African-American History Month: Books for Children & Teens

February is African-American History Month! To honor this event, we've taken a page from Left Bank Books' Black Lives Matter reading list* with our attempt to compile a list of books for children and teens which provide "history and context" for issues of race in the United States. Our list, like Left Bank Books', is also not comprehensive, but reflects some of the offerings on this topic available in the library catalog. You will find more titles using a subject search of African Americans History Juvenile or Civil Rights History Juvenile. 

Is there a book you'd like to recommend for young readers?  Let us know in the comments! 

Easy 

Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins by Carole Boston Weatherford

Freedom Summer by Debbie Wiles

Seeds of Freedom: The Peaceful Integration of Huntsville, Alabama by Hester Bass

Sugar Hill: Harlem's Historic Neighborhood by Carole Boston Weatherford

Harlem Renaissance Party by Faith Ringgold


Children's

Many Thousand Gone: African Americans From Slavery to Freedom by Virginia Hamilton

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker by Patricial Hruby Powell

My Name is Truth: The Life of Sojourner Truth by Ann Turner

Harlem Hellfighters by J. Patrick Lewis

The Girl from the Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement by Teri Kanefield

Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up By Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney  

Harlem Summer by Walter Dean Myers

Courage Has No Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles - America's First Black Paratroopers by Tanya Lee Stone

Seven Miles to Freedom: The Robert Smalls Story by Janet Halfmann 


Young Adult


The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights by Steve Sheinkin

Because They Marched: The People's Campaign for Voting Rights That Changed America by Russell Freedman

Fire in the Streets by Kekla Magoon

No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson


Links

A Guide to Teaching and Talking about the Civil Rights Movement With Books for Children & Teens [Scholastic]

The Black Lives Matter Reading List: Books to Change the World [MPR News]
 
Black Lives Matter: A Reading List [Left Bank Books] *