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America in 1982: Japanese car companies are on the rise and believed to be putting U.S. autoworkers out of their jobs. Anti-Asian American sentiment simmers, especially in Detroit. A bar fight turns fatal, leaving a Chinese American man, Vincent Chin, beaten to death at the hands of two white men, autoworker Ronald Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz. Paula Yoo has crafted a searing, extensively researched examination of the killing and the trial and verdicts that followed. When Ebens and Nitz pled guilty to manslaughter and received only a $3,000 fine and three years’ probation, the lenient sentence sparked outrage. The protests that followed led to a federal civil rights trial — the first involving a crime against an Asian American — and galvanized what came to be known as the Asian American movement.

Mia Tang has a secret. Actually, a lot of secrets. She doesn’t live in a house like her friends. She doesn’t have a dog. And her parents are hiding an even bigger secret, one that could get them all in trouble. It will take all of Mia’s courage, kindness, and hard work to get through this year. Will she be able to hold on to her job, help the immigrants and guests, escape Mr. Yao, and go for her dreams? First in a series.

Times are tough for Beans and his family in Key West during the Great Depression. Can Beans and his friends trust the New Dealers who say that they have come to Florida to make their small, poor town a tourist destination? Bean’s saga is both humorous and poignant in his satisfying story.

Espionage played an important role in defeating the British, as is demonstrated in this cleverly-formatted, intriguing book.

The ghost of George Washington introduces Sara to other presidential ghosts.

Ryan Smithson was in high school on September 11, 2001, but the events of that day made him determined to join the military. Here, in his own, sometimes unpolished but always authentic words, he tells of the joys, fears, even boredom of being stationed in Iraq as an army engineer.

Laced with real events and leaders such as Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, Give Me Liberty explores the Revolutionary ideas and risks colonists faced in their quest for liberty. Thirteen-year-old Nathaniel Dunn is an indentured servant laboring on a tobacco plantation in colonial Virginia. Life is hard, and it’s about to get harder when Nathaniel is sold at an auction.

Hand in Hand presents the stories of ten men from different eras in American history, organized chronologically to provide a scope from slavery to the modern day. The stories are punctuated with dynamic full color portraits and spot illustrations by two-time Caldecott Honor winner and multiple Coretta Scott King Book Award recipient Brian Pinkney. Backmatter includes a civil rights timeline, sources, and further reading. 

Wendell Scott figured he was signing up for trouble when he became NASCAR’s version of Jackie Robinson in the segregated 1950s. For the next two decades, Scott chased a dream through crashes, health problems, money troubles, and repeated encounters with discrimination. Hard Driving is the dramatic story of one man’s dogged determination to live the life he loved, and to compete, despite daunting obstacles, at the highest level of his sport.

Harriet Tubman did something exceptionally courageous: She escaped slavery. Then she did something impossible: She went back. She underwent some thirteen missions to rescue around seventy enslaved people, using and expanding a network of abolitionists that became known as the Underground Railroad. She spent her life as an activist, speaking out for Black people and women’s suffrage. This graphic novel of story is detailed and authentic. Illustrated with care for the historical record, it offers insight into the life and mind of Tubman, displaying her as a woman with an unshakable desire to break the chains of an unjust society. Introduction by Carole Boston Weatherford.

This survey of transformative events in American and African American history is presented in an informal text and striking illustrations in an oversized format.

Knox was a Boston bookseller in Colonial America who would go on to join the Continental Army and later become the young country’s first Secretary of War. Silvey presents the “dramatic story of his achievements [which is a…] little-known episode in the history of the American Revolution. 

This attractive book presents a brief but comprehensive look at the 35th U.S. President and the issues he confronted during his brief time in office including the Cuban missile crisis and more. Additional resources are included in this useful and attractive book.

Crisp photographs are used to illustrate this truly American holiday while revealing its origins in harvest festivals. A table of contents, index, and more are included.

Told in the words of Isaac, a Choctaw boy who does not survive the Trail of Tears, renowned author Tim Tingle tells tale of innocence and resilience in the face of tragedy. From the book’s opening line, “Maybe you have never read a book written by a ghost before,” the reader is put on notice that this is no normal book. Isaac leads a remarkable foursome of Choctaw comrades: a tough-minded teenage girl, a shape-shifting panther boy, a lovable five-year-old ghost who only wants her mom and dad to be happy, and Isaac’s talking dog, Jumper. The first in a trilogy, this novel highlights an important and oft-overlooked piece of history. Winner of the 2014 American Indian Youth Literature Award.

The history of African Americans is also the history of the United States. How the history and culture of once enslaved people came to sit proudly on the National Mall in the nation’s capital is told in word and image for a riveting portrait of a particular place and a country’s history.

This fact- and fun-filled look at female contributions to the American Revolution provides a serious but lighthearted introduction to a range of known and unknown women. Affable illustrations include thought and speech bubbles.

Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire. Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples’ history radically re-frames US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative. 2015 Recipient of the American Book Award.

We know a lot about Kennedy’s political career and untimely death, but little has been written for younger readers about his childhood. Kennedy was both a sickly child and a mischievous one.

Subtle references and evocative language introduce Jesse Owens and what he faced as a Gold Medalist — an African American in Hitler’s 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany. An endnote provides more information.

Readers first met young Yuki and her Japanese American family in Journey to Topaz, a story based on the author’s experience of having her own family uprooted and sent to the Relocation Center in Topaz, Utah. This novel continues their story after they are released into a society full of prejudice and fear.

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship — and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever. 

A former Democratic senator from California, in 2021 Kamala Harris became the first woman Vice President, as well as the first Black Vice President and the first Vice President of South Asian descent. Harris is known for her intelligence, toughness, and sense of humor — among students, teachers, coworkers and political opponents. Her message to kids is very much like the one her mother passed on to her: Don’t let your critics hold you back from achieving your potential.

Nine year old Dodgers fan Maggie and firefighter Jim bond over their mutual love of baseball. When Jim is drafted and returns from Korea traumatized and barely responsive, Maggie is determined to bring him back to his old self. A sensitive and artful work about grief and hope.