Susan Winter.  A Baby Just Like Me

Although at first she is disappointed with her new baby sister, Martha comes to appreciate her with time.

Kirsten Hall.  Ballerina Girl

A little girl puts on different costumes and pretends she's a ballerina performing for an audience.

Verna Aardema.  Bringing Rain to Kapiti Plain

A cumulative rhyme relating how Ki-pat brought rain to the drought-stricken Kapiti Plain.

C. W. Bowie.  Busy Toes

A playful list of some of the many things that toes can do, from waving and tickling to splashing and squishing.

Chris Raschka. Charlie Parker Played Be Bop

Introduces the famous saxophonist and his style of jazz known as bebop.

Barbara Shook Hazen.  Digby

Learning about the family dog, Digby , helps a young child understand aging.

Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen.  Elizabeti's Doll

When a young Tanzanian girl gets a new baby brother, she finds a rock, which she names Eva, and makes it her baby doll.

Lucille Clifton.  Everett Anderson's Goodbye

Everett Anderson has a difficult time coming to terms with his grief after his father dies.

Nancy Cote.  Flip-Flops

Even though Penny is annoyed that she can only find one of her flip -flops on the day she goes to the beach, she discovers a number of uses for it and enjoys her time there.

Eve Bunting.  Flower Garden

Helped by her father, a young girl prepares a flower garden as a birthday surprise for her mother.

Joyce Carol Thomas.  I Have Heard of a Land

Describes the joys and hardships experienced by an African-American pioneer woman who staked a claim for free land in the Oklahoma territory.

Hugh Lewin.  Jafta

Jafta describes some of his everyday feelings by comparing his actions to those of various African animals.

Juanita Havill. Jamaica and the Substitute Teacher

Jamaica copies from a friend during a spelling test because she wants a perfect paper, but her substitute teacher Mrs. Duval helps her understand that she does not have to be perfect to be special.

Patricia and Fredrick McKissack. Messy Bessey's Closet

Messy Bessey learns a lesson about sharing when she cleans out her closet.

Ezra Jack Keats.  Peter's Chair

When Peter discovers his blue furniture is being painted pink for a new baby sister, he rescues the last unpainted item, a chair , and runs away.

Margaret Read MacDonald.  Pickin' Peas

Because a pesky rabbit picks peas from her garden, a little girl catches it and puts it in a box, but that doesn't solve the problem.

Carl Best.  Red Light, Green Light, Mama and Me

After taking the train downtown, Lizzie spends the day at the public library, helping her mother who is a children's librarian.

Mem Fox.  Sophie

As Sophie grows bigger and her grandfather gets smaller, they continue to love each other very much.

Nina Crews.  You Are Here

When the rain keeps Mariah and Joy confined to the indoors, they create a magic map and go on a fantastic imaginary voyage.

Gavin Curtis. The Bat Boy and His Violin

Reginald is more interested in practicing his violin than in his father's job managing the worst team in the Negro Leagues, but when Papa makes him the bat boy and his music begins to lead the team to victory, Papa realizes the value of his son's passion.

Bill Cosby.  The Best Way to Play

Little Bill and his friends, avid fans of the television show "Space Explorers," clamor to get the video game version, but they find that they have more fun using their imagination while playing outside.

Donald Crews.  Bigmama's

Visiting Bigmama's house in the country, young Donald Crews finds his relatives full of news and the old place and its surroundings just the same as the year before.

Julius Lester.  Black Cowboy, Wild Horses:  A True Story

A black cowboy is so in tune with wild mustangs that they accept him into the herd, thus enabling him singlehandedly to take them to the corral.

Arnold Adoff.  Black is Brown is Tan

Describes in verse a family with a brown -skinned mother, white-skinned father, two children, and their various relatives.

Mary Hoffman.  Boundless Grace

Grace is invited for a visit with her father and his new family in Africa.

Debbie Allen.  Brothers of the Knight

In this contemporary retelling of the fairy tale "Twelve Dancing Princesses," an African-American reverend in Harlem endeavors to discover why the shoes of his twelve sons are worn to pieces every morning.

Robert D. San Souci.  Cendrillon:  A Caribbean Cinderella

A Creole variant of the familiar Cinderella tale set in the Caribbean and narrated by the godmother who helps Cendrillon find true love.

Andrea Davis Pinkney.  Duke Ellington:  The Piano Prince and His

Orchestra  A brief recounting of the career of this jazz musician and composer who, along with his orchestra, created music that was beyond category.

Robert D. San Souci.  The Hired Hand:  An African American

Folktale  Old Sam hires a man to help out at his saw mill, and the hired hand also teaches Sam's lazy son a lesson about how to treat people.

Lenny Hort.  How Many Stars in the Sky?

One night when Mama is away, Daddy and child seek a good place to count the stars in the night sky.

Natasha Anastasia Tarpley.  I Love My Hair!

A young African American girl describes the different, wonderful ways she can wear her hair.

Faith Ringgold.  If a Bus Could Talk:  The Story of Rosa Parks

A biography of the African American woman and civil rights worker whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus led to a boycott which lasted more than a year in Montgomery, Alabama.

In Daddy's Arms I am Tall:  African Americans Celebrating Fathers

A collection of poems celebrating African-American fathers by Angela Johnson, E. Ethelbert Miller, Carole Boston Weatherford, and others.

Kim L. Siegelson.  In the Time of Drums

Mentu, an American-born slave boy, watches his beloved grandmother, Twi, lead the insurrection at Teakettle Creek of Ibo people arriving from Africa on a slave ship.

Mary Quattlebaum.  Jackson Jones and the Puddle of Thorns

When his mother gives him a garden plot for his tenth birthday, Jackson Jones hopes to earn enough money to buy a basketball, but all he seems to get is trouble.

Robin Bernard.  Juma and the Honey Guide:  An African Story

After teaching his son how to find honey by following the honey-guide bird, an African father insists that they thank the bird by sharing some of the honey with it.

Tololwa M. Mollel.  My Rows and Piles of Coins

A Tanzanian boy saves his coins to buy a bicycle so that he can help his parents carry goods to market, but then he discovers that in spite of all he has saved, he still does not have enough money.

David A. Adler.  A Picture Book of George Washington Carver

A brief biography of the African American scientist who overcame tremendous hardship to make unusual and important discoveries in the field of agriculture.

William Miller.  Richard Wright and the Library Card

Based on a scene from Wright 's autobiography, Black boy, in which the seventeen-year-old African-American borrows a white man's library card and devours every book as a ticket to freedom.

Julius Lester.  Sam and the Tigers:  A New Retelling of Little Black

Sambo   Relates what happens when a little boy named Sam matches wits with several tigers that want to eat him (a retelling of Little Black Sambo ).

David Wisniewski.  Sundiata:  Lion King of Mali

The story of Sundiata , who overcame physical handicaps, social disgrace, and strong opposition to rule Mali in the thirteenth century.

Connie Porter.  Addy Learns a Lesson:  A School Story

After their escape from North Carolina to Philadelphia in the summer of 1864, Addy and her mother begin their new life as free people as her mother gets a paying job and Addy goes to school and learns a lesson in true friendship.

Walter Dean Myers.  At Her Majesty's Request:  An African

Princess in Victorian England   Biography of the African princess saved from execution and taken to England where Queen Victoria oversaw her upbringing and where she lived for a time before marrying an African missionary.

Christopher Paul Curtis.  Bud, Not Buddy

Ten-year-old Bud , a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father--the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.

Virginia Hamilton. Drylongso

As a great wall of dust moves across their drought-stricken farm, a family's distress is relieved by a young man called Drylongso , who literally blows into their lives with the storm.

Harriette Gillem Robinet.  Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule

Born with a withered leg and hand, Pascal, who is about twelve years old, joins other former slaves in a search for a farm and the freedom which it promises.

Julius Lester.  From Slave Ship to Freedom Road

Invoking the memories of ancestors whose names they do not know, Lester and Brown reveal the inner life of the slaves expressed in their secret worship meetings, their heroic escapes, and their joy about freedom.

Angela Johnson.  Heaven

Fourteen-year-old Marley's seemingly perfect life in the small town of Heaven is disrupted when she discovers that her father and mother are not her real parents.

Michele Wood.  I See the Rhythm

Chronicles and captures poetically the history, mood, and movement of African American music.

Joyce Hansen.  I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly:  The Diary

of Patsy, a Freed Girl   Twelve-year-old Patsy keeps a diary of the ripe but confusing time following the end of the Civil War and the granting of freedom to former slaves.

Alice Mead.  Junebug and the Reverend

Having moved out of the housing project and into a new home along with his mother and sister, ten-year-old Junebug discovers that bullies are everywhere and that the elderly can make great friends.

Kimberly Willis Holt.  Mister and Me

In a small Louisiana mill town in 1940, Jolene does not want her Momma to marry the logger who is courting her, but it seems that even her most defiantly bad behavior cannot make him go away.

Sandra Forrester.  My Home is Over Jordan

No longer a slave now that the Civil War is over, fifteen-year-old Maddie dreams of getting an education and becoming a teacher, but she finds the reality of freedom harsh.

Diane Patrick.  The New York Public Library Amazing African

American History:  A Book of Answers for Kids   Presents questions and answers relating to important periods in African American history including the Revolution, Civil War, Reconstruction, Migration, and the Civil Rights Movement.

Patricia Polacco.  Pink and Say

Say Curtis describes his meeting with Pinkus Aylee, a black soldier, during the Civil War, and their capture by Southern troops.

Walter Dean Myers.  The Righteous Revenge of Artemis Bonner

Fifteen-year-old Artemis journeys from New York City to Tombstone, Arizona, in 1882, to avenge the murder of his uncle.

Ruby Bridges.  Through My Eyes

Ruby Bridges recounts the story of her involvement, as a six-year-old, in the integration of her school in New Orleans in 1960.