African American Library

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...

The third installment in a hilarious and charming chapter book series featuring exuberant and irresistible third-grader Millie Magnus. Millie Magnus just knows she was born for the stage. So when the Overlook Little Theatre holds auditions for a new show, she's certain she will be the star. Even...

Rita Williams-Garcia’s masterful and bold Coretta Scott King Honor Book is fresh, funny, and powerfully relevant. This novel by a master storyteller and Newbery Honor-winning author is about one girl’s discovery of her family history—and her own place within it. When fourteen-year-old...

The Scorpions are a gun-toting Harlem gang, and Jamal Hicks is about to become tragically involved with them in this authentic tale of the sacrifice of innocence and the struggle to steer clear of violence. This Newbery Honor Book will challenge young men to consider their own decisions as they...

Professor Hakim Adi draws on a variety of published works in Black Voices on Britain, all of which describe powerful experiences: James Gronniosaw and his family endure poverty, illness and unemployment; Mary Prince is driven out by her cruel owners and turns to London charities for help; Frederick Douglass, on a lecture tour around Britain, reveals how the Christian clergy built churches with slave-owners’ money and William Wells Brown gives his impressions of England as he travels around a country which welcomes him more readily than America.

In this anthology, everybody is Black. Filled with epic battles, complicated families, soft kisses, and sharpened blades, Magic in the Melanin is an adult fantasy anthology that showcases Black authors who write magical stories of all kinds.

NICK FURY AND S.H.I.E.L.D. are faced with a foe no single person can defeat. So Fury sets out to bring together Earth's Mightiest Heroes and form the Avengers! Join Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye as they battle the Asgardian trickster known as Loki, who plans...

A little girl sings the praises of all four seasons in a playful picture book that celebrates the joys to be found throughout the year. Lyric loves every single season. Spring makes her so happy! Birds singing, plants sprouting, double-Dutching in the park. But hold on—what’s that peeking...

“What a beautiful gift of a narrative this is. So much love on every page. A fabulous celebration of the brilliance of Black boys.” —JACQUELINE WOODSON, author of the New York Times bestseller The Day You Begin An empowering picture book celebrating Black boys everywhere--acknowledging...

From award-winning author Tonya Bolden comes a biography of the first Black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and the first Black woman to run for president with a major political party: Shirley Chisholm. Before there was Barack Obama, before there was Kamala Harris, there was...

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD A powerful, genre-bending mosaic of fiction and poetry that celebrates the humanity, grace, and resilience of teenage New Yorkers riding out the pandemic—from the award-winning author of Chlorine Sky “A gorgeous, tender testament to the generation...

Coretta Scott King Honor winner Brenda Woods’s poignant, heartfelt story of an adopted boy and the bird he rescues Everyone expects Coop to be musical like his beloved parents, but he’s not. That’s one of the few things he finds awkward about being adopted—well, that and the fact that he...

A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Boston Globe–Horn Book Poetry Award Winner An “imaginative and moving” (The Horn Book, starred review) portrait of a Black family tree shaped by enslavement and freedom, rendered in searing poems by ALSC Children’s Literature Legacy Award winner Carole...

Boom! Snap! Whiz! Zap! The Magnificent Makers chapter book series is filled with science, adventure, and characters kids will love! Every book includes two science activities kids can do at home! A modern day Magic School Bus for the chapter book reader! Wacky scientist Dr. Crisp loves to invite...

A ten-day suspension has tweens De'Kari and Ebony seeing the world with a fresh perspective. Don't miss this poignant novel in verse from the award-winning author of Isaiah Dunn Is My Hero. Two kids. One fight. No one thinks they’re wrong. Flow I don’t even hit girls . . . is what I’m...

An adaptation of the powerful New York Times bestselling account of growing up Black and female in America, completely rewritten with new stories for young readers Austin Channing Brown’s first encounter with race in America came at age seven, when she discovered that her parents had named her...

The powerful story of an eleven-year-old Black boy determined to stand up for his rights, who's pulled into the action of the 1963 civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama. Rufus Jackson Jones is from Birmingham, the place Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called the most segregated place in...

A poignant story about the difficulties of leaving everything behind and the friendships that help you get through it. Fleeing war-torn Kosovo, ten-year-old Drita and her family move to America with the dream of living a typical American life. But with this hope comes the struggle to adapt and...

A heart-rending novel-in-verse about a girl beginning to learn it is possible to go on even after a great loss. Eleven-year-old April Jackson loves playing the drums, almost as much as she loves her best friend, Zee, a violin prodigy. They both dream of becoming professional musicians one day...

Millions of Africans were enslaved during the transatlantic slave trade, but few recorded their personal experiences. Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano is perhaps the most well known of the autobiographies that exist. Using this narrative as a primary...