Floyd Cooper

Through slightly fictionalized poetry, readers learn about a girl born in Baltimore who grows up to become jazz singer Billie Holiday. Her life is in not white-washed, there’s sex and drugs along with the music, but ultimately the music shines through. Floyd Cooper’s illustrations are gorgeous and perfectly suited.

Celebrated author Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrator Floyd Cooper provide a powerful look at the Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the worst incidents of racial violence in our nation’s history. The book traces the history of African Americans in Tulsa’s Greenwood district and chronicles the devastation that occurred in 1921 when a white mob attacked the Black community. News of what happened was largely suppressed, and no official investigation occurred for seventy-five years. This picture book sensitively introduces young readers to this tragedy and concludes with a call for a better future.