Jacqueline Woodson’s Before the Ever After is a middle-grade novel-in-verse published in 2020. Set at the turn of the 21st Century, the novel chronicles a professional football player’s mental decline due to the onset of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The story is told from the point of view of his pre-teen son. Together, the poems paint a picture of how a young boy adjusts to the decline of his beloved father. The novel takes place when doctors... Read Before the Ever After Summary

Bronx Masquerade is a young adult novel written by New York Times bestselling author Nikki Grimes. It was published in 2002. Bronx Masquerade chronicles an academic year in the lives of high school students in Mr. Ward’s English class. It includes the ways they relate to each other and their classwork, which prominently features Harlem Renaissance writers, as well as their hopes and dreams. The novel is written in both prose and poetry, with each... Read Bronx Masquerade Summary

Brown Girl Dreaming (2014) is a memoir in verse by Jacqueline Woodson, a children’s and young adult fiction writer. Published by Nancy Paulsen Books, a division of the Penguin Group, the memoir won the National Book Award, the Newberry Honor Book Award, and the Coretta Scott King Award. Other works by this author include Another Brooklyn, Red at the Bone, and Before the Ever After.Plot SummaryBrown Girl Dreaming covers Woodson’s childhood, detailing her family history and... Read Brown Girl Dreaming Summary

Copper Sun is a historical fiction novel about fifteen-year-old Amari, a young woman from Ziavi, Ghana. Amari loves her community (the Ewe people), her family, and her soon-to-be husband, Besa. One day, unannounced, a group of pale-faced strangers arrive, led there by a neighbouring tribe, the Ashanti. Amari’s people prepare a celebration to welcome the guests, not knowing the grave danger they will soon face. After a meal, gift exchange, storytelling, and dancing, the white... Read Copper Sun Summary

Day of Tears: A Novel in Dialogue is a young adult book of historical fiction written by Julius Lester and published in 2005. It was the 2006 winner of the Coretta Scott King Award as well as numerous other YA awards. The book concerns the largest slave auction in American history, which took place on March 2 and 3, 1859, in Savannah, Georgia. Plantation owner Pierce Butler sells more than 400 persons to repay his... Read Day of Tears Summary

Elijah of Buxton is a 2007 middle grade novel by American writer Christopher Paul Curtis (The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963; Bud, Not Buddy). Set in the 1850s, it follows 11-year-old Elijah Freeman, the first freeborn child of Buxton, a Canadian settlement of escaped slaves, as he makes a dangerous journey into the United States. The novel was a Newbery Honor Book and won the Coretta Scott King Award. Plot SummaryThe story opens as Elijah investigates strange... Read Elijah of Buxton Summary

Prolific children’s author Walter Dean Myers published his novel Fallen Angels in 1988. The young adult novel tells the story of a 17-year-old African American teenager from Harlem named Richie Perry who enlists in the United States Army during the Vietnam War. The novel follows Perry as he faces the realities of war with his fellow soldiers and transitions into adulthood on the battlefield. The novel contemplates racial and socio-economic issues in the US, the... Read Fallen Angels Summary

Freewater (2022) is a middle-grade historical fiction novel by Amina Luqman-Dawson. Told from multiple points of view, the novel chronicles 12-year-old Homer’s journey to escape enslavement with his younger sister Ada. They relocate to a secret safe haven deep in the swamp, but their mother remains at the plantation. With newfound hope and help from new friends, Homer and Ada seek to rescue their mother.This guide refers to the paperback edition published by Little, Brown... Read Freewater Summary

Genesis Begins Again is a contemporary middle grade novel published in 2019 by Alicia Williams, a teacher and an author of children’s fiction and young adult books. Genesis Begins Again, Williams’s debut novel, was met with critical praise for exploring and adapting complex emotional themes such as colorism, addiction, and bullying for a younger audience. Genesis Begins Again was a finalist for the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature and the recipient of the... Read Genesis Begins Again Summary

Safia Elhillo’s 2021 Young Adult novel in verse, Home is Not a Country, charts the growth of Nima, a Muslim teenager living in the United States with her immigrant mother. The author biography in the novel dubs Elhillo’s work “a love letter to the diaspora communities she grew up in.” Written in the first-person perspective of Nima, the novel uses elements of magical realism to explore the themes of The Struggle to Belong Within the... Read Home Is Not a Country Summary

King and the Dragonflies (2020) is a teen and young adult fiction novel about a Black youth in a small Louisiana town. It is a story of self-realization and the changes that the death of a child can bring to a family. Kingston James copes with the recent death of his older brother Khalid by using his imagination and his late brother’s musings about the universe to embark on a spiritual journey that includes dragonflies... Read King and the Dragonflies Summary

Legendborn is a young adult urban fantasy novel by Tracy Deonn. It was published by Margaret K. McElderry books in September 2020 and is the first book in a trilogy of the same name that also includes Bloodmarked (2022) and Oathbound (2025). The book is set in North Carolina, mainly on the UNC Chapel Hill campus, and draws from the history of enslavement and the Confederacy in that area, as well as from Black spiritual... Read Legendborn Summary

Let the Circle Be Unbroken (1981) is part of the Logan Family Saga by author Mildred D. Taylor. The series follows the fortunes of a Black farming family, the Logans, through more than one generation as they experience the tribulations of life in the South before the Civil Rights era. The saga consists of 10 novels and novellas. The award-winning novels include The Land (2001), Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976), and The Road... Read Let The Circle Be Unbroken Summary

Locomotion, Jacqueline Woodson’s 2003 novel in verse, follows the perspective of Lonnie Collins Motion, nicknamed Locomotion. After his parents die in a fire and his sister is adopted, Lonnie grieves and navigates life, first in a group home and then with Miss Edna, his foster mother. Through poetry, he slowly finds joy in life again, highlighting the themes of The Search for Identity and Belonging, The Healing Power of Writing, and The Enduring Support of... Read Locomotion Summary

Book DetailsLong Way Down (2017) by Jason Reynolds is a young adult novel in free verse about Will Holloman, a young Black boy struggling to make a decision after his brother, Shawn, is shot dead in the street. Will plans to seek revenge, but before he can leave the elevator of his building, he is greeted by a series of ghosts who confuse and complicate his perspective on Shawn’s death and the idea of revenge... Read Long Way Down Summary

Books Two and Three of March by John Lewis continue and then conclude Lewis’s graphic memoir of his role in the civil rights movement during the 1960s. As a child, Lewis read Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, a comic book recounting the bus boycotts of 1955 and 1956 that helped kick off the civil rights movement. Some described the comic book as corrupting the minds of America’s youth, as it adopted a format... Read March: Books 2 & 3 Summary

Me (Moth) (2021) is a YA novel-in-verse by American author Amber McBride. It traces the main character Moth’s transformative relationship with her Diné classmate Sani in the wake of tragedy. Two years prior to meeting Sani, Moth’s parents and brother died in a car accident. Now living with her aunt in Virginia, Moth is unable to overcome her sorrow. Sani has struggles of his own, and the two readily connect, offering each other friendship, guidance... Read Me (Moth) Summary

Monday’s Not Coming (2018) is a young adult novel by Tiffany D. Jackson. She employs a nonlinear narrative to explore issues of race, mental illness, and media bias. Claudia Coleman narrates the story of how her best friend, Monday Charles, disappeared for a year, and no one but Claudia seemed to notice or care.Published by Harper Collins, Monday’s Not Coming earned Jackson the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe award for new talent. It was also nominated... Read Monday's Not Coming Summary

Money Hungry is a 2001 middle-grade novel by American author Sharon G. Flake published by Little, Brown and Company. A Coretta Scott King Honor book, Money Hungry is the first book in Flake’s Raspberry Hill series. It explores 13-year-old Raspberry Hill’s hunger for money and the lengths to which she will go to acquire it. Stemming from a period of homelessness in her childhood, Raspberry will do almost anything to earn enough money to move... Read Money Hungry Summary

Monster, a YA novel about a Black New York teenager accused of murder, quickly became one of Walter Dean Myers's most acclaimed works when it was published in 1999, winning the Coretta Scott King Award, receiving the Prime Excellence Award of the American Library Association, named a National Book Award Finalist. The completion and release of the novel occurred during the arc of the conviction and eventual exoneration of the Central Park 5, Black teenagers... Read Monster Summary