What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorRoll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Mildred D. Taylor · 276 pages
Set in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, it is the story of one family's struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and independence. It is a story of physical survival, but more important, it is a story of the survival of the human spirit. And, too, it is Cassie's story -- Cassie Logan, an independent girl raised by a family for whom independence is primary, a family determined not t
Glory Be
Augusta Scattergood · 205 pages
In the summer of 1964 as she is about to turn twelve, Glory's town of Hanging Moss, Mississippi, is beset by racial tension when town leaders close her beloved public pool rather than desegregating it.
The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963
Christopher Paul Curtis · 239 pages
The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.
Brown Girl Dreaming
Jacqueline Woodson · 368 pages
Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement.
Ellen Foster
Kaye Gibbons · 126 pages
Having suffered abuse and misfortune for much of her life, a young child searches for a better life and finally gets a break in the home of a loving woman with several foster children.
One Crazy Summer
Rita Williams-Garcia · 232 pages
Eleven-year-old Delphine has it together. Even though her mother, Cecile, abandoned her and her younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, seven years ago. Even though her father and Big Ma will send them from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to stay with Cecile for the summer. And even though Delphine will have to take care of her sisters, as usual, and learn the truth about the missing pieces of the pas
The Kitchen House
Kathleen Grissom · 368 pages
"In 1790, Lavinia, a seven-year-old Irish orphan with no memory of her past, arrives on a tobacco plantation where she is put to work as an indentured servant with the kitchen house slaves. Though she becomes deeply bonded to her new family, Lavinia is also slowly accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. As time passes she finds
Nightjohn
Gary Paulsen · 92 pages
Summary: Twelve-year-old Sarny's brutal life as a slave becomes even more dangerous when a newly arrived slave offers to teach her how to read.
In Front of God and Everybody
K.D. McCrite · 301 pages
In the summer of 1986, eleven-year-old April Grace, who lives on a rural Arkansas farm with her family, across a field from her grandmother, has her sense of Christian charity tested when a snooty couple from San Francisco moves into a dilapidated house down the road and her grandmother takes up with a loud, obnoxious, and suspicious-acting Texan.
Diamond
Jacqueline Wilson · 294 pages
Diamond wasn't always a star. Born to penniless parents who longed for a strong, healthy son, she was a dainty, delicate daughter and a bitter disappointment. Discovering an extraordinary gift for acrobatics, Diamond uses her talent to earn a few pennies, but brings shame on her family. When a mysterious, cruel-eyed stranger spots her performing, Diamond is sold and is taken to become an acrobat a
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain · 330 pages
Color Me Dark: The Diary of Nellie Lee Love, the Great Migration North
Patricia C. McKissack · 220 pages
An ordinary girl living extraordinary events. Her family, Love, characterizes her comfortable, secure world in Bradford Corners, TN. Until Uncle Pace is murdered by the KKK. The Author gradually exposes the prejudice & segregation existing even though slavery has been abolished over 50 years. All discover, how whites live on one side of the only road, & Colored live on the other. We recognize t
Stella by Starlight
Sharon M. Draper · 304 pages
When a burning cross set by the Klan causes panic and fear in 1932 Bumblebee, North Carolina, fifth-grader Stella must face prejudice and find the strength to demand change in her segregated town.
The Lions of Little Rock
Kristin Levine
In 1958 Little Rock, Arkansas, painfully shy twelve-year-old Marlee sees her city and family divided over school integration, but her friendship with Liz, a new student, helps her find her voice and fight against racism.
Counting by 7s
Holly Goldberg Sloan · 380 pages
Skylark
Patricia MacLachlan · 90 pages
*My mother, Sarah, doesn't love the prairie. She tries, but she can't help remembering what she knew first.* Sarah came to the prairie from Maine to marry Papa. But that summer, a drought turned the land dry and brown. Fires swept across the fields and coyotes came to the well in search of water. So Sarah took Anna and Caleb back east, where they would be safe. Papa stayed behind. He would n
Esperanza Rising
Pam Munoz Ryan · 262 pages
Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.
No Ordinary Day
Deborah Ellis
Valli is an orphan who lives on the streets of Kolkata, India. No matter how bad her life seems, there are people who are worse off than her - the lepers. And then, one day, she finds out that she also has leprosy. This is a powerful story about poverty, leprosy suffering and survival, but it's also about hope and compassion, and the power of each individual to make a difference.
Little Audrey
Ruth White · 145 pages
In 1948, eleven-year-old Audrey lives with her father, mother, and three younger sisters in Jewell Valley, a coal mining camp in Southwest Virginia, where her mother still mourns the death of a baby, her father goes on drinking binges on paydays, and Audrey tries to recover from the scarlet fever that has left her skinny and needing to wear glasses.
A Parchment of Leaves
Silas House · 278 pages
"So it is that Vine, Cherokee-born and raised in the early 1900s, trains her eye on a young white man, forsaking her family and their homeland to settle in with Saul's people: his smart-as-a-whip, slow-to-love mother, Esme; his brother Aaron, a gifted banjo player, hot tempered and unpredictable; and Aaron's flightly and chattery Melungeon wife, Aidia.". "It's a delicate negotiation into this new
Snow in Summer
Jane Yolen · 257 pages
Recasts the tale of Snow White, setting it in West Virginia in the 1940s with a stepmother who is a snake-handler.
A Painted House
John Grisham · 465 pages
Using his own childhood for inspiration (and leaving the lawyers behind), bestselling author John Grisham sets A Painted House in 1950s rural Arkansas. During harvest time, together with hired Mexicans and hill people, seven-year-old Luke Chandler picks cotton on his family's rented 80 acres. But racial tension, a forbidden love affair, and murder cause Luke to grow up before he's ready.
Necessary Lies
Diane Chamberlain · 370 pages
Caring for her family on their mid-20th-century tobacco farm after the loss of her parents, 15-year-old Ivy connects with Grace County social worker Jane, who strains her personal and professional relationships with her advocacy of Ivy's family, whose dark secrets test Jane's resolve against racial tensions and state-mandated sterilizations.