Black History Resources 2006

We're not usually fans of celebrities as children's book authors, but the April 2006 paperback release by Spike Lee and his wife, Tonya Lewis Lee, is really worth a look. please, baby, please (Simon & Schuster) takes the reader through a toddler's day with a parent wheedling, as parents do, for little ones to eat, stop dropping their food, stop running in the house, dawdling...well, you get the idea. The repetition of the title words provides terrific practice for emerging readers and comprehension success is assured. This version is $6.99 at your local bookstore.

Han Nolan gives us A Summer of Kings (Harcourt, Inc.) for ages 12 and up. It's a 333-page tour de force about the civil rights movement in 1963 as seen through the eyes of a 14-year-old. Race becomes personal when a young Black man, the son of her mother's friend, comes to live with Esther and her family in Westchester County, NY. King-Roy Johnson was alleged to have killed a white man in Alabama. This is an enormously powerful piece of writing and the story's pacing makes it a great read aloud. $17 and well worth it.

Let Them Play! (Sleeping Bear Press) is the story of the all-Black Cannon Street All-Stars on the road to the 1955 Little League World Series. The terrible injustice of that time is well-documented and the whole tone of the story is upbeat and courageous. Kids will enjoy the baseball information and be amazed at the restrictions in sports just 50 years ago. $16.95 wherever you buy your books.

Weigl Publishers Inc. has a super six-book series entitled Great African-American Women. The books present a broad spectrum of successful women from writers to entertainers to TV personalities and athletes.

However, these books are much more than just a look at celebrities: there is information about the cities in which they lived, information about the vocation, sport or career they pursued and general social studies information. For instance, the Toni Morrison book has information on the publishing process and fiction and non-fiction.

The books are only 24 pages long, but they really pack a wallop as far as information is concerned. Women included besides Toni Morrison are Venus and Serena Williams, Oprah Winfrey, Rosa Parks, Halle Berry and Beyonce Knowles.

The photos are outstanding and the sidebars are jammed with facts. A set of these would work well in every classroom, reading level grades two and up. Although we saw the paperback version, there is a hardbound set. The Weigl website had a price of about $146 for the set but it's best to check with them directly at www.weigl.com

Doreen Rappaport has completed the last book in her trilogy on the Black experience in America. No body Gonna Turn Me 'Round – Songs and Stories of the Civil Rights Movement (Candlewick Press) is a gem. In spartan prose, this former teacher brings us to Emmett Till's coffin, dead at 14 because he was Black. She takes us to the bone-weary Rosa Parks and to frightened teenager, Elizabeth Eckford, walking into a high school in Little Rock. The skill of the reporter lets us feel each of the emotions of the individuals being remembered. Martin Luther King, Jr. appears in this 59-page book, as does Malcolm X, but it is the little girls in Birmingham and Fanny Lou Hamer trying to vote that we – and the children – will remember.

The songs in the book are now the folk songs of freedom for all. Be sure to buy this one. It's $19.99.

And one more...Bessie Smith and the Night Riders by Sue Stauffacher (G.P. Putnam's Sons) is a terrific recounting of an actual event involving the famous blues singer, Bessie Smith, and the Ku Klux Klan. $16.99.