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Monster |
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| Author: |
Walter Dean Myers |
 Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0064407314 |
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| Availability: |
Usually ships within 24 hours. |
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Book Review
"Monster" is what the prosecutor called 16-year-old Steve Harmon for his supposed role in the fatal shooting of a convenience-store owner. But was Steve really the lookout who gave the "all clear" to the murderer, or was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time? In this innovative novel by Walter Dean Myers, the reader becomes both juror and witness during the trial of Steve's life. To calm his nerves as he sits in the courtroom, aspiring filmmaker Steve chronicles the proceedings in movie script format. Interspersed throughout his screenplay are journal writings that provide insight into Steve's life before the murder and his feelings about being held in prison during the trial. "They take away your shoelaces and your belt so you can't kill yourself no matter how bad it is. I guess making you live is part of the... |
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We Can't Teach What We Don't Know: White Teachers, Multiracial Schools |
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| Author: |
Gary R. Howard |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Textbook Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0807746657 |
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Book Description
Once again, in this expanded Second Edition, Gary Howard outlines what good teachers know, what they do, and how they embrace culturally responsive teaching. Howard brings his bestselling book completely up to date with today’s school reform efforts and includes a new introduction and a new chapter that speak directly to current issues such as closing the achievement gap, and to recent legislation such as No Child Left Behind. With our nation’s student population becoming ever more diverse, and teachers remaining largely White, this book is now more important than ever. A must-read in universities and school systems throughout the country, We Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know continues to facilitate and deepen the discussion of race and social justice in education.
From the... |
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The Road to Memphis |
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| Author: |
Mildred D. Taylor |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0140360778 |
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| Availability: |
Usually ships within 24 hours. |
Book Review
The third novel in a series which started with Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, The Road to Memphis catches up with the Logan family in 1941. Cassie is entering her last year of high school in Jackson, Mississippi and her older brother Stacey is driving his first car. After a family trip to Memphis, a sequence of events, including pregnancy, death and the intrusions of Pearl Harbor and World War II wreaks havoc on the family, threatening to separate them from each other, perhaps forever. Drawing upon their strength as a family and the support of their community, the Logans fight for survival, particularly Cassie, who dreams of becoming a lawyer. The Road to Memphis won the 1991 Coretta Scott King Award.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers... |
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Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry |
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| Author: |
Mildred D. Taylor |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0140384510 |
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Book Review
In all Mildred D. Taylor's unforgettable novels she recounts "not only the joy of growing up in a large and supportive family, but my own feelings of being faced with segregation and bigotry." Her Newbery Medal-winning Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry tells the story of one African American family, fighting to stay together and strong in the face of brutal racist attacks, illness, poverty, and betrayal in the Deep South of the 1930s. Nine-year-old Cassie Logan, growing up protected by her loving family, has never had reason to suspect that any white person could consider her inferior or wish her harm. But during the course of one devastating year when her community begins to be ripped apart by angry night riders threatening African Americans, she and her three brothers come to understand why the land they own means so... |
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The Skin I'm In: A First Look at Racism |
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| Author: |
Pat Thomas |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0764124595 |
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Book Description
Racial discrimination is cruel—and especially so to younger children. This title encourages kids to accept and be comfortable with differences of skin color and other racial characteristics among their friends and in themselves. A First Look At… is an easy-to-understand series of books for younger children. Each title explores emotional issues and discusses the questions such difficulties invariably raise among kids of preschool through early school age. Written by a psychotherapist and child counselor, each title promotes positive interaction among children, parents, and teachers. The books are written in simple, direct language that makes sense to younger kids. Each title also features a guide for parents on how to use the book, a glossary, suggested additional reading, and a list of resources. There are... |
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The Hundred Dresses |
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| Author: |
Eleanor Estes |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0152052607 |
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Usually ships within 24 hours. |
Book Review
Wanda Petronski lives way up in shabby Boggins Heights, and she doesn't have any friends. Every day she wears a faded blue dress, which wouldn't be too much of a problem if she didn't tell her schoolmates that she had a hundred dresses at home--all silk, all colors, and velvet, too. This lie--albeit understandable in light of her dress-obsessed circle--precipitates peals of laughter from her peers, and she never hears the end of it. One day, after Wanda has been absent from school for a few days, the teacher receives a note from Wanda's father, a Polish immigrant: "Dear teacher: My Wanda will not come to your school any more. Jake also. Now we move away to big city. No more holler Polack. No more ask why funny name. Plenty of funny names in the big city. Yours truly, Jan Petronski." Maddie, a girl who had... |
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Uncle Tom's Cabin (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) |
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| Author: |
Harriet Beecher Stowe |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Mass Market Paperback |
| ISBN: |
1593080387 |
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Book Description
Nearly every young author dreams of writing a book that will literally change the world. A few have succeeded, and Harriet Beecher Stowe is such a marvel. Although the American anti-slavery movement had existed at least as long as the nation itself, Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) galvanized public opinion as nothing had before. The book sold 10,000 copies in its first week and 300,000 in its first year. Its vivid dramatization of slavery’s cruelties so aroused readers that it is said Abraham Lincoln told Stowe her work had been a catalyst for the Civil War. Today the novel is often labeled condescending, but its characters—Tom, Topsy, Little Eva, Eliza, and the evil Simon Legree—still have the power to move our hearts. Though “Uncle Tom” has become a synonym for... |
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Story of Ruby Bridges |
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| Author: |
Robert Coles |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0439598443 |
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Usually ships within 24 hours. |
From Publishers Weekly
Ruby Bridges was the sole African American child to attend a New Orleans elementary school after court-ordered desegregation in 1960. Noted research psychiatrist Coles tells how federal marshals escorted the intrepid six-year-old past angry crowds of white protestors thronging the school. Parents of the white students kept them home, and so Ruby "began learning how to read and write in an empty classroom, an empty building." Although there are disappointingly few words from Ruby herself, Coles's use of quotes from her teacher adds to the story's poignancy ("Sometimes I'd look at her and wonder how she did it.... How she went by those mobs and sat here all by herself and yet seemed so relaxed and comfortable"). The story has a rather abrupt ending; the concluding page reprints the prayer that Ruby said daily,... |
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Slam! |
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| Author: |
Walter Dean Myers |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Mass Market Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0590486683 |
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From Publishers Weekly
"Myers uses contemporary urban black locutions to relay his view of the mean streets of Harlem and to describe some heart-thumping hoop action in a novel that, like most good sports stories, is about more than just sports," said PW. Ages 12-up. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Gr 8 Up-"Basketball is my thing. I can hoop. Case closed." So begins Walter Dean Myers' novel (Scholastic, 1996) which lends itself perfectly to an audio presentation for young adults. Male reluctant readers as well as basketball fans will be captivated with this realistic story in which 17-year-old Greg Harris tells of the year in which he transfers to a magnet school for the arts, a more academically challenging, mostly white school. After being the hot... |
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Romiette and Julio |
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| Author: |
Sharon Mills Draper |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0689842090 |
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| Availability: |
Usually ships within 24 hours. |
From School Library Journal
Grade 6-10-A contemporary retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story with a happy, upbeat ending. Sixteen-year-old Julio Montague's parents have moved their family to Cincinnati, OH, in order to get their son out of his gang-ridden high school in Corpus Christi, TX. Romiette Cappelle, also 16, is the daughter of successful African-American parents and the granddaughter of college professors. When these two young people, both from proud heritages, begin a romance, they must deal not only with their parents' prejudices but also with the threats of a local gang called The Family. At times, Romiette and Julio effectively parallels and contemporizes the original story. The young couple meet, not at the Capulets' feast, but in an Internet chat room. Julio's friend, Ben Olsen (read Benvolio), who looks like a punk... |
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Uncle Tom's Cabin (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) |
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| Author: |
Harriet Beecher Stowe |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Hardcover |
| ISBN: |
1593081812 |
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Freedom Summer |
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| Author: |
Deborah Wiles |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
068987829X |
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Usually ships within 24 hours. |
From Publishers Weekly
Set in Mississippi during the summer of 1964, Wiles's affecting debut children's book about two boysAone white and the other African-AmericanAunderscores the bittersweet aftermath of the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Rather than opening public pools, roller rinks and shops to African-Americans, many towns and private owners boarded up the doors. Wiles delivers her message incisively through the credible voices of her young characters, narrator Joe and his best friend, John Henry, whose mother works as housekeeper for Joe's family. Joe and John spend many hours swimming together in the creek because John is not allowed in the public pool, so on the day the Civil Rights Act is enacted, they visit the town pool together, excited about diving for nickels in the clear water. Instead they find a work crewAincluding... |
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Crossing Jordan |
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| Author: |
Adrian Fogelin |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
1561452815 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 2-3 days. |
From School Library Journal
Grade 5-8-A contemporary story set in Tallahassee, FL, of interracial friendship despite parental opposition, with a clear purpose and predictable outcome. Twelve-year-old Cass befriends African-American Jemmie when her family moves into the house next door. The girls both love to run and become instant friends, racing each morning. They also read Jane Eyre together, analyzing and alternating chapters. Calling themselves "Chocolate Milk," the girls derive inspiration from Jemmie's wise, gospel-singing grandmother and set an example of understanding for both families. Cass, however, must keep their friendship a secret from her racist father until her baby sister's heatstroke compels Jemmie's indignant mother to volunteer her nursing skills. From then on, Cass's grateful parents are solicitous of their new... |
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Uncle Tom's Cabin (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) |
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| Author: |
Harriet Beecher Stowe |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
1593081219 |
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Mississippi Trial, 1955 |
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| Author: |
Chris Crowe |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0142501921 |
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Usually ships within 24 hours. |
From Publishers Weekly
Basing his promising debut novel on historical events, Crowe adopts the point of view of a white teenager confronting racism in the 1950s South. Hiram Hillburn has resented his civil-rights-minded father ever since the age of nine, when his parents moved him from his adored grandfather's home in Greenwood, Miss., to the more liberal climate of an Arizona college town. Now that he is 16, Hiram has finally been permitted to visit Grampa Hillburn again. Crowe takes a bit too much time before arriving at the central action: the lynching of Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago who reputedly made "ugly remarks" to a white woman, and the nationally publicized trial, in which the murderers were acquitted. However, the author takes a nuanced approach to ethical dilemmas and his plotting seems lifelike. Events force... |
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Gold Cadillac |
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| Author: |
Mildred D. Taylor |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0140389636 |
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From Publishers Weekly
-038964-4. Two novels by a Newbery Medalist address racial prejudice. In The Gold Cadillac, an African American family driving South in their new 1950 car encounters suspicion and segregation. In The Friendship, Cassie Logan of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry witnesses a confrontation between a white storekeeper and an African American customer in her small Mississippi town in 1933. Ages 7-11. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 2-3 In this quiet story, `lois explains a child's perspective of her fears when she, her sister Wilma, and their parents drive from Ohio to visit relatives in Mississippi in 1950. When `lois' father buys a new gold Cadillac, his wife refuses to ride in ituntil he declares his intentions to visit his... |
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Big Mouth & Ugly Girl |
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| Author: |
Joyce Carol Oates |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0064473473 |
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| Availability: |
Ships within 3-4 days. |
From Publishers Weekly
Believable, full-blooded characters propel Oates's first YA novel past some plotting that doesn't quite add up. Ursula Riggs, a high school junior, has adopted a stance of invincible indifference ("Since that day I woke up and knew I wasn't an ugly girl, I was Ugly Girl"). Against her mother's wishes, she leaps to her classmate Matt Donaghy's defense when his throwaway joke about blowing up the school makes him a suspected terrorist, but then rebuffs Matt's overtures to friendship. Told in alternating perspectives (Ursula's in first-person and Matt's in third), the novel intensifies even though Matt is quickly exonerated. Matt's friends ice him out, citing pressure from their parents, and his family receives hate mail. When Matt's family files suit against the school and his accusers, the hostilities escalate,... |
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If I Should Die Before I Wake |
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| Author: |
Han Nolan |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0152046798 |
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From Publishers Weekly
Few novels can match this effort for its stupefying lack of taste. Teenager Hilary, who has never recovered from the long-ago death of her father and from her Bible-thumping mother's temporary abandonment of her, lies in a coma, the victim of her own adventures with her neo-Nazi pals. Suddenly she "slips" into another life--that of a Jewish girl in Poland at the beginning of the Nazi occupation. It turns out that she is sharing the memories of her hospital roommate, whose telepathic communications eventually bring about Hilary's salvation. Gratuitously lurid subplots involve teenage American neo-Nazi depredations and the torture of Hilary's young Jewish neighbor; the Holocaust flashbacks feature a psychic grandmother. Passages about Nazi ghettos and concentration camps seem cobbled together from survivors'... |
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If You Come Softly |
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| Author: |
Jacqueline Woodson |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0698118626 |
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From Publishers Weekly
Once again, Woodson (I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This) handles delicate, even explosive subject matter with exceptional clarity, surety and depth. In this contemporary story about an interracial romance, she seems to slip effortlessly into the skins of both her main characters, Ellie, an upper-middle-class white girl who has just transferred to Percy, an elite New York City prep school, and Jeremiah, one of her few African American classmates, whose parents (a movie producer and a famous writer) have just separated. A prologue intimates heartbreak to come; thereafter, sequences alternate between Ellie's first-person narration and a third-person telling that focuses on Jeremiah. Both voices convincingly describe the couple's love-at-first-sight meeting and the gradual building of their trust. The intensity of their... |
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Witness |
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| Author: |
Karen Hesse |
Book Review
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| Format: |
Paperback |
| ISBN: |
0439272009 |
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| Availability: |
Usually ships within 24 hours. |
Book Review
It is 1924, and a small Vermont town finds itself under siege--by the Ku Klux Klan. Using free verse, Newbery Medal-winning author Karen Hesse (Out of the Dust) allows 11 unique and memorable voices to relate the story of the Klan's steady infiltration into the conscience of a small, Prohibition-era community. The Klan's "all-American" philosophy is at first embraced by several of the town's influential men, including Constable Parcelle Johnson and retailer Harvey Pettibone. But Harvey's sensible wife, Viola, and independent restaurant owner Iris Weaver suspect from the beginning that the Klan's arrival heralds trouble. As the only African Americans in town, 12-year old Leonora Sutter and her father try to escape Klan scrutiny, while 6-year-old, city-born Esther Hirsch remains blissfully unaware of the Klan's... |
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