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Remembering Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Notorious RBG : the life and times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Summary:Presents an illustrated biography of the feminist icon and legal pioneer who has changed the world, especially in the realms of gender equality and civil rights.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg : the case of R.B.G. vs. inequality
Summary:"To become the first female Jewish Supreme Court Justice, the unsinkable Ruth Bader Ginsburg had to overcome countless injustices. Growing up in Brooklyn in the 1930s and ’40s, Ginsburg was discouraged from working by her father, who thought a woman’s place was in the home. Regardless, she went to Cornell University, where men outnumbered women four to one. There, she met her husband, Martin Ginsburg, and found her calling as a lawyer. Despite discrimination against Jews, females, and working mothers, Ginsburg went on to become Columbia Law School’s first tenured female professor, a judge for the US Court of Appeals, and finally, a Supreme Court Justice. Structured as a court case in which the reader is presented with evidence of the injustice that Ginsburg faced, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the true story of how one of America’s most ‘notorious’ women bravely persevered to become the remarkable symbol of justice she is today." — Amazon.com.
I dissent : Ruth Bader Ginsburg makes her mark
Summary:Traces the achievements of the celebrated Supreme Court justice through the lens of her many famous acts of civil disagreement against inequality, unfair treatment, and human rights injustice.
Becoming RBG : Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s journey to justice
Summary:"From the New York Times bestselling author of I Dissent comes a biographical graphic novel about celebrated Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a modern feminist icon-a leader in the fight for equal treatment of girls and women in society and the workplace. She blazed trails to the peaks of the male-centric worlds of education and law, where women had rarely risen before. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has often said that true and lasting change in society and law is accomplished slowly, one step at a time. This is how she has evolved, too. Step by step, the shy little girl became a child who questioned unfairness, who became a student who persisted despite obstacles, who became an advocate who resisted injustice, who became a judge who revered the rule of law, who became…RBG"–
Ruth objects : the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Summary:A portrait of the trailblazing Supreme Court Justice describes the prejudices that challenged her pursuit of an education and a career in law, her achievements as the second woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court and her important contributions to high-profile cases.
I look up to…Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Summary:It’s never too early to introduce your child to the people you admire! This board book distills Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s excellent qualities into deliciously illustrated little baby-sized bites, with text designed to share and read aloud. Each spread highlights an important trait, and is enhanced by a quote from RBG herself. Kids will grow up hearing the words of this influential woman and will learn what YOU value in a person!
No truth without Ruth : the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Summary:An introduction to the second female Supreme Court justice describes how she faced discrimination because of her gender throughout her education and working life, and how her fight for equality changed the way the law dealt with women’s rights.
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The Vanishing Half Read-Alikes
The vanishing half
Summary:"The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?"
The Turner house : a novel
Summary:A powerful, timely debut, this book marks a major new contribution to the story of the American family. The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house has seen thirteen children grown and gone–and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit’s East Side, and the loss of a father. The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts–and shapes–their family’s future. Already praised by Ayana Mathis as "utterly moving" and "un-putdownable," it brings us a colorful, complicated brood full of love and pride, sacrifice and unlikely inheritances. It’s a striking examination of the price we pay for our dreams and futures, and the ways in which our families bring us home.– Provided by publisher.
Homegoing : a novel
Summary:Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising half-caste children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the Empire. Her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath Effia in the Castle’s women’s dungeon, and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, where she will be sold into slavery.
We cast a shadow : a novel
Summary:"In a near-future Southern city, everyone is talking about a new experimental medical procedure that boasts unprecedented success rates. In a society plagued by racism, segregation, and private prisons, this operation saves lives with a controversial method–by turning people white. Like any father, our unnamed narrator just wants the best for his son Nigel, a biracial boy whose black birthmark is getting bigger by the day. But in order to afford Nigel’s whiteness operation, our narrator must make partner as one of the few black associates at his law firm, jumping through a series of increasingly absurd hoops–from diversity committees to plantation tours to equality activist groups–in a tragicomic quest to protect his son."
A kind of freedom : a novel
Summary:Evelyn is a Creole woman who comes of age in New Orleans at the height of World War II. Her family inhabits the upper echelon of Black society, and when she falls for no-account Renard, she is forced to choose between her life of privilege and the man she loves. In 1982, Evelyn’s daughter, Jackie, is a frazzled single mother grappling with her absent husband’s drug addiction. Just as she comes to terms with his abandoning the family, he returns, ready to resume their old life. Jackie’s son, T.C., loves the creative process of growing marijuana more than the weed itself. He was a square before Hurricane Katrina, but the New Orleans he knew didn’t survive the storm. Fresh out of a four-month stint for drug charges, T.C. decides to start over―until an old friend convinces him to stake his new beginning on one last deal. For Evelyn, Jim Crow is an ongoing reality, and in its wake new threats spring up to haunt her descendants. A Kind of Freedom is an urgent novel that explores the legacy of racial disparity in the South through a poignant and redemptive family history.
Silver sparrow : a novel
Summary:The story about a man’s deception, a family’s complicity, and two teenage girls caught in the middle, set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s.
Passing
Summary:Two light-skinned African American women try to pass for white to escape racism, and Clare Kendry cuts her ties to the past and to Irene Redfield, ignoring the fact that that racism exists. — Novelist.
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Roald Dahl Day, September 13th
Fantastic Mr. FoxSummary:
Three farmers, each one meaner than the other, try all-out warfare to get rid of the fox and his family.
Matilda
Summary:Matilda, a brilliant, sensitive little girl, uses her talents and ingenuity to seek revenge on her crooked father, lazy mother, and the terrifying Miss Trunchbull, her wicked headmistress, and save her beloved teacher, Miss Honey.
James and the giant peach
Summary:A young boy escapes from two wicked aunts and embarks on a series of adventures with six giant insects he meets inside a giant peach.
Boy : tales of childhood
Summary:Presents humorous anecdotes from the author’s childhood which includes summer vacations in Norway and an English boarding school.
Charlie and the chocolate factory
Summary:Each of five children lucky enough to discover an entry ticket into Mr. Willy Wonka’s mysterious chocolate factory takes advantage of the situation in his own way.
The Twits
Summary:The misadventures of two terrible old people who enjoy playing nasty tricks and are finally outwitted by a family of monkeys.
The BFG
Summary:Snatched from her orphanage by a BFG (Big Friendly Giant), who spends his life blowing happy dreams to children, Sophie concocts with him a plan to save the world from nine other man-gobbling cannybull giants.
George’s marvelous medicine
Summary:George decides that his grumpy, selfish old grandmother must be a witch and concocts some marvelous medicine to take care of her.
The witches
Summary:A young boy and his Norwegian grandmother, who is an expert on witches, together foil a witches’ plot to destroy the world’s children by turning them into mice.
The magic finger
Summary:Angered by a neighboring family’s sport hunting, an eight-year-old girl turns her magic finger on them.
The enormous crocodile
Summary:The enormous crocodile devises secret plans and a few clever tricks to secure his lunch only to have them foiled by his neighbors.
Esio Trot
Summary:Shy and lonely Mr. Hoppy devises a plan to win the heart of his true love, Mrs. Silver, by teaching her a spell to make her beloved pet tortoise grow bigger.
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Labor Day, September 7th
Nickel and dimed : on (not) getting by in America
Summary:Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, the author decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job, any job could be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on six to seven dollars an hour? To find out, she left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered as a woefully inexperienced homemaker returning to the workforce. So began a grueling, hair raising, and darkly funny odyssey through the underside of working America. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.
Hand to mouth : living in bootstrap America
Summary:The author, in her signature brutally honest yet personable voice, takes all of these preconceived notions of what it means to be poor and smashes them to bits. She articulates not only what it is to be working poor in America (yes, you can be poor and live in a house and have a job, even two), but what poverty is truly like, on all levels. In her thought-provoking voice, she discusses how she went from lower-middle class, to sometimes middle class, to poor and everything in between, and in doing so reveals why "poor people don’t always behave the way middle-class America thinks they should." — Provided by publisher.
The new geography of jobs
Summary:From the author, an economist, this book is an examination of innovation and success, and where to find them in America. An unprecedented redistribution of jobs, population, and wealth is under way in America, and it is likely to accelerate in the years to come. America’s new economic map shows growing differences, not just between people but especially between communities. In this book, the author provides a fresh perspective on the tectonic shifts that are reshaping America’s labor market, from globalization and income inequality to immigration and technological progress, and how these shifts are affecting our communities.
Triangle : the fire that changed America
Summary:Describes the 1911 fire that destroyed the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York’s Greenwich Village, the deaths of 146 workers in the fire, and its implications for twentieth-century politics and labor relations.
Heads in beds : a reckless memoir of hotels, hustles, and so-called hospitality
Summary:"A humorous memoir by a veteran hospitality employee that reveals what goes on behind the scenes of the hotel business. Includes tips on how to get the most out of your hotel stay."
Rise of the robots : technology and the threat of a jobless future
Summary:Examines the effects of accelerating technology on the economic system.,"In Silicon Valley the phrase "disruptive technology" is tossed around on a casual basis. No one doubts that technology has the power to devastate entire industries and upend various sectors of the job market. But Rise of the Robots asks a bigger question: Can accelerating technology disrupt our entire economic system to the point where a fundamental restructuring is required? Companies like Facebook and YouTube may only need a handful of employees to achieve enormous valuations, but what will be the fate of those of us not lucky or smart enough to have gotten into the great shift from human labor to computation?"
Shop class as soulcraft : an inquiry into the value of work
Summary:Called “the sleeper hit of the publishing season” (The Boston Globe), Shop Class as Soulcraft became an instant bestseller, attracting readers with its radical (and timely) reappraisal of the merits of skilled manual labor. On both economic and psychological grounds, author Matthew B. Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a “knowledge worker,” based on a misguided separation of thinking from doing. Using his own experience as an electrician and mechanic, Crawford presents a wonderfully articulated call for self-reliance and a moving reflection on how we can live concretely in an ever more abstract world.
Bread and roses : mills, migrants, and the struggle for the American dream
Summary:The 1912 textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts was a watershed moment in labor history as significant as the Haymarket bombing in Chicago and the Triangle fire in New York. In a history with the narrative drive of a novel, journalist Watson provides the first full-length account of the strike that began when textile workers stormed out of the mills on a frigid January day. Despite owners’ predictions to the contrary, the walkout soon became a protracted Dickensian drama that included 23,000 strikers from fifty-one nations singing as they paraded through Lawrence, bayonet-toting militiamen patrolling the streets, and the daring evacuation of the strikers’ tattered and hungry children to Manhattan, where they lived with strangers and wrote loving letters to their parents on the picket line.–From publisher description.
We are Market Basket : the story of the unlikely grassroots movement that saved a beloved business
Summary:On June 23, 2014, the long-time CEO of a popular New England supermarket chain was ousted by his board of directors, led by his cousin. What transpired over the next two months is an inspiring tale of epic loyalty to a man who had impacted his community far beyond that of providing groceries.In We Are Market Basket, readers will learn more than simply the story of the strike heard round the world. How did a single CEO garner so much respect from his company’s managers and rank-and-file workers that they walked out
Adult Memoirs
Ordinary girls : a memoir
Summary:"Jaquira Díaz writes an unflinching account of growing up as a queer biracial girl searching for home as her family splits apart and her mother struggles with mental illness and addiction. From her own struggles with depression and drug abuse to her experiences of violence to Puerto Rico’s history of colonialism, every page vibrates with music and lyricism."
Fairest : a memoir
Summary:"A heartrending immigrant memoir and a uniquely intersectional coming-of-age story of a life lived in duality and the in-between, and how one navigates through race, gender, and the search for love."
The beauty in breaking : a memoir
Summary:"A series of connected personal stories drawn from the author’s life and work as an ER doctor that explores how we are all broken–physically, emotionally, and psychically–and what we can do to heal ourselves as we try to heal others."
My vanishing country : a memoir
Summary:"The CNN analyst and youngest state representative in South Carolina’s history illuminates the lives of America’s forgotten rural, Black working-class men and women."
Missed translations : meeting the immigrant parents who raised me
Summary:"Approaching his 30th birthday, Sopan Deb had found comfort in his day job as a writer for the New York Times and a practicing comedian. But his stage material highlighting his South Asian culture only served to mask the insecurities borne from his family history. Sure, Deb knew the facts: his parents, both Indian, separately immigrated to North America in the 1960s and 1970s. They were brought together in a volatile and ultimately doomed arranged marriage and raised a family in suburban New Jersey before his father returned to India alone. But Deb had never learned who his parents were as individuals–their ages, how many siblings they had, what they were like as children, what their favorite movies were. Theirs was an ostensibly nuclear family without any of the familial bonds. Coming of age in a mostly white suburban town, Deb’s alienation led him to seek separation from his family and his culture, longing for the tight-knit home environment of his white friends. His desire wasn’t rooted in racism or oppression; it was born of envy and desire–for white moms who made after-school snacks and asked his friends about the girls they liked and the teachers they didn’t. Deb yearned for the same. Deb’s experiences as one of the few minorities covering the Trump campaign, and subsequently as a stand up comedian, propelled him on a dramatic journey to India to see his father–the first step in a life altering journey to bridge the emotional distance separating him from those whose DNA he shared. Deb had to learn to connect with this man he recognized yet did not know–and eventually breach the silence separating him from his mother. As it beautifully and poignantly chronicles Deb’s odyssey, Missed Translations raises questions essential to us all: Is it ever too late to pick up the pieces and offer forgiveness? How do we build bridges where there was nothing before–and what happens to us, to our past and our future, if we don’t?"–Amazon
All you can ever know : a memoir
Summary:Chung investigates the mysteries and complexities of her transracial adoption in this chronicle of unexpected family for anyone who has struggled to figure out where they belong.
The Sixth Man : a memoir
Summary:"A standout sports memoir from NBA powerhouse, a swingman and NBA All-Star of the Golden State Warriors."
Bright precious thing : a memoir
Summary:"Frank and revealing, this memoir chronicles what it was like for Gail Caldwell to grow up across the decades of the women’s movement. She confronts personal turning points, from abortion and illicit love to date rape and alcoholism, up through the #MeToo movement, that led her to see life as a bright precious thing. Another bright precious thing is a young neighborhood girl with whom Gail shares stories. The wise voice and deep feelings for life from Caldwell’s bestseller Let’s Take The Long Way Home are present again in Bright Precious Thing."
When I was white : a memoir
Summary:"At the age of 27, Sarah Valentine discovered that she was not, in fact, the white girl she had always believed herself to be. She learned the truth of her paternity: that her father was a black man. And she learned the truth about her own identity: mixed race. And so Sarah began the difficult and absorbing journey of changing her identity from white to black. In this memoir, Sarah details the story of the discovery of her identity, how she overcame depression to come to terms with this identity, and, perhaps most importantly, asks: why? Her entire family and community had conspired to maintain her white identity. The supreme discomfort her white family and community felt about addressing issues of race–her race–is a microcosm of race relationships in America. A black woman who lived her formative years identifying as white, Sarah’s story is a kind of Rachel Dolezal in reverse, though her ‘passing’ was less intentional than conspiracy. This memoir is an examination of the cost of being black in America, and how one woman threw off the racial identity she’d grown up with, in order to embrace a new one."
Inheritance : a memoir of genealogy, paternity, and love
Summary:"In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had whimsically submitted her DNA, Dani Shapiro received the astonishing news that her beloved deceased father was not her biological father. Over the course of a single day, her entire history–the life she had lived–crumbled beneath her. In just a few hours of Internet sleuthing, she was able to piece together the story of her conception and, remarkably, find a YouTube video of her biological father–his face and mannerisms eerily similar to her own. [This] is a book about
YA Memoirs
Taking flight : from war orphan to star ballerina
Summary:Michaela DePrince was known as girl Number 27 at the orphanage, where she was abandoned at a young age and tormented as a “devil child” for a skin condition that makes her skin appear spotted. But it was at the orphanage that Michaela would find a picture of a beautiful ballerina en pointe that would help change the course of her life. In this engaging, moving, and unforgettable memoir, Michaela shares her dramatic journey from an orphan in West Africa to becoming one of ballet’s most exciting rising stars.
Elena vanishing : a memoir
Summary:Seventeen-year-old Elena has a voice in her head that tells her what she needs to do in order to be perfect: Put on her makeup. Be charming and poised. Make top grades. Work two or even three jobs. And never, ever eat. This is the voice that she calls her conscience. And listening to it just might kill her. As Elena’s body starts to break down and she goes from one hospital to another, she comes to understand that her inner voice is her greatest demon. And in order to defeat it, she will have to face a secret she’s hidden for years. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety is artillery against herself, a girl battling on both sides of a lose-lose war, a girl struggling with anorexia nervosa.
Enchanted air : two cultures, two wings : a memoir
Summary:"In this … memoir, Margarita Engle, the first Latina woman to receive a Newbery Honor, tells of growing up as a child of two cultures during the Cold War"–Amazon.com.,In this poetic memoir Engle, the first Latina woman to receive a Newbery Honor, tells of growing up as a child of two cultures during the Cold War. Her heart was in Cuba, her mother’s tropical island country, a place so lush with vibrant life that it seems like a fairy tale kingdom. But most of the time she lived in Los Angeles, lonely in the noisy city and dreaming of the summers when she can take a plane through the enchanted air to her beloved island. When the hostility between Cuba and the United States erupted at the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Engle’s worlds collided in the worst way possible. Would she ever get to visit her beautiful island again?
Almost American girl : an illustrated memoir
Summary:"A powerful and moving teen graphic novel memoir about immigration, belonging, and how arts can save a life. For as long as she can remember, it’s been Robin and her mom against the world. Growing up as the only child of a single mother in Seoul, Korea, wasn’t always easy, but it has bonded them fiercely together. So when a vacation to visit friends in Huntsville, Alabama, unexpectedly becomes a permanent relocation–following her mother’s announcement that she’s getting married–Robin is devastated. Overnight, her life changes. She is dropped into a new school where she doesn’t understand the language and struggles to keep up. She is completely cut off from her friends in Seoul and has no access to her beloved comics. At home, she doesn’t fit in with her new stepfamily, and worst of all, she is furious with the one person she is closest to–her mother. Then one day Robin’s mother enrolls her in a local comic drawing class, which opens the window to a future Robin could never have imagined"–Amazon.com.
Warhead : the true story of one teen who almost saved the world
Summary:"A memoir about Jeff Henigson’s teen Starlight Children’s Foundation wish after being diagnosed with brain cancer: to meet Mikhail Gorbachev and plea for nuclear disarmament and world peace."
All boys aren’t blue : a memoir-manifesto
Summary:In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.
Every falling star : the true story of how I survived and escaped North Korea
Summary:"Every Falling Star, the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a young audience, is the intense memoir of a North Korean boy named Sungju who is forced at age twelve to live on the streets and fend for himself. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains. Sungju richly re-creates his scabrous story, depicting what it was like for a boy alone to create a new family with his gang, his ‘brothers’; to be hungry and to fear arrest, imprisonment, and even execution. This riveting memoir allows young readers to learn about other cultures where freedoms they take for granted do not exist."
Chinese Cinderella the true story of an unwanted daughter
Summary:Adeline is just three days old when her mother dies. She is blamed for the death and considered bad luck. For years, she tries to please her family, wanting only acceptance and love, but often facing rejection. Finally, after discovering literature, she is given the chance to succeed.
Bad boy : a memoir
Summary:Children’s author Walter Dean Myers describes his childhood in Harlem in the 1940s and 1950s, discussing his loving stepmother, his problems in school, his reasons for leaving home, and his beginnings as a writer.
Americanized : rebel without a green card
Summary:In San Jose, California, in the 1990s, teenaged Sara keeps a diary of life as an Iranian American and her discovery that she and her family entered as undocumented immigrants.
Readalikes for “The Vanishing Half”
Here’s a list of Readalikes for “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett, recommended by the Readers’ Advisory section of the Massachusetts Library Association.
We wear the mask : 15 true stories of passing in America
Summary:For some, passing means opportunity, access, or safety. Others don’t willfully pass but are passed in specific situations by someone else. We Wear the Mask, edited by authors Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page, is an illuminating and timely anthology of original essays that examines the complex reality of passing in America
Summary:For some, passing means opportunity, access, or safety. Others don’t willfully pass but are passed in specific situations by someone else. We Wear the Mask, edited by authors Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page, is an illuminating and timely anthology of original essays that examines the complex reality of passing in America
The vanishing half
Summary:"The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect? W"–
The care and feeding of ravenously hungry girls
Summary:The Butler family has had their share of trials, as sisters Althea, Viola, and Lillian can attest, but nothing prepared them for the literal trial that will upend their lives. Althea, the eldest sister and substitute matriarch, is a force to be reckoned with and her younger sisters have alternately appreciated and chafed at her strong will. They are as stunned as the rest of the small community when she and her husband Proctor are arrested, and in a heartbeat the family goes from one of the most respected in town to utter disgrace. The worst part is, not even her sisters are sure exactly what happened. As Althea awaits her fate, Lillian and Viola must come together in the house they grew up in to care for their sister’s teenage daughters.
Homegoing : a novel
Summary:Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising half-caste children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the Empire. Her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath Effia in the Castle’s women’s dungeon, and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, where she will be sold into slavery.–
We cast a shadow : a novel
Summary:"In a near-future Southern city, everyone is talking about a new experimental medical procedure that boasts unprecedented success rates. In a society plagued by racism, segregation, and private prisons, this operation saves lives with a controversial method–by turning people white. Like any father, our unnamed narrator just wants the best for his son Nigel, a biracial boy whose black birthmark is getting bigger by the day. But in order to afford Nigel’s whiteness operation, our narrator must make partner as one of the few black associates at his law firm, jumping through a series of increasingly absurd hoops–from diversity committees to plantation tours to equality activist groups–in a tragicomic quest to protect his son."–
Mrs. Everything : a novel
Summary:"A smart, thoughtful, and timely exploration of two sisters’ lives from the 1950s to the present as they struggle to find their places–and be true to themselves–in a rapidly evolving world. Mrs. Everything is an ambitious, richly textured journey through history–and herstory–as these two sisters navigate a changing America over the course of their lives"–
Red at the bone
Summary:It is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody’s birthday celebration in her grandparent’s Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, escorted by her father to the soundtrack of Prince, she wears a special, custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody’s mother, for her own sixteenth birthday party and a celebration which ultimately never took place.
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ALA Book Awards
- Newbery Medal — The John Newbery Award is given annually for the greatest contribution to children’s literature
- Caldecott Award — The Randolph Caldecott Award is given annually to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.
- Michael L. Printz Award — The Michael L. Printz Award is given annually to a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature. It is named for a Topeka, Kansas, school librarian who was a long-time active member of the Young Adult Library Services Association. The award is sponsored by Booklist, a publication of the American Library Association
- Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal — The Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal is awarded annually to the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished informational book published in the United States in English during the preceding year. The award is named in honor of Robert F. Sibert, the long-time President of Bound to Stay Bound Books, Inc. and is administered by the Association for Library Service to Children, American Library Association.
- Sydney Taylor Book Awards — The Sydney Taylor Book Award is presented annually to outstanding books for children and teens that authentically portray the Jewish experience. Presented by the Association of Jewish Libraries since 1968, the award encourages the publication and widespread use of quality Judaic literature.
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