Special Collections
Jane Addams Children's Book Award Winners
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The Other Side of Truth
by Beverley NaidooWill the truth harm them -- or save them?
When Nigeria's corrupt military government kills their mother, twelve-year-old Sade and her brother Femi think their lives are over. Out of fear for their safety, their father, an outspoken journalist, decides to smuggle the children out of Nigeria and into London, where their uncle lives.
But when they get to the cold and massive city, they find themselves lost and alone, with no one to trust and no idea when -- or if -- they will ever see their father again. The Other Side of Truth is a gripping adventure story about courage, family, and the power of truth.
Martin's Big Words
by Doreen RappaportThis picture book biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. brings his life and the profound nature of his message to young children through his own words. Martin Luther King, Jr. , was one of the most influential and gifted speakers of all time. Doreen Rappaport uses quotes from some of his most beloved speeches to tell the story of his life and his work in a simple, direct way. A timeline and a list of additional books and web sites help make this a standout biography of Dr. King.
Winner of the Caldecott Honor
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
Planting the Trees of Kenya
by Claire A. NivolaWangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and founder of the Green Belt Movement, grew up in the highlands of Kenya, where fig trees cloaked the hills, fish filled the streams, and the people tended their bountiful gardens. But over many years, as more and more land was cleared, Kenya was transformed. When Wangari returned home from college in America, she found the village gardens dry, the people malnourished, and the trees gone. How could she alone bring back the trees and restore the gardens and the people? Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature, says: “Wangari Maathai’s epic story has never been told better—-everyone who reads this book will want to plant a tree!” With glowing watercolor illustrations and lyrical prose, Claire Nivola tells the remarkable story of one woman’s effort to change the fate of her land by teaching many to care for it. An author’s note provides further information about Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement. In keeping with the theme of the story, the book is printed on recycled paper.
Berries Goodman
by Emily Cheney NevilleThe Goodman family move to the suburbs and nine-year-old Berries finds his nearest playmate is a girl, Sandra. She is a year older than Berries, feels superior in many ways, and undertakes to teach him prejudice against Jews.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
Nobody Wants A Nuclear War
by Judith VignaWhen a mother discovers her small daughter and son have built a shelter to protect themselves from nuclear attact, she explains that grownups all over the world are working hard to make the world safe for children to grow up in.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
Hiroshima No Pika
by Toshi MarukiAugust 6, 1945, 8:15 a.m.
Hiroshima. Japan
A little girl and her parents are eating breakfast, and then it happened.
HIROSHIMA NO PIKA. This book is dedicated to the fervent hope the Flash will never happen again, anywhere.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
All The Colors Of The Race
by Arnold Adoff and John L. SteptoeA collection of poems written from the point of view of a child with a black mother and a white father.
The Breadwinner
by Deborah EllisYoung Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan. Because Parvana's father has a foreign education, he is arrested by the Taliban. The family becomes increasingly desperate until Parvana conceives a plan.
Amifika
by Lucille Clifton and Thomas DigraziaWhen Amifika hears that his mother is going to get rid of things his father won't remember, Amifika thinks he might be one of those things since he can't remember his father. So, he looks for a place to hide...
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
The Wheel of King Asoka
by Ashok DavarA brief account of King Asoka and how he ruled over his dynasty making it powerful and symbolized Ashoka Chakra. Throughout centuries the wheel of King Asoka has been there to inspire us to live as did this great king of India - in peace and love.
Natural History
by M. B. GoffsteinText and illustrations descibe the riches of the earth and how people can promote peace and goodwill by sharing equitably with each other and their fellow creatures.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
Middle Passage
by Tom Feelings and John Henrik ClarkeThe Middle Passage is the name given to one of the most tragic ordeals in history: the cruel and terrifying journey of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean.
In this seminal work, master artist Tom Feelings tells the complete story of this horrific diaspora in sixty-four extraordinary narrative paintings. Achingly real, they draw us into the lives of the millions of African men, women, and children who were savagely torn from their beautiful homelands, crowded into disease-ridden "death ships", and transported under nightmarish conditions to the so-called New World.
An introduction by noted historian Dr. John Henrik Clarke traces the roots of the Atlantic slave trade and gives a vivid summary of its four centuries of brutality. The Middle Passage reaches us on a visceral level. No one can experience it and remain unmoved. But while we absorb the horror of these images, we also can find some hope in them. They are a tribute to the survival of the human spirit, and the humanity won by the survivors of the Middle Passage belongs to us all.
Winner of the Coretta Scott King Medal
Children as Teachers of Peace
by Gerald G. JampolskyThis book by our children is the result of a joyous journey. From the day we were inspired by the realization of the truth in the words "Children as Teachers of Peace"... to the invitation we issued that same week to children throughout the country to express their thoughts and advice about peace... to the day only five weeks later when this book was delivered to the publisher, we have been profoundly moved by the truth our children speak for all of us.
The Lost Year
by Katherine MarshFrom the author of Nowhere Boy - called “a resistance novel for our times” by The New York Times - comes a brilliant middle-grade survival story that traces a harrowing family secret back to the Holodomor, a terrible famine that devastated Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s.
Thirteen-year-old Matthew is miserable. His journalist dad is stuck overseas indefinitely, and his mom has moved in his one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother to ride out the pandemic, adding to his stress and isolation.
But when Matthew finds a tattered black-and-white photo in his great-grandmother’s belongings, he discovers a clue to a hidden chapter of her past, one that will lead to a life-shattering family secret. Set in alternating timelines that connect the present-day to the 1930s and the US to the USSR, Katherine Marsh’s latest novel sheds fresh light on the Holodomor – the horrific famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, and which the Soviet government covered up for decades.
An incredibly timely, page-turning story of family, survival, and sacrifice, inspired by Marsh’s own family history, The Lost Year is perfect for fans of Ruta Sepetys' Between Shades of Gray and Alan Gratz's Refugee.
A Song for the Unsung
by Carole Boston Weatherford and Rob SandersA singular, richly illustrated picture book biography of Bayard Rustin, the gay Black man behind the March on Washington of 1963, by the acclaimed authors of Unspeakable: the Tulsa Race Massacre and Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag.
On August 28, 1963, a quarter of a million activists and demonstrators from every corner of the United States convened for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It was there and then that they raised their voices in unison to call for racial and economic justice for all Black Americans, to call out inequities, and ultimately to advance the Civil Rights Movement.
Every movement has its unsung heroes: individuals who work in the background without praise or accolades, who toil and struggle without notice. One of those unsung heroes was at the center of some of the most important decisions and events of the Civil Rights Movement.
That hero was a quiet man, a gay African American man. He was Bayard Rustin.
Carole Boston Weatherford and Rob Sanders's A Song for the Unsung, featuring illustrations from artist Byron McCray, is an inspiring story that answers one of our nation’s greatest calls to action by honoring one of the men who made it happen.
Undercover Latina
by Aya De LeónA Latina teen spy goes undercover as a white girl to stop a white supremacist terrorist plot in a fast-paced middle-grade debut from a seasoned author of contemporary crime fiction. In her debut for younger readers, Aya de León pits a teen spy against the ominous workings of a white nationalist. Fourteen-year-old Andréa Hernández-Baldoquín hails from a family of spies working for the Factory, an international organization dedicated to protecting people of color. For her first solo mission, Andréa straightens her hair and goes undercover as Andrea Burke, a white girl, to befriend the estranged son of a dangerous white supremacist. In addition to her Factory training, the assignment calls for a deep dive into the son’s interests—comic books and gaming—all while taking care not to speak Spanish and blow her family’s cover. But it’s hard to hide who you really are, especially when you develop a crush on your target’s Latino best friend. Can Andréa keep her head, her geek cred, and her code-switching on track to trap a terrorist? Smart, entertaining, and politically astute, this is fast-paced upper-middle-grade fare from an established author of heist and espionage novels for adults.