Walter Dean Myers
4) Jazz
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Series
Language
English
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Formats
Description
Illustrations and rhyming text celebrate the roots of jazz music.
5) Juba!
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Language
English
Description
In Five Points, New York, in the 1840s, African American teenager William Henry "Juba" Lane works hard to achieve his dream of becoming a professional dancer but his real break comes when he is invited to perform in England. Based on the life of Master Juba; includes historical note.
6) Kick
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Language
English
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Description
Told in their separate voices, thirteen-year-old soccer star Kevin and police sergeant Brown, who knew his father, try to keep Kevin out of juvenile hall after he is arrested on very serious charges.
7) Lockdown
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Language
English
Description
Teenage Reese, serving time at a juvenile detention facility, gets a lesson in making it through hard times from an unlikely friend with a harrowing past.
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Language
English
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Description
Few men in American history are as controversial as Malcolm X. In this provocative biography, Myers, winner of a Newbery Honor and four-time Coretta Scott King Award winner, presents a forthright portrait of a complex man whose life reflected the major events of our times.
Author
Language
English
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Description
The summer after his absentee father is killed in a random shooting, Paul works at a Harlem soup kitchen, where he listens to lessons about "the social contract" from an elderly African American man and mentors a seventeen-year-old unwed mother who wants to make it to college on a basketball scholarship.
10) Fallen angels
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Language
English
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Description
Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.
11) Riot
Author
Language
English
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Description
In 1863, fifteen-year-old Claire, the daughter of an Irish mother and a black father, faces ugly truths and great danger when Irish immigrants, enraged by the Civil War and a federal draft, lash out against blacks and wealthy "swells" of New York City.
12) Dope sick
Author
Language
English
Description
Seeing no way out of his difficult life in Harlem, seventeen-year-old Jeremy "Lil J" Dance flees into a house after a drug deal goes awry and meets a weird man who shows different turning points in Lil J's life when he could have made better choices.
13) Scorpions
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Language
English
Description
After reluctantly taking on the leadership of the Harlem gang, the Scorpions, Jamal finds that his enemies treat him with respect when he acquires a gun--until a tragedy occurs.
14) On a clear day
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
In 2035, Dahlia Grillo, a sixteen-year-old math whiz, joins with six other American teens traveling to England to meet with groups from around the world in hopes of stopping C8, the companies that control nearly everything for their own benefit.
18) Crystal
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Fifteen-year-old Crystal has difficulty trying to reconcile her personal and school life with the sexy, sophisticated persona her career as a quickly advancing high-fashion model has forced upon her.
Author
Language
English
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Black Authors: Youth Biographies (SCPL-YS)
Black History Month - ROD Children's
OBD Black History Month (February) - YOUTH
Black History Month - ROD Children's
OBD Black History Month (February) - YOUTH
Description
Frederick Douglass was a self-educated slave in the South who grew up to become an icon. He was a leader of the abolitionist movement, a celebrated writer, an esteemed speaker, and a social reformer, proving that, as he said, "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."