Catalog Search Results
1) Monster
Author
Language
English
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Description
While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.
Author
Language
English
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Awesome YA Books by Black Authors
Formidable Females in YA
High School Project Lit Titles
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Formidable Females in YA
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Description
Sixteen-year-old Bri hopes to become a great rapper, and after her first song goes viral for all the wrong reasons, she must decide whether to sell out or face eviction with her widowed mother.
3) Dear Martin
Author
Language
English
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High School Project Lit Titles
Project Lit - Full List
Short YA Fiction
YA Contemporary Fiction Classics
Project Lit - Full List
Short YA Fiction
YA Contemporary Fiction Classics
Description
"Justyce McAllister is a good kid, an honor student, and always there to help a friend--but none of that matters to the police officer who just put him in handcuffs. Despite leaving his rough neighborhood behind, he can't escape the scorn of his former peers or the ridicule of his new classmates. Justyce looks to the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for answers. But do they hold up anymore? He starts a journal to Dr. King to find out. Then...
4) Harbor me
Author
Language
English
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Description
Everything changes when six kids are sent to a room in school by themselves with no adults to listen in. Dubbing it the ARTT room, A Room To Talk, they find themselves discussing things they never thought they could with anyone else, finding outlets for fears about parents, racial profiling, deportation scares, and ultimately their shared longing for a place to belong.
5) Dough boys
Author
Language
English
Description
Told in two voices, thirteen-year-old best friends Simp and Rollie play on a basketball team in their housing project, but Rollie dreams of being a drummer and Simp, to impress the gang leader, Coach Tez.
Author
Language
English
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High School Project Lit Titles
Nashville Reads 2024 | The Works of Jason Reynolds
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Nashville Reads 2024 | The Works of Jason Reynolds
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Description
When sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing, classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who happens to be the older brother of his best friend. Told through Rashad and Quinn's alternating viewpoints.
9) Dear Justyce
Author
Language
English
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Description
Incarcerated teen Quan Banks writes letters to Justyce McCallister, with whom he bonded years before over family issues, about his experiences in the American juvenile justice system.
10) Legendborn
Author
Language
English
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Description
Sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or her home in rural North Carolina after her mother dies. The residential program for high schoolers at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill is the perfect escape, until Bree sees a demon attack the night before school starts. A teenage mage who calls himself a "Merlin" tries to wipe her memory of the attack, but fails and Bree manages to stumble upon a society of...
11) Rebound
Author
Language
English
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Description
In the summer of 1988, twelve-year-old Chuck Bell is sent to stay with his grandparents, where he discovers jazz and basketball and learns more about his family's past.
12) Foul trouble
Author
Language
English
Description
"College recruiters are clambering to sign up Terrell Jamerson, the #1 high school basketball player in the country. But not all of these recruiters are straight shooters, and Terrell will have to think fast if he wants to stay in the game"--
13) Leaving Lymon
Author
Language
English
Description
Raised by his grandparents, first in Mississippi then in Wisconsin, ten-year-old Lymon moves to Chicago in 1945 to live with the mother he never knew, while yearning for his father.
14) Like Vanessa
Author
Language
English
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Description
It is 1983 and Vanessa Martin, a thirteen-year-old African American girl in Newark's public housing, dreams of following in the footsteps of the first black Miss America, Vanessa Williams; but with a dysfunctional family (mother in jail, father withdrawn, drunken grandfather, gay cousin) the odds are against her--until a new teacher at school organizes a beauty pageant and encourages Vanessa to enter.
16) Betty before X
Author
Language
English
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Description
Raised by her aunt until she is six, Betty, who will later marry Malcolm X, joins her mother and stepfamily in 1940s Detroit, where she learns about the civil rights movement.
17) Game
Author
Language
English
Description
If Harlem high school senior Drew Lawson is going to realize his dream of playing college, then professional, basketball, he will have to improve at being coached and being a team player, especially after a new--white--student threatens to take the scouts' attention away from him.
18) Ophie's ghosts
Author
Language
English
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Historical Fiction for Kids
Middle School Project Lit Titles
Project Lit - Full List
Scary Stories for Kids
Middle School Project Lit Titles
Project Lit - Full List
Scary Stories for Kids
Description
After a white mob murders her father, twelve-year-old Ophelia Harrison is awakened by his ghost, who tells her to wake her mother and retreat to the woods. They comply, and escape before their home is burned to the ground by the same men. The pair move to Pittsburgh to live with relatives and take jobs at Daffodil Manor, the home of a wealthy white woman. There, Ophelia continues to see ghosts and learns she has a gift with helping them move on.
19) Flygirl
Author
Language
English
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Description
During World War II, a light-skinned African American girl "passes" for white in order to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots.
Author
Language
English
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Description
Ali lives in Bed-Stuy, a Brooklyn neighborhood known for guns and drugs, but he and his sister, Jazz, and their neighbors, Needles and Noodles, stay out of trouble until they go to the wrong party, where one gets badly hurt and another leaves with a target on his back.