Having fled the rampaging revolutionaries in Mexico in 1911, thirteen-year-old Evangelina and her family face unexpected prejudice and violence in Texas.
Evangelina Takes Flight
20th century
An Illustrated History Of China’s War Of Resistance Against Japan (New Edition)
With historic pictures and materials organized in chronological order, the book presents the whole process of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression from 1931 to 1945, underlining the invincible spirit of the Chinese nation. Many of the 438 pictures in the book are published for the first time.
The Book Itch
The Book Itch is the story of the National Memorial African Bookstore, founded in Harlem by Louis Michaux. Told from Lewis’s son’s perspective, the book complements Nelson’s award-winning novel No Crystal Stair.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 8, Issue 4
The Four Immigrants Manga : A Japanese Experience In San Francisco, 1904-1924
A “documentary comic book” from 1931, depicting the true adventures of four young Japanese men in America.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume VI, Issue 4
The Tweedles Go Electric
Meet the Tweedles: Papa, Mama, daughter Frances and her brother, Francis. It’s the dawn of a new century—the twentieth century!—and the Tweedles have decided to buy a car. But no gas-guzzler for this modern family. Only an electric car will do for them. Frances is the only member of her eccentric family who is not delighted when Papa decides they need an electric car. She would rather read a book. Frances knows that cars go fast, which can only lead to trouble. She is even less impressed when the family takes possession of the car and faces ridicule from more conventional citizens with their noisy, dirty, gas-fueled machines. But when Mr. Hamm is unable to get to the hospital because his car has run out of gas, Frances saves the day—and falls in love with automobile travel at the same time. With humorous allusions to the twenty-first century—which is better? Gas or electric?
These Hands
Joseph’s grandpa could do almost anything with his hands. He could play the piano, throw a curveball, and tie a triple bowline knot in three seconds flat. But in the 1950s and 60s, he could not bake bread at the Wonder Bread factory. Factory bosses said white people would not want to eat bread touched by the hands of the African Americans who worked there. In this powerful intergenerational story, Joseph learns that people joined their hands together to fight discrimination so that one day, their hands Joseph’s hands could do anything at all in this whole wide world.
No Crystal Stair
A documentary novel of the life and work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem bookseller
‘You can’t walk straight on a crooked line. You do you’ll break your leg. How can you walk straight in a crooked system?’
Lewis Michaux was born to do things his own way. When a white banker told him to sell fried chicken, not books, because Negroes don’t read,’ Lewis took five books and one-hundred dollars and built a bookstore. It soon became the intellectual center of Harlem, a refuge for everyone from Muhammad Ali to Malcolm X.
In No Crystal Stair, Coretta Scott King Award-winning author Vaunda Micheaux Nelson combines meticulous research with a storyteller’s flair to document the life and times of her great uncle Lewis Michaux, an extraordinary literacy pioneer of the Civil Rights era.
‘My life was no crystal stair, far from it. But I’m taking my leave with some pride. It tickles me to know that those folks who said I could never sell books to black people are eating crow. I’d say my seeds grew pretty damn well. And not just the book business. It’s the more important business of moving our people forward that has real meaning.’
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 5, Issue 1
The Secret Of The Yellow Death: A True Story Of Medical Sleuthing
Red oozes from the patient’s gums. He has a rushing headache and the whites of his eyes look like lemons. He will likely die within days. Here is the true story of how four Americans and one Cuban tracked down a killer, one of the word’s most vicious plagues: yellow fever. Set in fever-stricken Cuba, the reader feels the heavy air, smell the stench of disease, hear the whine of mosquitoes biting human volunteers during the surreal experiments. Exploring themes of courage, cooperation, and the ethics of human experimentation, this gripping account is ultimately a story of the triumph of science.
Hazel: A Novel
Hazel Louise Mull-Dare has a good life, but it’s so dull. With an adoring father who grants her every wish, a place in the Kensington School for the Daughters of Gentlemen, and no pressure to excel in anything whatsoever, her future looks primly predictable.But on the day of the Epsom Derby — June 4, 1913 — everything changes. A woman in a dark coat steps in front of the king’s horse, in protest at the injustice of denying women the vote. She dies days later, bringing further attention to the suffragist cause. Young Hazel is transfixed. And when her bold new friend Gloria convinces her to take on the cause, Hazel gets her first taste of rebellion.But doing so leads her into greater trouble than she could have ever imagined. Such great trouble that she is banished from London, all the way to where her family fortune originates — a sugar plantation in the Caribbean. There Hazel is forced to confront the dark secrets of her family — secrets that have festered, and a shame that lingers on.
The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales Of The Supernatural: (Newbery Honor Book, Coretta Scott King Author Award, Ala Notable Children’s Book) (Coretta Scott King Author Award Winner)
A collection of ghost stories with African American themes, designed to be told during the Dark Thirty–the half hour before sunset–when ghosts seem all too believable. With an extraordinary gift for suspense, McKissack brings us ten original spine-tingling tales inspired by African-American history and the mystery of that eerie half-hour before nightfall–the dark thirty. “The atmosphere of each selection is skillfully developed and sustained to the very end. Pinkney’s stark scratchboard illustrations evoke an eerie mood, which heightens the suspense of each tale. This is a stellar collection for both public and school libraries looking for absorbing books to hook young readers. Storytellers will also find it a goldmine.”