Bingham is determined to take advantage of the low cost of land in Texas to build up a farm into a cotton plantation with the use of slave labor. Over the next nine years, James will experience and participate in a series of wrenching events that marked the origins of the Lone Star State.

Set in the years surrounding the 1836 Texas War of Independence, Escape from Texas is a solidly researched examination of the clashing aspirations of people who are enslaved, slave owners, Indians, and Mexicans during a turning point of the westward expansion of the United States.

While there are a number of novels set in this period of Texas history, Escape from Texas is the only novel written from the perspective of an enslaved man. Its provocative underlying thesis is that the extension of slavery was the true underlying cause of the Texas War of Independence, not yearnings for freedom by the Texas frontiersmen, as American folklore has traditionally had it. [Publisher’s description.]

ISBN: 9781597380355 | Sloan Publishing | www.escapefromtexas.com

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Written from an African point of view, this novel describes the conditions many African children face in South Africa. The central character is a 13-year-old African girl, Naledi. She, her nine-year-old brother, and baby sister live with their aunt and grandmother in one of South Africa’s infamous black “homelands.” When Naledi’s sister falls ill, Naledi and her younger brother set out on foot for Johannesburg to fetch their mother who works for a white family.

All of the major and most of the minor characters are Black. They are admirable figures who strive, albeit in different ways, to resist and surmount the obstacles erected by apartheid. Whites are distant figures. It is their institutionalized power over Blacks rather than their personalities that is emphasized here. This novel is unique in that it is one of a very few written from a Black South African perspective. The story is well written and realistic. [Description by Brenda Randolph at Africa Access.]

ISBN: 9780064402378 | HarperCollins

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The story is loosely based on the childhood experiences of Reverend Owen H. Whitfield, an African-American sharecropper, preacher, and union organizer in Arkansas during the 1930s.

At the heart of the story is the fact that Sugar’s mother had taken on extra work to save money specifically for a stained-glass window when the new church is built. When funds fall short, the building committee decides to use the funds to buy bricks instead. Sugar’s keen disappointment and his abiding faith in his mother’s dream eventually cause church members to rethink what is important.

Rubright’s sentences are descriptive, yet never overwhelming; paragraphs are kept short, and the pace is swift-all elements that draw in even the most reluctant readers. The book is simple in style and layout, with plenty of white space and a few small black-and-white illustrations.

This touching tale of a boy’s commitment to his mother, underscored by the powerful understanding and closeness that develops between him and his uncle, makes this a wonderful first purchase. [Description by Mary N. Oluonye, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH  for the School Library Journal]

ISBN: 9781600603358 | Lee & Low Books

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Based on actual events and real people, the poems in Surrender Tree outline Rosa’s life: born into slavery; learning about healing plants and flowers; through 30 years of war as a self-appointed nurse; seeking freedom; and fighting death and sickness with her natural potions.

The author uses several voices to convey the longing for freedom, the hope for peace, the fear of detection, and the sorrow and horror of war. These include: Jose Varona, (freed from slavery), marries Rosa and helps her establish (and hide) makeshift hospitals in forests, mountains, and caves; Silvia, a young refugee, escapes the reconcentration camp* and joins Rosa to serve as a nurse and learn the healing cures; and the man known as the Lieutenant of Death, who has grown up hunting people who had escaped from slavery, vows to find and kill Rosa to eliminate the symbol of hope and resistance she has become.

Monument in Cuba to Rosa La Bayamesa.

The alternating perspectives both refine the characters and dramatically move the narrative forward. The verse is clear, concise, and compelling. This is a wonderful book, powerful and simple at the same time.

The author offers a personal connection and a historical note and timeline at the back of the book that helps the reader realize that real people faced these fears and hardships. The book offers an excellent way to introduce and promote discussion of historical events such as Cuba’s fight for independence, the Spanish-American war, and slavery. This is that rare book where the remembrance of it is even more powerful than the reading of it. [Reviewed by Ellen Simmons, The Lorgnette – Heart of Texas Reviews from CLCD].

ISBN: 9780312608712 | Square Fish

*In 1896, General Weyler of Spain implemented the first wave of the Spanish “Reconcentracion Policy” that sent thousands of Cubans into concentration camps. Under Weyler’s policy, the rural population had eight days to move into designated camps located in fortified towns; any person who failed to obey was shot. The housing in these areas was typically abandoned, decaying, roofless, and virtually uninhabitable. Food was scarce and famine and disease quickly swept through the camps. By 1898, one-third of Cuba’s population had been forcibly sent into the concentration camps. More than 400,000 Cubans died as a result of the Spanish Reconcentration Policy. [Description from PBS.]

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This is an ideal introduction for students to the Young Lords, a key yet seldom taught story of Puerto Ricans in the modern Civil Rights Movement.

ISBN: 9780545325059 | Scholastic Press

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This middle school chapter book by Jewell Parker Rhodes offers children a chance to learn an untold story of Reconstruction that was a precursor to the Great Migration.

ISBN: 9780316043052 | Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

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For decades, a riot that killed three hundred people and wounded hundreds of others was scarcely heard of. But several new studies have focused attention on Tulsa’s Greenwood race riot of 1921. In If We Must Die novelist Pat Carr turns that tragedy into a riveting novel.

When Berneen O’Brien’s mother dies, the seventeen-year-old moves from Wyoming to Tulsa to live with her stem uncle. Berneen secures a teaching position at Liberty Elementary School. When she meets the principal, Nelson Flowers, she is amazed to find that he is a black man. Slowly, as she meets the other teachers, Berneen realizes that she is teaching in a black school. Her worries about being an outcast soon disappear, as the other teachers make her welcome. Berneen, who is of Black-Irish descent, doesn’t realize that the teachers and students all assume she is also black.

At school and after hours Berneen finds herself moving in the world of the segregated Greenwood neighborhood. And she finds herself increasingly drawn to Nelson Flowers.

Racial tension erupts into violence when a young white girl accuses a black shoeshine boy of raping her in an office-building elevator. Whites burn Greenwood and storm the neighborhood, shooting and beating black men, women, and children.

Berneen is trapped in the school with Nelson Flowers and the teachers when the mob approaches. The story of their desperate attempt to escape is realistic and frightening, made more so by its historical accuracy. [Publisher’s description.]

ISBN: 9780875652627 | Texas Christian University Press

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Meena writes back that it sounds like what happened to her parents’ village when a dam was built in India, now “tourists come and rent boats that bob up and down in the water. They pose for pictures above the spot where our village used to be.” Meena’s letters chronicle the challenges faced by many new immigrants in school, housing, legal status, employment, and overall human rights.

While the book teaches the reader a lot, it manages to do so without being preachy or didactic. In fact, the authors do such a good job that at times you will be convinced you stumbled across a packet of real letters. [Description by Rethinking Schools.]

ISBN: 9780763664510  | Candlewick

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In the tradition of Octavia Butler’s Kindred and Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, A Wish After Midnight is the affecting and inspiring tale of a fearless young woman’s fight to hold on to her individuality and her humanity in two different worlds. [Publisher’s description.]

We also recommend the sequel, released in 2016, The Door at the Crossroads.

ISBN: 978098255505

About the Author

Zetta Elliott was born and raised outside of Toronto, Canada, and has lived and taught in Brooklyn for over ten years. An educator and a writer, Elliott has published numerous works of poetry, plays, essays, and children’s books, including Bird, her critically acclaimed picture book, which was released in 2008.

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An outstanding book which powerfully mixes the stuff of ordinary, daily life with the larger stuff of political conflict and personal courage. The reader can imagine her or himself actually there in a rural black South African community. Accurate and moving, this is as good a book as her highly praised (and awarded) Journey to Jo’burg, though perhaps not as immediately popular, perhaps because it takes a political struggle (against the forced removal of the community) as its immediate story. [Description by Barbara Brown, Boston University, for Africa Access.]

ISBN: 9780064404686 | HarperCollins

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