Celebrating Black History Month with YA


Showing 1 - 20 of 24  There are a total of 33 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "All American boys"
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Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
A bag of chips. That’s all sixteen-year-old Rashad is looking for at the corner bodega. What he finds instead is a fist-happy cop, Paul Galluzzo, who mistakes Rashad for a shoplifter, mistakes Rashad’s pleadings that he’s stolen nothing for belligerence, mistakes Rashad’s resistance to leave the bodega as resisting arrest, mistakes Rashad’s every flinch at every punch the cop throws as further resistance and refusal to STAY STILL as ordered....
Book cover for "All boys aren't blue"
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Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.
Book cover for "The awakening of Malcolm X"
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"In Charlestown Prison, Malcolm Little struggles with the weight of his past. Plagued by nightmares, Malcolm drifts through days, unsure of his future. Slowly, he befriends other prisoners and writes to his family. He reads all the books in the prison library, joins the debate team and the Nation of Islam. Malcolm grapples with race, politics, religion, and justice in the 1940s. And as his time in jail comes to an end, he begins to awaken — emerging...
Book cover for "A ballerina's tale"
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This documentary follows Misty Copeland's rise as a dancer in the American Ballet Theatre.
Book cover for "The beautiful struggle"
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"As a child, Ta-Nehisi Coates was seen by his father, Paul, as too sensitive and lacking focus. Paul Coates was a Vietnam vet who'd been part of the Black Panthers and was dedicated to reading and publishing the history of African civilization. When it came to his sons, he was committed to raising proud Black men equipped to deal with a racist society, during a turbulent period in the collapsing city of Baltimore where they lived. Coates details...
Book cover for "The Black friend"
Star rating for The Black friend
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
Writing from the perspective of a friend, Frederick Joseph offers candid reflections on his own experiences with racism and conversations with prominent artists and activists about theirs--creating an essential read for white people who are committed anti-racists and those newly come to the cause of racial justice. Features conversations with Jemele Hill, Angie Thomas, Naima Cochrane and others.
Book cover for "The black kids"
Star rating for The black kids
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
With the Rodney King riots closing in on high school senior Ashley and her family, the privileged bubble she has enjoyed, protecting her from the difficult realities most black people face, begins to crumble.
Book cover for "Blackout"
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Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
"Six critically acclaimed, bestselling, and award-winning authors bring the glowing warmth and electricity of Black teen love to this interlinked novel of charming, hilarious, and heartwarming stories that shine a bright light through the dark. A summer heatwave blankets New York City in darkness. But as the city is thrown into confusion, a different kind of electricity sparks… A first meeting. Long-time friends. Bitter exes. And maybe the beginning...
Book cover for "Caste"
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Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
Masterful narratives about real people that reveal an insidious phenomenon in the United States: a hidden caste system. Caste is not only about race or class; it is about power—which groups have it and which do not. Isabel Wilkerson explores historical social hierarchies, including those in India and Nazi Germany, and explains how perpetuating these rankings dehumanizes vast sections of society. Once we learn the reasons behind caste and see the...
Book cover for "Concrete rose"
Star rating for Concrete rose
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
Maverick feels strongly about family ties, making choices he feels necessary to help support his mom while his King father serves time, and leave him literally holding his son in a doctor's waiting room after he gets paternity test results back and his babymomma ghosts. Now the child he's raising is impacting the lives of his family and his girlfriend, and the gang life he led to support them all financially could leave them all bearing his responsibilities...
Book cover for "Freedom!"
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There is a saying: knowledge is power. The secret is this. Knowledge, applied at the right time and place, is more than power. It's magic. That's what the Black Panther Party did. They called up this magic and launched a revolution. In the beginning, it was a story like any other. It could have been yours and it could have been mine. But once it got going, it became more than any one person could have imagined. This is the story of Huey and Bobby....

12. Ghost

Book cover for "Ghost"
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Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Description:
"Ghost, a naturally talented runner and troublemaker, is recruited for an elite middle school track team. He must stay on track, literally and figuratively, to reach his full potential"--
Book cover for "The hate u give"
Star rating for The hate u give
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters...
Book cover for "Lifting as we climb"
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"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." -- Publisher's description.
Book cover for "Light for the world to see"
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Presents a collection of three powerful poems that take on racism and Black resistance in America.
Book cover for "March, Book One"
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Series:
March volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:

Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon, one of the key figures of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president.Now, to share his remarkable story with

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Book cover for "Piecing me together"
Star rating for Piecing me together
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
Tired of being singled out at her mostly-white private school as someone who needs support, high school junior Jade would rather participate in the school's amazing Study Abroad program than join Women to Women, a mentorship program for at-risk girls.
Book cover for "Punching the Air"
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New York Times and USA Today bestseller * Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor * Walter Award Winner * Goodreads Finalist for Best Teen Book of the Year * Time Magazine Best Book of the Year * Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year * Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year * School Library Journal Best Book of the Year * Kirkus Best Book of the Year * New York Public Library Best Book of the Year

From award-winning, bestselling

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Book cover for "Revolution in our time"
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Description:
Kekla Magoon introduces readers to the Panthers' community activism, grounded in the concept of self-defense, which taught Black Americans how to protect and support themselves in a country that treated them like second-class citizens. For too long the Panthers' story has been a footnote to the civil rights movement rather than what it was: a revolutionary socialist movement that drew thousands of members--mostly women--and became the target of one...
Book cover for "Say her name"
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Inspired by the #SayHerName campaign launched by the African American Policy Forum, these poems pay tribute to victims of police brutality as well as the activists insisting that Black Lives Matter. Elliott engages poets from the past two centuries to create a chorus of voices celebrating the creativity, resilience, and courage of Black women and girls. This collection features forty-nine powerful poems, four of which are tribute poems inspired by...