African American Children Fiction

Mama's Child is story of an idealistic young white woman who travelled to the American South as a civil rights worker, fell in love with an African American man, and started a family in San Francisco, where the more liberal city embraced them - except when it didn't. They raise a son and daughter, but the tensions surrounding them have a negative impact on their marriage, and they divorce when their children are still young.

Summer 1943. Harlem is a never-ending carnival in the second year of the war. Yet underneath the glitter, its black residents remain second-class citizens, and the neighborhood is a tinderbox, waiting for a match. Along these restless streets, two very different young men will cross paths. Their...

Nothing can mend a broken heart quite like family. Sherry has struggled all her life to understand who she is, where she comes from, and, most important, why her mother slapped her cheek one summer afternoon. The incident has haunted Sherry, and it causes her to dig into her family's past. Like many family histories, it is fractured and stubbornly reluctant to reveal its secrets. But Sherry is determined to know the full story. In a few days' time, her extended family will gather for a reunion, and Sherry sets off across the country with her mother, Dumpling, to join them.

For 17 years, Sheridan and Quentin seemed to have the perfect marriage. Now he is leaving her for another man. Her life shattered, Sheridan wonders how she can help their two children live through this crisis, while keeping her own emotional turmoil under control.

The compelling saga of the Realm continues when a darkening sun threatens to destroy the world. Grand Wizard Kelm races to retrieve the Icon of Earth - an ancient relic with the magical power to counter the threat. However, mistrust and mishaps run rampant as he encounters unlikely allies and a technologically advanced enemy willing to stifle his efforts at all cost.

In the world of children's literature, Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy and The Long Secret are widely recognized as epoch-making. They have been received by young learners, year after year, with excitement and love. Nobody's Family Is Going to Change - the story of an African American family in New York in the 1970s - shares the vigorous sense of comedy and unflinching fidelity to the real world that has made Fitzhugh's other books into classics.

African-American folklore was Zora Neale Hurston's first love. Collected in the late 1920's Every Tongue Got to Confess, from the celebrated author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, is published here for the first time, beautifully performed by Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis. Hilarious, bittersweet...

One of the worst acts of racial violence in American history took place in 1921, when a White mob numbering in the thousands decimated the thriving Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Burning recreates Greenwood at the height of its prosperity, explores the currents of hatred, racism, and mistrust between its Black residents and Tulsa's White population, narrates events leading up to and including Greenwood's devastation, and documents the subsequent silence that surrounded this tragedy.

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.

In his meteoric, 13-year rise to fame, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a mass movement for civil rights - with his relentless peaceful, non-violent protests, public demonstrations, and eloquent speeches. But as violent threats cast a dark shadow over Dr. King's life, Swanson hones in on James Earl Ray, a bizarre, racist prison escapee who tragically ends King's life.

The Reconstruction and Rise of Jim Crow describes the fallout of the Civil War, whose aftermath left the United States South angry and poor. This book details the struggles to decide how to deal with the newly freed slaves, through the years of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, sharecropping, and segregation. The storyline also sets the stage for the country’s next battle, which is between the Jim Crow laws and the 14th and 15th Amendments.

When Thurgood Marshall - the great-grandson of a slave - was born, African Americans were denied equal rights in America. Segregation was legal. Lynching was common. In some places, African Americans were entirely excluded from public life; they were forbidden to enter public parks and museums or use public swimming pools and restrooms. After being denied admission to the University of Maryland Law School because of his race, Marshall enrolled at Howard University. He graduated first in his class and set out as a young lawyer determined to achieve equality for all Americans.

Mama Don't Like Ugly takes listeners on a journey of Dana Calhoun's life growing up in Nautica, Louisiana. Her mama finds her dark skin repulsive, so she abuses and neglects her. Also, she constantly compares Dana to her light-skinned sister. Regardless of Dana's unconditional love for her mama, she still encounters a cycle of torment. Will Mama finally realize that Dana is a beautiful person in spite of her dark skin or will she continue to spew those hateful words, "Mama don't like ugly"?

For African American women, the fight for the right to vote was only one battle. An eye-opening book that tells the important, overlooked story of black women as a force in the suffrage movement - when fellow suffragists did not accept them as equal partners in the struggle.

What does it take to be a STEM genius? Check out these exciting, highly listenable profiles of a dozen contemporary women who are on the cutting edge of scientific research.

Dovey Johnson Roundtree was most famous for her successful defense of an indigent Black man accused of the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer, a prominent White Washington, DC, socialite, in 1965. Despite her triumph in this high-profile case, Roundtree continued to represent the poor and the underserved. She was the first lawyer to bring a bus-desegregation case before the Interstate Commerce Commission, clinching the ruling that enabled Robert F. Kennedy to enforce bus integration. She was also among the first Black women to enter the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.

PREGNANT AND ALONE? When Katie Rogers returns to Dundee, Idaho, it's not because she wants to. It's because she's disillusioned, broke and pregnant. She was going to make something of her life in the big city. Instead, she's paying a high price for trusting the wrong man. Booker Robinson is...

A baby in need—and one special nurse—tame a wealthy doctor in this Texas Cattleman’s Club novel from USA TODAY bestselling author Michelle Celmer! Pediatrician Parker Reese likes to play the field and usually has women at his beck and call. Until caring for a newborn in crisis sets him on...

Andre Anderson is a Black teenager with a dream. Although he loves to play basketball and laugh with his friends, he also loves to write and wants to make his mark on the world. One summer when he is assigned to do a magazine article about race, he creates a passionate and explosive piece. Soon, he is the target of racists who brutally attack him, putting him in the hospital. With his hand and dream broken, he must figure out how to put his life back together in spite of the anger and injustice he now sees around him.

A serial killer is on the loose in the city of Detroit, breaking into people's homes and killing their entire family, even their pets, just for laughs. Now he’s even going as far as kidnapping women, but the police are showing little to no interest in the case because it’s minority low- and middle-class families. With no one to stop him, anyone could be the next victim--even you! But whatever you do, don’t scream because the screaming brings him joy.