Happy Juneteenth!
Celebrate Juneteenth! Read Black voices. Learn about liberation.
The World’s Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America’s First Black Sports Hero by Michael Kranish
Fascinating story about Major Taylor, the first Black person to become a world champion in sports. Biking was then the most popular sport in America. The extraordinary Taylor was a heroic athlete who broke racial barriers, battling Jim Crow laws and attitudes, even those of his colleagues. Inspiring and riveting. –Krijn, Queen Anne Book Company, …
The 1619 Project: Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson, illustrated by Nikkolas Smith
A work of triumphant wonder, representation and truth telling to transform the 1619 Project’s essence into picture book for children. A family tree assignment sparks questions of “who are you, trace your roots, draw a flag that represents your ancestral land…” and for some and reminders the erasure of records. Grandmother gathers the family around …
On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed
Gordon-Reed made her name, and won a Pulitzer, as a historian of Virginia, and specifically of Thomas Jefferson’s estate of Monticello, as she told the history of its black residents alongside its white ones in unprecedented detail. But she was raised in Texas, East Texas specifically, and her little handbook about Juneteenth, the local holiday …
Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote and Insisted on Equality for All by Martha Jones
Martha Jones is a giant in the field of African American history and this book is her best yet. Beautiful storytelling, which incorporates Jones’s own family history, makes this the perfect book for any armchair historian. Jones brings to light the stories of dozens of black women who are often ignored in history books, proving that …
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
While still a teenager, abolitionist Harriet Tubman received a head injury that left her with pain, dizziness, and visions. Coates reimagines her visions as something more. This tale of Hiram Walker, and enslaved half-white, half-black child of a slave and a plantation owner in the Antebellum South, weaves subtle magical realism into life as he …
The Secret Garden of George Washington Carver written by Gene Barretta, illustrated by Frank Morrison
Arguably one of the most outstanding Americans of the 20th century, yet seemingly almost forgotten today, George Washington Carver gets an enlightening biographical treatment in this beautifully illustrated picture book. The book focuses on George’s childhood, as he tends a hidden garden and teaches himself botany through observation and experimentation, but his social and scientific …
