans fought for equal rights, and made history. Even though slavery had ended in the 1860s, African Americans were still suffering under the weight of segregation a hundred years later. They couldn't go to the same schools, eat at the same restaurants, or...

From the acclaimed author of Flygirl and the bestselling author of Code Name Verity comes the thrilling and inspiring true story of the desegregation of the skies. In the years between World War I and World War II, aviation fever was everywhere, including among Black Americans. But what hope...

In the same style as the New York Times Best-Selling Who Was? series, What Was? focuses on compelling historical events, great battles, protests, and discoveries. Learn about a pivotal time in American history and its momentous effects on civil rights in America in this enlightening title about...

From the award-winning author of Flygirl comes this powerful WWII romance between two Japanese teens caught in the cogs of an unwinnable war, perfect for fans of Salt to the Sea, Lovely War, and Code Name Verity. Japan 1945. Taro is a talented violinist and a kamikaze pilot in the days before...

It's up, up, and away with the Tuskegee Airmen, a heroic group of African American military pilots who helped the United States win World War II. During World War II, black Americans were fighting for their country and for freedom in Europe, yet they had to endure a totally segregated military...

Stefan Drosselmeyer is a reluctant apprentice to his toymaker father until the day his world is turned upside down. His father is kidnapped, and Stefan is enlisted by his mysterious cousin Christian to find a mythical nut to save a princess who has been turned into a wooden doll....

In this audiobook from the #1 New York Times bestselling series, learn how this vibrant Black neighborhood in upper Manhattan became home to the leading Black writers, artists, and musicians of the 1920s and 1930s. Travel back in time to the 1920s and 1930s to the sounds of jazz in nightclubs...

A speculative middle grade novel about three generations of Black girls connected across time and space through a wormhole in their school locker. What if your locker was a wormhole to the past? On the first day of eighth grade, Candace Wells opens her locker and is astonished when an unusual...