"By heeding their wise grandmother's advice, a brother and sister discover the ability to lift themselves up and imagine a better world" --

Frannie doesn't know what to make of the poem she's reading in school. She hasn't thought much about hope. There are so many other things to think about. Each day, her friend Samantha seems a bit more "holy." There is a new boy in class everyone is calling the Jesus Boy. And although the new boy looks like a white kid, he says he's not white. Who is he? During a winter full of surprises, good and bad, Frannie starts seeing a lot of things in a new...

A rope passed down through the generations frames an African American family's story as they journey north during the time of the Great Migration.

"ZJ's friends Ollie, Darry and Daniel help him cope when his father, a beloved professional football player, suffers severe headaches and memory loss that spell the end of his career."--

"Brooklyn, 2001.  Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, sixteen-year-old Melody celebrates her coming of age wearing a custom-made dress - the very same dress that was sewn for Melody's mother for a celebration that ultimately never took place.  Unfurling the history of Melody's family - from the 1921 Tulsa race massacre to post 9/11 New York - Red at the Bone explores sexual desire, race, class and the life-altering facts of parenthood,...

As the daughter of biracial parents, fourteen-year-old Staggerlee already feels like an outsider in her largely African-American community, and a summer with her cousin Trout during which both girls question their sexuality, allows Stagerlee to think about the type of person she can become.

In the New York City borough of Queens in 1996, three girls bond over their shared love of Tupac Shakur's music, as together they try to make sense of the unpredictable world in which they live.

After meeting at their private school in New York, fifteen-year-old Jeremiah, who is black and whose parents are separated, and Ellie, who is white and whose mother has twice abandoned her, fall in love and then try to cope with people's reactions.

After Mama takes a job in Chicago during World War II, Ada Ruth stays with Grandma but misses her mother who loves her more than rain and snow.

Describes the life of the civil rights worker who is honored on Martin Luther King Day.