Book Finder

Outstanding athlete, exceptional courage AND restraint in the face of violent hatred, Jackie Robinson is a hero for all ages.

Ellen and William Craft, an enslaved married couple, devised a daring plan to escape to freedom. Capitalizing on Ellen’s mixed race heritage and light skin, she would dress herself as a wealthy white man, while William posed as her slave.

A common love of Tupac Shakur unites three preteens: two from comfortable lives and one, D Foster, who can really relate to Tupac’s lyrics.

The Aleuts were dramatically affected by both Japanese and the American forces during World War II. How they were relocated from their small island in the Pacific and relocated to the coast of Alaska is hauntingly told by Vera, a young Aleutian/Caucasian girl.

Two teens — one black, one white — grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension. Written in tandem by two award-winning authors, this story shares the alternating perspectives of Rashad and Quinn as the complications from that single violent moment, the type taken from the headlines, unfold and reverberate to highlight an unwelcome truth.

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. Both a primer for teens eager to be allies as well as a reassuring testimony for young queer men of color, All Boys Aren’t Blue covers topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and Black joy. Johnson’s emotionally frank style of writing will appeal directly to young adults. A New York Library Best Book of 2020.

1961. Nearly two decades before Sally Ride — there was Jerrie Cobb. Cobb was one of the top female pilots in the country and completed all the astronaut testing the Mercury 7 men did. She excelled at all the tests. Proved she had the Right Stuff. Twelve other female pilots followed her, passing the tests they took with flying colors. When they were told there was no room for women in the space program, they took they’re cause to Congress.

Three storylines — contemporary and mythic — intersect in this tale of a boy who is not comfortable with his culture or himself. This fresh, sometimes surprising, revealing novel is told in image and text. This graphic novel was the first of its format to win the Printz Award for best work of Young Adult Literature.

Bright and carefree, Zitkála-Sá grows up on the Yankton Sioux reservation in South Dakota with her mother until Quaker missionaries arrive, offering the reservation’s children a free education. The catch: They must leave their parents behind and travel to Indiana. Curious about the world beyond the reservation, Zitkála-Sá begs her mother to let her go—and her mother, aware of the advantages that an education offers, reluctantly agrees. But the missionary school is not the adventure that Zitkála-Sá expected: The school is a strict one, her long hair is cut short, and only English is spoken. She encounters racism and ridicule. Slowly, Zitkála-Sá adapts to her environment—excelling at her studies, winning prizes for essay-writing and oration. But the price of success is estrangement from her cultural roots—and is it one she is willing to pay?

Now that Amina is in middle school, everything feels different. Does Amina need to start changing too? Or hiding who she is to fit in? While Amina grapples with these questions, she is devastated when her local mosque is vandalized. Amina’s Voice brings to life the joys and challenges of a young Pakistani-American and highlights the many ways in which one girl’s voice can help bring a diverse community together to love and support each other. Named a Best Book of 2017 by The Washington Post, NPR, and other reviewers.

Black teens Isaiah Wilson and Angel Hill start to fall in love in Greenwood, Oklahoma, just before the the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

After her sophomore year in high school, Apple Starkington, who grew up feeling like she didn’t fit in with her White father and stepmother, spends the summer at the Turtle Mountain Chippewa reservation getting to know her Native family members for the first time.

The lives of a tight-knit group of 14 young Nisei, second-generation Japanese American citizens, are irrevocably changed by the mass U.S. incarcerations of World War II when over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry are removed from their homes and forced into desolate incarceration camps.  

Watch as Traci Chee reads a short excerpt from We Are Not Free

Nadira’s family has lived a law-abiding — but illegal — existence since arriving in the U.S. from Bangladesh years ago. During a post-9/11 crackdown, her father is discovered and the possibility of deportation hangs heavy over their lives.

By winning the state high school basketball championship in 1955, ten teens from an Indianapolis school meant to be the centerpiece of racially segregated education in the state shattered the myth of their inferiority. Anchored by the astonishing Oscar Robertson, a future college and NBA star, the Crispus Attucks Tigers went down in history as the first state champions from Indianapolis and the first all-black team in U.S. history to win a racially open championship tournament—an integration they had forced with their on-court prowess. From native Hoosier and award-winning author Phillip Hoose comes this true story of a team up against impossible odds, making a difference when it mattered most.

Diego has gotten into trouble because of his temper before. But when he punches out a guy in school who was looking at him funny, he finds himself in juvenile court, facing the possibility of probation, or worse — juvenile jail. It’s only when Diego starts to open up to his probation officer that he begins to understand that the source of his anger is buried in his past — and to move beyond it, he needs to stop running from his personal demons.

While his father is in prison for treating a leader of the democracy movement, 15-year-old Chiko is drafted into the Burmese military. Trained to fight the rebel Karenni people, Chiko soon finds himself at the mercy of a young Karenni rebel fighter whose village was attacked by Burmese soldiers. Will the two remain enemies?

Before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947, Black athletes played in the Negro Leagues — on teams coached by Black managers, cheered on by Black fans, and often run by Black owners. Here is the riveting true story of the woman at the center of the Black baseball world: Effa Manley, co-owner and business manager of the Newark Eagles. Elegant yet gutsy, she cultivated a powerhouse team. Yet just as her Eagles reached their pinnacle, so did calls to integrate baseball, a move that would all but extinguish the Negro Leagues. On and off the field, Effa hated to lose. She had devoted her life to Black empowerment — but in the battle for Black baseball, was the game rigged against her? 

During World War II, Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps. Isolated and bored, baseball became a life and soul-saving pastime which successfully brought very different people together. Darkly hued illustrations evoke the difficulty of the time, based on the author’s family story. Spanish version available.

Teen beauty queens. A desert island. Mysteries and dangers. No access to e-mail. And the spirit of fierce, feral competition that lives underground in girls, a savage brutality that can only be revealed by a journey into the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Oh, the horror, the horror! Only funnier. With evening gowns. And a body count.

Michelle Robinson was born on the South Side of Chicago. From her modest beginnings, she would become Michelle Obama, the inspiring and powerful First Lady of the United States, when her husband, Barack Obama, was elected the forty-fourth president. They would be the first Black First Family in the White House and serve the country for two terms. In this volume for young people, Michelle Obama shares her views on how all young people can help themselves as well as help others, no matter their status in life. She asks readers to realize that no one is perfect, and that the process of becoming is what matters, as finding yourself is ever evolving. In telling her story with boldness, she asks young readers: Who are you, and what do you want to become? This book is also available in Spanish.

Before he was a household name, Cassius Clay was a kid with struggles like any other. Kwame Alexander and James Patterson join forces to vividly depict his life up to age seventeen in both prose and verse, including his childhood friends, struggles in school, the racism he faced, and his discovery of boxing. Fully authorized by and written in cooperation with the Muhammad Ali estate, and vividly brought to life by Dawud Anyabwile’s dynamic artwork, Becoming Muhammad Ali captures the budding charisma and youthful personality of one of the greatest sports heroes of all time. 

Poems and photographs subtly introduce the stunning church bombing in which four girls were killed. Readers come to know each child as individuals as well as glimpse this sad, tumultuous period while looking toward a more hopeful future.

Marcus and Eddie are basketball teammates and best friends. But when they get involved in a crime, will the fact that Marcus is black and Eddie is white affect how they are treated? Great sports action and a compelling premise make this a page turner.