Addy Learns a Lesson

by Connie Rose Porter

When Addy and her mother escape from the plantation where they were slaves, Addy finds that she has much to learn about what freedom really means. With her friend Sarah's help, Addy learns a lot more...

American Girl series

Dad, Jackie, and Me

by Myron Uhlberg

With Jackie Robinson now playing first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers, it promises to be an exciting season for a young boy who dreams of seeing the inside of Ebbets Field, where the Dodgers play. Though...

Dinner at Aunt Connie's House

by Faith Ringgold

A Caldecott award-winning author tells the story of two young girls who discover 12 portraits that can talk! Through painted images of great African-American women, this work of historical fiction includes...

Escape North!

by Monica Kulling

This simple biography of Harriet Tubman, who, born into slavery on a Southern plantation, escaped and lived as a free woman until her death at age 93, focuses on Tubman's work as a conductor for the...

Step into Reading — 3 series

Follow the Drinking Gourd

by Jeanette Winter

By following the directions in a song, "The Drinking Gourd," taught to them by an old sailor named Peg Leg Joe, runaway slaves move north along the Underground Railroad to freedom in Canada. This book...

Harlem

by Walter Dean Myers

In this award-winning book, a poem celebrates the people, sights, and sounds of Harlem.

Henry's Freedom Box

by Ellen Levine

2008 Caldecott Honor Book

Henry "Box" Brown dreams of a world where his life belongs to him; where his family cannot be bought and sold on the slave market, and where he could be free...

Martin's Big Words

by Doreen Rappaport

Martin Luther King, Jr., grew up in a place where people used words that made him feel bad. This beautifully illustrated, Caldecott honor book shows how Martin used words to fight for equal rights for...

Minty

by Alan Schroeder

Young Harriet Tubman, whose childhood name was Minty, dreams of escaping slavery on the Brodas plantation in the late 1820s.

The Other Side

by Jacqueline Woodson

This book is a moving narrative about the racial tensions that Clover discovers as she wonders why a fence separates the black side of town from the white side. Annie, a white girl, sits on the fence...