JoCoLibrary - Race Reads - Youth Historical FictionLike this list

34 items

• The Door of No Return

  Alexander, Kwame

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  A novel in verse about a boy escaping slavers during the nineteenth century.

• Little Man, Little Man

  a Story of Childhood

  Baldwin, James, 1924-1987,

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  Four-year-old TJ spends his days on his lively Harlem block playing with his best friends WT and Blinky and running errands for neighbors. As he comes of age as a "Little Man" with big dreams, TJ faces a world of grown-up adventures and realities.

• The Summoner

  Bond, Victoria, 1979-

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  For Carrie and her best friend, Zora, Eatonville--America's first incorporated Black township--has been an idyllic place to live out their childhoods. But when a lynch mob crosses the town's border to pursue a fugitive and a grave robbery…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Long Ride

  Budhos, Marina Tamar,

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  In New York in 1971, Jamila and Josie are bused across Queens where they try to fit in at a new, integrated junior high school while their best friend, Francesca, tests the limits at a private school.

• Like Vanessa

  Charles, Tami,

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  It is 1983 and Vanessa Martin, a thirteen-year-old African American girl in Newark's public housing, dreams of following in the footsteps of the first black Miss America, Vanessa Williams; but with a dysfunctional family (mother in jail, father…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Chasing Secrets

  Choldenko, Gennifer, 1957-

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  Thirteen-year-old Lizzie and her secret friend Noah, who is hiding in her house, plan to rescue Noah's father from the quarantined Chinatown, and save everyone they love from contracting the plague that is spreading in 1900 San Francisco.

• Finding Langston

  Cline-Ransome, Lesa,

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  Discovering a book of Langston Hughes' poetry in the library helps Langston cope with the loss of his mother, relocating from Alabama to Chicago as part of the Great Migration, and being bullied.

• The Journey of Little Charlie

  Curtis, Christopher Paul,

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  When his poor sharecropper father is killed in an accident and leaves the family in debt, twelve-year-old Little Charlie agrees to accompany fearsome plantation overseer Cap'n Buck north in pursuit of people who have stolen from him; Cap'n Buck…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963

  Curtis, Christopher Paul

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  The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

• Stella by Starlight

  Draper, Sharon M. (Sharon Mills)

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  When a burning cross set by the Klan causes panic and fear in 1932 Bumblebee, North Carolina, fifth-grader Stella must face prejudice and find the strength to demand change in her segregated town.

• It Ain't So Awful, Falafel

  Dumas, Firoozeh,

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  Eleven-year-old Zomorod, originally from Iran, tells her story of growing up Iranian in Southern California during the Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis of the late 1970s.

• Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop

  the Sanitation Strike of 1968

  Duncan, Alice Faye,

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  This historical fiction picture book presents the story of nine-year-old Lorraine Jackson, who in 1968 witnessed the Memphis sanitation strike--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s final stand for justice before his assassination--when her father, a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Armstrong & Charlie

  Frank, Steven, 1963-

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  During the pilot year of a Los Angeles school system integration program, two sixth grade boys, one black, one white, become best friends as they learn to cope with everything from first crushes and playground politics to the loss of loved ones and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Warrior on the Mound

  Headen, Sandra W.,

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  In 1939 North Carolina, an all-Black baseball team "trespasses" on the whites-only baseball field, and the resulting racial outrage can only be resolved on the mound.

• Witness

  Hesse, Karen

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  A series of poems express the views of various people in a small Vermont town, including a young black girl and a young Jewish girl, during the early 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan is trying to infiltrate the town.

• Ophie's Ghosts

  Ireland, Justina,

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  Discovering her ability to see ghosts when a cruel act ends her father's life and forces her to move in with relatives in 1920s Pittsburgh, young Ophelia forges a helpful bond with a spirit whose own life ended suddenly and unjustly.

• The Lucky Ones

  Jackson, Linda Williams,

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  It's 1967, and eleven-year-old Ellis Earl Brown has big dreams. He's going to grow up to be a teacher or a lawyer--or maybe both--and live in a big brick house in town. There'll always be enough food in the icebox, and his mama won't have to run…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Midnight Without a Moon

  Jackson, Linda Williams,

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  Rose Lee Carter, a thirteen-year-old African-American girl, dreams of life beyond the Mississippi cotton fields during the summer of 1955, but when Emmett Till is murdered and his killers are unjustly acquitted, Rose is torn between seeking her…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Yard War

  Kitchings, Taylor,

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  Twelve-year-old Trip Westbrook lives in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1964 and discovers the underlying racism in his family and neighborhood when he invites his maid's son Dee to play football in the yard.

• Inside Out & Back Again

  Lại, ThanhhÃ

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  Through a series of poems, a young girl chronicles the life-changing year of 1975, when she, her mother, and her brothers leave Vietnam and resettle in Alabama.