Juneteenth Reading Recs!
This Juneteenth, read a book or graphic novel, or watch a movie celebrating black lives and history! There’s something for all ages in this reading list.❤️💛🧡💚
Juneteenth Is – Ages 5-8
A girl contemplates what Juneteenth means to her, her family, and her community.
What is Juneteenth? – Ages 8-12
On June 19, 1865, a group of enslaved men, women, and children in Texas gathered around a Union soldier and listened as he read the most remarkable words they would ever hear. They were no longer enslaved: they were free. The inhumane practice of forced labor with no pay was now illegal in all of the United States. This news was cause for celebration, so the group of people jumped in excitement, danced, and wept tears of joy. They did not know it at the time, but their joyous celebration of freedom would become a holiday–Juneteenth–that is observed each year by more and more Americans.
Soul Food Sunday – Ages 4 – 8
Granny teaches her young grandson how to cook the family meal, in this celebration of food, traditions, and gathering together at the table. Includes recipe for baked macaroni and cheese!
I Am Every Good Thing – Ages 4 – 8
Let’s hear it for everything that makes you the amazing, awesome, inspiring kid that you are… Your curiosity and creativity. Your bravery and kindness. Your sense of humor and fun. Your ability to get up again when you get knocked down. Your way of helping others. Yeah–you are all that and more! You are every good thing that makes the world go round. So go ahead and show us your magnificence–all the things that make you, you.
The Door of No Return – Ages 10 and up.
A novel in verse about a boy escaping slavers during the nineteenth century.
Mirror Girls – Ages 14 and up.
Biracial twin sisters – one who presents as black and the other as white – are determined to put the ghosts of the past to rest and to uncover the truth behind their parents’ murders in the Jim Crow South. As infants, twin sisters Charlie Yates and Magnolia Heathwood were separated after the lynching of their parents, who died for loving across the color line. Now Charlie is a young Black organizer in Harlem, while white-passing Magnolia is the heiress to a cotton plantation in Eureka, Georgia. When Magnolia finally learns the truth, her reflection mysteriously disappears from mirrors– the sign of a terrible curse. In Harlem, Charlie’s grandmother falls ill, and her final wish is to go back to Eureka– and, unbeknownst to Charlie, to see Magnolia one last time. Now teenagers, the sisters reunite. They couldn’t be more different, but they will need each other to put the hauntings of the past to rest, to break the mirrors’ deadly curse– and to discover the meaning of sisterhood in a racially divided land.
Stamped – Ages 12 and up.
The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. Racist ideas are woven into the fabric of this country, and the first step to building an antiracist America is acknowledging America’s racist past and present. This nonfiction book takes you on that journey, showing how racist ideas started and were spread, and how they can be discredited.
The Poet X – Elizabeth Acevedo
Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out, much less speak her words out loud. But still, she can’t stop thinking about performing her poems. Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.
The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a powerful and gripping YA novel about one girl’s struggle for justice.
This book was made into a movie! Check out the film from the library after you finish reading the book.
With the Fire on High – Elizabeth Acevedo
With her daughter to care for and her abuela to help support, high school senior Emoni Santiago has to make the tough decisions, and do what must be done. The one place she can let her responsibilities go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness. Still, she knows she doesn’t have enough time for her school’s new culinary arts class, doesn’t have the money for the class’s trip to Spain — and shouldn’t still be dreaming of someday working in a real kitchen. But even with all the rules she has for her life — and all the rules everyone expects her to play by — once Emoni starts cooking, her only real choice is to let her talent break free.
Miles Morales: Spider-Man – Jason Reynolds
Miles Morales is just your average teenager. Dinner every Sunday with his parents, chilling out playing old-school video games with his best friend, Ganke, crushing on brainy, beautiful poet Alicia. He’s even got a scholarship spot at the prestigious Brooklyn Visions Academy. Oh yeah, and he’s Spider Man. But lately, Miles’s spidey-sense has been on the fritz. When a misunderstanding leads to his suspension from school, Miles begins to question his abilities. After all, his dad and uncle were Brooklyn jack-boys with criminal records. Maybe kids like Miles aren’t meant to be superheroes. Maybe Miles should take his dad’s advice and focus on saving himself. As Miles tries to get his school life back on track, he can’t shake the vivid nightmares that continue to haunt him. Nor can he avoid the relentless buzz of his spidey-sense every day in history class, amidst his teacher’s lectures on the historical “benefits” of slavery and the modern-day prison system. But after his scholarship is threatened, Miles uncovers a chilling plot, one that puts his friends, his neighborhood, and himself at risk. It’s time for Miles to suit up.
By day, seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson is an honors student, a math tutor, and one of the only Black kids at Jefferson Academy. But at home, she joins hundreds of thousands of Black gamers who duel worldwide as Nubian personas in the secret multiplayer online role-playing card game, SLAY. No one knows Kiera is the game developer, not her friends, her family, not even her boyfriend, Malcolm, who believes video games are partially responsible for the “downfall of the Black man.” But when a teen in Kansas City is murdered over a dispute in the SLAY world, news of the game reaches mainstream media, and SLAY is labeled a racist, exclusionist, violent hub for thugs and criminals. Even worse, an anonymous troll infiltrates the game, threatening to sue Kiera for “anti-white discrimination.” Driven to save the only world in which she can be herself, Kiera must preserve her secret identity and harness what it means to be unapologetically Black in a world intimidated by Blackness. But can she protect her game without losing herself in the process?