Words By Heart
10 best books like Words By Heart (Ouida Sebestyen): The Bill Martin Jr Big Book of Poetry, Stealing Freedom, Lillian's Right to Vote: A Celebration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, The Court of the Stone Children, Carver: A Life in Poems, Jessica's First Prayer, Nothing to Fear, Twelve Rounds to Glory: The Story of Muhammad Ali, The Night Swimmers, The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian
| Author | Bill Martin Jr. |
| ISBN | 1416939717 |
The definitive anthology of children's poetry, collected by a beloved author
Years in the making, this full-color treasury contains nearly two hundred poems, all of them handpicked by Bill Martin Jr. Traditional children's poems are presented alongside contemporary pieces, and the collection...
| Author | Elisa Carbone |
| ISBN | 0440417074 |
Inspired by a true story, the riveting novel of a young slave girl's harrowing escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
The moment Ann Maria Weems was born, her freedom was stolen from her. Like her family and the other slaves on the farm, Ann works from sunup to sundown and obeys the orders...
| Author | Jonah Winter |
| ISBN | 0385390289 |
An elderly African American woman, en route to vote, remembers her family’s tumultuous voting history in this picture book publishing in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
As Lillian, a one-hundred-year-old African American woman, makes a “long haul...
| Author | Eleanor Cameron |
| ISBN | 0140342893 |
Who is Dominique? When Nina first sees her in the French Museum, she senses that there is something unreal about the strange, beautiful girl. In fact, Domi is from Napoleon's time, and she has come to get Nina's help. For Domi's father was executed as a traitor during the French Revolution, and Domi is...
| Author | Marilyn Nelson |
| ISBN | 1886910537 |
George Washington Carver was born a slave in Missouri about 1864 and was raised by the childless white couple who had owned his mother. In 1877 he left home in search of an education, eventually earning a master's degree. In 1896, Booker T. Washington invited Carver to start the agricultural department...
| Author | Hesba Stretton |
| ISBN | 1594623732 |
In a screened and secluded corner of one of the many railway-bridges which span the streets of London there could be seen a few years ago, from five o'clock every morning until half past eight, a tidily set-out coffee-stall, consisting of a trestle and board, upon which stood two large tin cans, with a...
| Author | Jackie French Koller |
| ISBN | 0152575820 |
Thirteen-year-old Danny and his family are struggling to make ends meet in New York during the Great Depression. His father leaves to search for work, and Danny and his mother do what they can to survive. With his mother pregnant and unable to help, Danny is forced to beg for food. Through it all, they retain...
| Author | Charles R. Smith Jr. |
| ISBN | 0763616923 |
A dynamic author-illustrator team follows the threetime heavyweight champ through twelve rounds of a remarkable life.
"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. . . . I’m the prettiest thing that ever lived!"
From the moment a fired-up teenager from Kentucky won 1960 Olympic gold...
| Author | Betsy Byars |
| ISBN | 0440458579 |
Retta, Johnny and Roy are the night swimmers: three children whose father leaves them alone while he performs as a singer."Byars has the uncanny ability to know the secret lives...the outward postures, and the exact words her characters would surely use."-- "The New York Times Book Review."
A...
| Author | Lloyd Alexander |
| ISBN | 0141308168 |
When fourth fiddler Sebastian loses his place in the Baron's orchestra, he has to leave the only home he knows--which turns out to be the least of his troubles. He rescues a stray cat from a group of tormentors, who then smash his precious violin; and the troubled young boy he tries to help turns out to be...
| Author | Michelle Y. Green |
| ISBN | 0803726619 |
Mamie Johnson looks the batter in the eye. Sizes him up for a curve- or a fastball. Stretches her 5'2" frame. And pops a surefire, windup, coming-right-at-ya pitch smack dab over the plate. One that lets the batter know that this "peanut of a girl" means business. Fueled by her passion for the game and buoyed...
| Author | Jen Bryant |
| ISBN | 0375840486 |
Will Lyza's 1968 summer mystery lead to . . . pirate treasure?
When Lyza helps her dad clean out her late grandfather's house, a mysterious surprise brightens the sad task. In Gramps's dusty attic, Lyza discovers three maps, carefully folded and stacked, bound by a single rubber band. On top,...
| Author | Kate Seredy |
| ISBN | 1930900813 |
Young Michael of Hungary carries an acorn all the way from his castle home in Chestry Valley to the warm soil of the Hudson Valley farm in the USA where he makes a new home after WWII.
It was difficult to decide which are the most unforgettable; the scenes in Hungary, Michael's proud, valiant father...
| Author | Rick Bowers |
| ISBN | 1426309155 |
This book tells a group of intertwining stories that culminate in the historic 1947 collision of the Superman Radio Show and the Ku Klux Klan. It is the story of the two Cleveland teenagers who invented Superman as a defender of the little guy and the New York wheeler-dealers who made him a major media force....
| Author | Huynh Quang Nhuong |
| ISBN | 0064401839 |
An ALA Notable Children’s Book and a Booklist Editors’ Choice, about one young man’s memories of the land he called home.
The land I love was lost to me forever.
Huynh Quang Nhuong grew up in the highlands of Vietnam, next to the jungle teeming with wildlife. Encounters with tigers,...
| 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...
| Author | Sheila Gordon |
| ISBN | 0440226988 |
I first read this book when I was in the fifth grade, and I've never forgotten it. It tells the story of two boys in apartheid-era South Africa, Tengo and Frikkie. The two boys are the best of friends; Tengo is the black son of the "boss boy" on a large, prosperous farm, while Frikkie is the nephew of the farm...
| Author | Isaac Bashevis Singer |
| ISBN | 0374416966 |
An ALA Notable Book.
“Singer's memories of his youth in Poland make a powerful, brilliant children's book. The author lays out a panorama of Jewish life in the city-- the rabbis in black velvet and gabardine, the shopkeepers, the street urchins and schoolboys, the poverty, the confusion,...
| Author | Diane Lee Wilson |
| ISBN | 0689871384 |
WANTED: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders. Willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.
When Colton Wescott sees this sign for the Pony Express, he thinks he has the solution to his problems. He's stuck with his ma and two younger sisters on the wrong side...
| Author | Eloise Jarvis McGraw |
| ISBN | 0816710503 |
I read this book I-don't-know-how-many times as a kid, and loved it every time. For this year's reading challenge, I wanted to see if this simple 150-page story held up as well as I remembered, and guess what? It did!
This book is just so . . . satisfying. I love watching all the little pieces of the...
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 | Anna Claybourne |
| ISBN | 0794517102 |
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| Author | Mildred D. Taylor |
| ISBN | 0140389644 |
Cassie Logan and her brothers have been warned never to go to the Wallace store, so they know to expect trouble there. What they don t expect is to hear Mr. Tom Bee, an elderly black man, daring to call the white storekeeper by his first name. The year is 1933, the place is Mississippi, and any child knows that...
| Author | Marie Bradby |
| ISBN | 0531094642 |
Simply put a beautiful story on reading with beautiful imagery. However, “More Than Anything Else” was more than that. It had a likable character named Booker to follow throughout the story. It compared grasping or “holding” on to something, a frog, with grasping knowledge or learning to...
| Author | Chris Crowe |
| ISBN | 0142501921 |
Winner of the 2003 International Reading Association Award for Young Adult Novel
At first Hiram is excited to visit his hometown in Mississippi. But soon after he arrives, he crosses paths with Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago who is also visiting for the summer, and Hiram sees firsthand...
