The Rock and the River
10 best books like The Rock and the River (Kekla Magoon): Flygirl, Martin & Mahalia: His Words, Her Song, Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don't You Grow Weary, After Tupac and D Foster, Zora and Me, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, Crossing Stones, Riot, All the Broken Pieces, Heart of a Shepherd
| Author | Sherri L. Smith |
| ISBN | 0399247092 |
Ida Mae Jones dreams of flight. Her daddy was a pilot and being black didn't stop him from fulfilling his dreams. But her daddy's gone now, and being a woman, and being black, are two strikes against her.
When America enters the war with Germany and Japan, the Army creates the WASP, the Women Airforce...
| Author | Andrea Davis Pinkney |
| ISBN | 0316070130 |
They were each born with the gift of gospel.
Martin's voice kept people in their seats, but also sent their praises soaring.
Mahalia's voice was brass-and-butter - strong and smooth at the same time.
With Martin's sermons and Mahalia's songs, folks were free to shout, to...
| Author | Elizabeth Partridge |
| ISBN | 0670011894 |
An inspiring look at the fight for the vote, by an award-winning author Only 44 years ago in the U.S., Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was leading a fight to win blacks the right to vote. Ground zero for the movement became Selma, Alabama.
Award-winning author Elizabeth Partridge leads you straight...
| Author | Jacqueline Woodson |
| ISBN | 0399246541 |
D Foster showed up a few months before Tupac got shot that first time and left us the summer before he died. The day D Foster enters Neeka and her best friend’s lives, the world opens up for them. D comes from a world vastly different from their safe Queens neighborhood, and through her, the girls see another...
| Author | Victoria Bond |
| ISBN | 0763643009 |
Winner of the 2011 John Steptoe New Talent (Author) Award!
Racial duplicity threatens an idyllic African American community in the turn-of-the-century South in a dazzling debut inspired by the early life of Zora Neale Hurston.
Whether she’s telling the truth or stretching it,...
| Author | Phillip Hoose |
| ISBN | 0374313229 |
“When it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, ‘This is not right.’” – Claudette Colvin On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white...
| Author | Helen Frost |
| ISBN | 0374316538 |
Maybe you won't rock a cradle, Muriel.
Some women seem to prefer to rock the boat.
Eighteen-year-old Muriel Jorgensen lives on one side of Crabapple Creek. Her family's closest friends, the Normans, live on the other. For as long as Muriel can remember, the families' lives have been intertwined,...
| Author | Walter Dean Myers |
| ISBN | 1606840002 |
As the Civil War rages, another battle breaks out behind the lines.
During a long hot July in 1863, the worst race riots the United States has ever seen erupt in New York City. Earlier that year, desperate for more Union soldiers, President Abraham Lincoln instituted a draft–a draft that would...
| Author | Ann E. Burg |
| ISBN | 0545080924 |
A remarkable literary debut by a stunning new voice in children's fiction.
Two years after being airlifted out of war-torn Vietnam, Matt Pin is haunted: by bombs that fell like dead crows, by the family -- and the terrible secret -- he left behind. Now, inside a caring adoptive home in the United States,...
| Author | Rosanne Parry |
| ISBN | 0375848037 |
With his father shipped off to Iraq and his older brothers away, 11-year-old Ignatius "Brother" Alderman works with his grandparents to keep their Oregon ranch going, while coming to realize what he really wants to do with his life. Wonderfully moving story of a sensitive kid trying to do a man's job...
For an eighth grader, Molly Williams has more than her fair share of problems. Her father has just died in a car accident, and her mother has become a withdrawn, quiet version of herself.
Molly doesn't want to be seen as "Miss Difficulty Overcome"; she wants to make herself known to the kids at...
The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had
| Author | Kristin Levine |
| ISBN | 0399250905 |
The last thing Harry "Dit" Sims expects when Emma Walker comes to town is to become friends. Proper -talking, brainy Emma doesn't play baseball or fish too well, but she sure makes Dit think, especially about the differences between black and white. But soon Dit is thinking about a whole lot more when...
| Author | Hope Anita Smith |
| ISBN | 0805072020 |
So many unanswered questions weigh down thirteen-year-old C.J. as he struggles to understand why his father walked out. His father is back now, though C.J. is not as quick to forgive as the other members of his family. He still feels the weight of responsibility that fell on his shoulders when Daddy was...
| Author | Lyn Miller-Lachmann |
| ISBN | 1931896496 |
Daniel’s papá, Marcelo, used to play soccer, dance the cueca, and drive his kids to school in a beat-up green taxi—all while publishing an underground newspaper that exposed Chile’s military regime.After papá’s arrest in 1980, Daniel’s family fled to the United States. Now Daniel has...
| Author | Mary Jane Auch |
| ISBN | 0805079009 |
Not even losing his hand can keep Norm from trying out for the baseball team
What would life be like with only one hand? That's exactly what eleven-year-old Norm finds out when he loses his left hand in an accident at his family's store. It's July 4, 1946. World War II has ended, and life is getting...
| Author | Fran Cannon Slayton |
| ISBN | 0399251898 |
Jimmy lives in Rowlesburg, West Virginia, during the 1940s. He does all the things boys do in the small mountain town: plays a mean game of football, pulls the unforgettable Halloween prank with his friends in ?the Platoon,? and promises to head off into the woods on the first day of hunting season? no...
| Author | Clay Carmichael |
| ISBN | 1590786270 |
Stubborn, self-reliant eleven-year-old Zoe, recently orphaned, is forced to move to the country to live with her strange and bad-tempered uncle. Zoe could care less that he's a famous doctor and sculptor. All she knows is that he is impossible to understand. The only interesting thing on the farm is...
| Author | Tanita S. Davis |
| ISBN | 0375857141 |
Meet Mare, a grandmother with flair and a fascinating past. Octavia and Tali are dreading the road trip their parents are forcing them to take with their grandmother over the summer. After all, Mare isn't your typical grandmother. She drives a red sports car, wears stiletto shoes, flippy wigs, and push-up...
| Author | Victoria McKernan |
| ISBN | 0375837507 |
When orphans Aiden and Maddy Lynch first meet trailrider Jefferson J. Jackson in the spring of 1865, they're struggling to survive on their family's drought-ravaged Kansas farm. So when Jackson offers an escape – a 2000-mile journey across the roughest country in the world – Aiden knows it's their...
| Author | Nancy Bo Flood |
| ISBN | 1590786610 |
On the island of Saipan, in the South Pacific, the second world war is a distant idea. The Japanese have governed the island for twenty-five years and they mix regularly with the native islanders. Though no one questions who holds power, the two peoples coexist peacefully.
Joseph has known...
| Author | Carole Boston Weatherford |
| ISBN | 0803728603 |
When four courageous black teens sat down at a lunch counter in the segregated South of 1960, the reverberations were felt both far beyond and close to home. This insightful story offers a child's-eye view of this seminal event in the American Civil Rights Movement. Connie is used to the signs and customs...
Black and white : the confrontation of Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Eugene "Bull" Connor
| Author | Larry Dane Brimner |
| ISBN | 1590787668 |
In the 1950s and early 60s, Birmingham, Alabama, became known as Bombingham. At the center of this violent time in the fight for civil rights, and standing at opposite ends, were Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Eugene Bull Connor. From his pulpit, Shuttlesworth agitated for racial equality, while...
| Author | Shane W. Evans |
| ISBN | 1596435399 |
On August 28, 1963, a remarkable event took place--more than 250,000 people gathered in our nation's capital to participate in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The march began at the Washington Monument and ended with a rally at the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered...
| Author | Barbara O'Connor |
| ISBN | 0374399379 |
Aggie isn't expecting visitors at the Sleepy Time Motel in the Great Smoky Mountains. Since her husband died, she is all alone with her cat, Ugly, and keeping up with the bills and repairs has become next to impossible. The pool is empty, the garden is overgrown, and not a soul has come to stay in nearly three...
