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This comprehensive look at the Hoover and how he shaped the FBI necessarily examines the United States and its history including the Cold War, communism, and race relations.

Danny’s a great baseball player but he’s not even on the school team — he’s consumed with feeling like his private-school classmates only see him as a Mexican who doesn’t belong and that his Mexican relatives see him as an “almost albino.” Can Danny find the help he needs before it’s too late?

Raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the height of Jim Crow, Dovey Johnson Roundtree felt the sting of inequality at an early age and made a point to speak up for justice. She was one of the first Black women to break the racial and gender barriers in the US Army; a fierce attorney in the segregated courtrooms of Washington, DC; and a minister in the AME church, where women had never before been ordained as clergy. In 1955, Roundtree won a landmark bus desegregation case that eventually helped end “separate but equal” and dismantle Jim Crow laws across the South. Developed with the full support of the Dovey Johnson Roundtree Educational Trust and adapted from her memoir, this book brings her important story and voice to life. 

This thoroughly researched and compelling history looks at the editors, authors, librarians, and booksellers who helped answer the provocative and centuries-old question: What should children read? Discover how landmark children’s books like The New England Primer, The Cat in the Hat, and The Chocolate Wars helped define children, families, and the culture of their times.

Matilda’s Pacific Island village has been torn apart by civil war. Against this harsh backdrop, Mr. Watts, a lonely British expatriate, maintains calm by reading Dicken’s Great Expectations aloud to the village children, transforming their lives.

Martin Luther King’s entire life is presented in this handsome and well-sourced, and highly readable biography. Liberal use of quotes and numerous photographs bring the man, his accomplishments, and the times in which he lived into clear focus.

A class takes a field trip to a museum that houses facsimiles of monsters like Count Dracula, Bigfoot, poltergeists, Medusa, mummies, zombies, werewolves, and The Blob. As their tour continues, one does wonder if the creatures are really replicas or are in fact quite real. Black-lined illustrations add detail, a bit of monster background and comedy.

When a petty thief falls through a glass roof while fleeing from the police, it should have been the death of him. Instead, it marks the beginning of a whole new life. Soon he has become the most successful — and elusive — burglar in Victorian London, plotting daring raids and using London’s new sewer system to escape. He adopts a dual existence to fit his new lifestyle, taking on the roles of a respectable, wealthy gentleman named Montmorency and his corrupt servant, Scarper.

Vivian Carter is tired…tired of disrespect, bump and grabs, and a principal who turns a blind eye to football players who treat girls inappropriately. When Vivvy finds an old shoebox full of evidence from her mom’s feminist exploits as a teen, she is inspired to start her own Moxie girl rebellion.

Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic.

Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright’s powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.

This brief, often poetic, and informative introduction to the Negro Leagues uses period photographs to enhance the information. The period in American history is one of segregation and sadness but also of great joy and achievement.

Seventeen-year-old Peter Houghton wakes up one day, loads his backpack with four guns, walks into the school cafeteria, and kills nine students and one teacher in the span of nineteen minutes. Why?

By the time he was twenty-seven years old, Kwame Onwuachi had opened — and closed — one of the most talked about restaurants in America. He had sold drugs in New York and been shipped off to rural Nigeria to “learn respect.” He had launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars made from selling candy on the subway and starred on Top Chef. Through it all, Onwuachi’s love of food and cooking remained a constant, even when, as a young chef, he was forced to grapple with just how unwelcoming the food world can be for people of color. In this memoir about the intersection of race, fame, and food, he shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age.

Phillip Malloy likes to hum as the national anthem is played over the school’s intercom system each morning, despite his teacher’s pleas to stop. Through a series of journal entries, notes, and memos, Avi documents Phillip’s rise to fame, and the consequences he endures along the way.

Whether looking back to a troubled past or welcoming a hopeful future, the powerful voices of Indigenous women across North America resound in this book. In the same style as the best-selling Dreaming in Indian, #NotYourPrincess presents an eclectic collection of poems, essays, interviews, and art that combine to express the experience of being a Native woman. Sometimes angry, often reflective, but always strong, the women in this book will give teen readers insight into the lives of women who, for so long, have been virtually invisible.

Sixteen-year-old November has just lost her boyfriend Josh in an unfortunate accident. She also found out that she is pregnant with his baby. While she deals with the drama in her own life, Josh’s cousin and best friend, Jericho, is also reeling from the unexpected death. Will Jericho be able to support November through the worst time in both of their lives?

Rita Williams-Garcia tells the story of three sisters who travel to Oakland, California, in 1968 to meet the mother who abandoned them.

Poems of the Harlem Renaissance and new poems inspired by Harlem Renaissance poets and poetry combine to give voice to the experiences of Black life. 

Twelve-year-old tomboy May Amelia Jackson, the youngest of seven children and the only girl in a Finnish immigrant family, lives in the wilderness along the Nasel River in Washington State in 1899. Through May Amelia’s travels, readers witness the diverse ways of life in the expanding West: peaceful relations with the Chinook Indians, the dangers posed by the neighboring logging camp, her aunt’s life in the nearby boomtown of Astoria, Oregon, as well as the rhythms of the seasons.

Regardless of where in the world they live or what cause they take up, the young people introduced here share passion, energy, and vision that may well inspire others to start to initiate change, too. From local activities to much broader venues, readers will follow how these young people have shaped their world and touched lives. The book gives young readers the tools to bring about change. Many young people are seeking out ways to become constructively engaged in their world. This book couldn’t be more timely.

Out of gratitude for the poet’s art form, Newbery Award–winning author and poet Kwame Alexander, along with Chris Colderley and Marjory Wentworth, present original poems that pay homage to twenty famed poets who have made the authors’ hearts sing and their minds wonder. Stunning mixed-media images by Ekua Holmes, winner of a Caldecott Honor and a John Steptoe New Talent Illustrator Award, complete the celebration and invite the reader to listen, wonder, and perhaps even pick up a pen.

Claire Wang, a wealthy 11th grader in Shanghai, is suddenly sent on her own or “parachuted” to California to finish private high school and finds herself boarding with Dani, a scholarship student at her new school.

Though they joined the Confederate or Union armies for a variety of reasons, women fought during the Civil War. What they experienced, how they hid their true identities, and the conditions faced by everyone is presented in lucid text and archival material. Thoroughly researched and well documented, this is a little known aspect of women in the Civil War.

Lonnie, aka Locomotion (first introduced in Locomotion) tries to connect with his sister and to prevent forgetting their “real” parents. As he writes Lili, readers learn about his life including his foster brother who has returned from the Iraq war.