#ownvoices - Black Books for Kids

To gain leadership skills needed to run a cupcake-baking empire when she grows up, Brianna runs for president of the fifth grade--expecting little competition--until a new girl enters the race.

The story of one African American family fighting to stay together and strong in the face of brutal racist attacks, illness, poverty, and betrayal in the Deep South of the 1930s. In Mississippi, during the Great Depression of the 1930's the Logans are one of the few Black families who own their own land. Nine-year-old Cassie Logan doesn't understand why her parents attach so much importance to this, any more than she understands the Night Riders,...

In this wordless retelling of an Aesop fable, an adventuresome mouse proves that even small creatures are capable of great deeds when he rescues the King of the Jungle.

In the summer of 1968, after traveling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

Suspended unjustly from elite Middlefield Prep, Donte Ellison studies fencing with a former champion, hoping to put the racist fencing team captain in his place.

"Award-winning author Nikki Grimes's beloved novel in verse Garvey's Choice is now a graphic novel, imaginatively and dramatically illustrated by Little Shaq artist Theodore Taylor III"-- Garvey's father has always wanted Garvey to be athletic, but Garvey is interested in astronomy, science fiction, reading -- anything but sports. Feeling like a failure, he comforts himself with food. Garvey is kind, funny, smart, a loyal friend, and he is also overweight,...

In segregated 1950s Nashville, a young African American girl braves a series of indignities and obstacles to get to one of the few integrated places in town: the public library.

Celebrates the magnificent feeling that comes from walking out of a barber shop with newly-cut hair.

The making of "Show ways," or quilts which once served as secret maps for freedom-seeking slaves, is a tradition passed from mother to daughter in the author's family.

A young girl learns much about her mother as she reads a collection of poems written before she was born that capture her mother's memories of living around the world and growing up as a child of an Air Force serviceperson. Includes author's note, list of Air Force bases, and explanation of the free verse and tanka poetry forms used.