Tameka’s New Dress Written by Ronnie Sidney, II, MSW Illustrated by Traci Van Wagoner Being the new girl at middle school can be a challenge. For protagonist, Tameka, it is harder because since her father has died, her mother…
Tag: African Americans
Nelson Beats the Odds by Ronnie Sidney, II, MSW, illustrated by Traci Van Wagoner
Nelson Beats The Odds By Ronnie Sidney, II, MSW Illustrated by Traci Van Wagoner Middle school is often a struggle for many kids, but especially for Nelson. Full of life, he considers school a place for socializing, daydreaming, and…
My Seneca Village by Marilyn Nelson
My Seneca Village By Marilyn Nelson Most people in the United States have heard about New York City’s Central Park, but few have heard of Seneca Village, a community built on a portion of land that later was developed…
A Tragedy of Race: Out of Darkness
On March 18, 1937, a natural gas leak led to a deadly explosion and collapse of the all-white school in New London, a town in East Texas. Ashley Hope Pérez, who grew up nearby, has mined her grandmother’s recollections, archives,…
Brick by Brick, written by Charles R. Smith Jr. and Illustrated by Floyd Cooper
Brick by Brick Written by Charles R. Smith Jr. Illustrated by Floyd Cooper The White House was built brick by brick by numerous workers, including many who were slaves. In 1792 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue did not exist; the…
Returning to a Painful Past: A Review of The Door at the Crossroads
Fans of Zetta Elliott’s 2008 time travel novel for teens, A Wish After Midnight (originally self-published, then republished by Amazon Encore in 2010) have waited a long time for the sequel. Patience, however, has been rewarded by a second volume…
I Identify with The Anti-Socialites
Attending the Brooklyn Book Festival’s Children’s Day for the first time last September, I came across a lone booth in the middle of the plaza. There Alicia and Tameka McKenzie were selling their self-published series for middle graders, The Anti-Socialites,…
A Journey into the Past with Dayshaun’s Gift
Zetta Elliott’s City Kids series, which debuted in 2014 with The Phoenix on Barkley Street, features African-American characters who experience magic in their daily lives. After the phoenix helps Carlos and Tariq to restore their urban garden in Brooklyn and…
Friendship and Finding Yourself on the Road: A Review of An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes
With his debut novel, An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes, Filipino-born author Randy Ribay emerges as a bright new star of YA literature. His novel follows four teens—players of Dungeons & Dragons since sixth grade—they take a cross-country drive at…
On Family, Friendship, and Finding Yourself: A Review of Show and Prove
With the increasing gentrification of New York City, it’s sometimes hard to imagine the early 1980s in the city, when public officials, both local and national, wrote off huge swaths of the city populated by people of color. News and…