Black History to Listen to as a Family

With deeply personal and uplifting essays in the vein of Black Girls Rock, You Are Your Best Thing, and I Really Needed This Today, this is “a necessary testimony on the magic and beauty of our capacity to live and love fully and out loud” (Kerry Washington).

When Tracey M. Lewis-Giggetts wrote an essay on Black joy for The Washington Post, she... Read more »

Newbery Honor Book * Sibert Medal Winner

Carefully researched and expertly told, this Newbery Honor and Sibert Medal-winning book is a moving account of the life of a talented and determined artist who left her mark on musical and social history. Through her story, Newbery Medal-winning author Russell Freedman illuminates the social and political...

Celebrate the joys of Black boyhood with stories from seventeen bestselling, critically acclaimed Black authors--including Jason Reynolds (the Track series), Jerry Craft (New Kid), and Kwame Mbalia (the Tristan Strong series)!

Black boy joy is…
 
Picking out a fresh first-day-of-school outfit.
Saving the universe in an epic intergalactic... Read more »

Chronicling the story of the last Africans brought illegally to America in 1860, African Town is a powerful and stunning novel-in-verse.

In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama aboard a ship called Clotilda.... Read more »

Amazing timelines take listeners through the people and the issues that have shaped Black history.

Erased. Ignored. Hidden. Lost. Underappreciated. No longer. Delve into the unique, inspiring, and world-changing history of Black people.

From Frederick Douglass to Oprah Winfrey, and the achievements of ancient African kingdoms to those of the US... Read more »

From award-winning author Tonya Bolden comes a biography of the first Black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and the first Black woman to run for president with a major political party: Shirley Chisholm. Before there was Barack Obama, before there was Kamala Harris, there was Fighting Shirley Chisholm. A daughter of Barbadian... Read more »

A comprehensive, entertaining look at heroes, heroines, and critical moments from African American history -- from the slave trade to the Black Lives Matter movement -- by award-winning author Jabari Asim.

Jabari Asim goes beyond what's taught in the classroom to reveal a fact-filled history of African American history through politics,... Read more »

This chapter book edition of the #1 New York Times bestseller by luminaries Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds is an essential introduction to the history of racism and antiracism in America
 
RACE. Uh-oh. The R-word. 
But actually talking about race is one of the most important things to learn how to do.

Adapted from the groundbreaking... Read more »

Why are white supremacists still openly marching in the United States? Why are undocumented children of color separated from their families and housed in cages? Where did racism come from? Why hasn’t it already disappeared? And what can young people do about it? Rise Up! breaks down the origins of racial injustice and its continued impact... Read more »

BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE GUARDIAN

Winner of the 2020 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 

Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

“Dara’s is an extraordinary voice and vision: brave, poetic, ethical, lyrical, strong enough to have made him heard and admired from a young age.” —Robert Macfarlane

Evocative, raw, and beautifully written,...

This brilliant memoir-in-verse tells the moving story of how a nation learned to celebrate a hero. Through years of protests and petition, Kathlyn's story highlights the foot soldiers who fought to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday.

Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ’Round is a deeply moving middle grade memoir about what it... Read more »

The young adult adaptation of the acclaimed, #1 New York Times bestseller Just Mercy--now a major motion picture starring Michael B. Jordan, Jaime Foxx, and Brie Larson and the subject of an HBO documentary feature!

In this very personal work--adapted from the original #1 bestseller, which the New York Times calls "as compelling as To Kill a... Read more »

This inspiring memoir, now adapted for young adults, chronicles Top Chef star and Forbes and Zagat 30 Under 30 phenom Kwame Onwuachi's incredible and odds-defying fame in the food world after a tough childhood in the Bronx and Nigeria.

Food was Kwame Onwuachi's first great love. He connected to cooking via his mother, in the family's modest Bronx... Read more »

For fans of The Wire and Unbroken comes a story of two fatherless boys from Baltimore, both named Wes Moore. One is in prison, serving a life sentence for murder. The other is a Rhodes Scholar, an army veteran, and an author whose book is being turned into a movie produced by Oprah Winfrey.
 
The story of “the other Wes Moore” is one that the...

Adapted from Emmanuel Acho's New York Times bestseller Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, comes an essential young listeners edition aimed at opening a dialogue about systemic racism with our youngest generation.

Young people have the power to affect sweeping change, and the key to mending the racial divide in America lies in giving...

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You

“I really enjoyed this audiobook, and was lucky enough to meet Jason Reynolds at Winter Institute 2020, and he said he hopes this book helps all of us have a full knowledge and a frank discussion about race in America. Reynolds is an engaging narrator, and he deftly reads this remix of Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award winning Stamped From the Beginning. I learned a great deal from this book, and I have been studying American history my whole life. Reynolds' book will allow adults to educate middle readers -- and all of us -- about the true legacy of America's past, and where we go from here. An absolutely essential book. I can't recommend it highly enough, and am grateful to Kendi and Reynolds for providing an accessible telling of the great irony of the premise on the American truth that all men are created equal.”

John, Main Point Books

A young listener's edition of Candacy Taylor's acclaimed book about the history of the Green Book, the guide for Black travelers

Overground Railroad chronicles the history of the Green Book, which was published from 1936 to 1966 and was the "Black travel guide to America." For years, it was dangerous for African Americans to travel in the... Read more »