Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case

Crowe, Chris. Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case. Dial, 2003. 128pp. Lexile 1210.

Emmett Till would have been 74 this year.  He was born in 1941 and killed on August 28th, 1955.  The murder of Emmett Till and the trial in which his killers, who later confessed, were acquitted had a profound effect on the Civil Rights Movement.  This painful but important story concerns Till, a fourteen-year-old African-American boy from Chicago, visiting his relatives in small-town Mississippi in 1955. Having allegedly called a white woman “baby,” he was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by local white men.  Crowe conveys the vicious prejudice and the sense of white superiority that led to Till’s death.  The straightforward writing lets facts and quotes speak for themselves.  It sets the murder and trial in context, shortly after Brown v. Board of Education was decided, and at a time when blacks and women could not serve on Mississippi juries.  The country’s stunned reaction to the photographs of Till’s body and the unjust trial come across as well.  Black-and-white photographs, a timeline, lists of further reading and websites, and a bibliography enrich the book.

Fiction, Poetry, & Drama Tie-ins:  Crowe lists several responses in art to the Till story: plays by Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, a Bob Dylan song, and a Gwendolyn Brooks poem.  Crowe has also written a novel, Mississippi 1955, that tells the story of Till’s murder and trial through the viewpoint of a white teenager.  Pair any of these with the nonfiction book to show different approaches to the same subject.  Older readers may appreciate the beautiful, intricate sonnets in Marilyn Nelson's A Wreath for Emmett Till.

Searching for Sarah Rector

Bolden, Tonya. Searching for Sarah Rector. Abrams, 2014. 80pp. Lexile 1050.

In my experience, many kids care about the topic  of money, making a book about the once-wealthiest black girl in America inherently interesting to them.  Sarah Rector was the descendant of slaves owned by the Creek Indian nation, who took them from the South to the West.  After the Civil War, those former slaves became known Creek freedmen and each one, including children, received an allotment of land in the area that is now Oklahoma.  In 1914, when Sarah Rector was 12, oil was found on her allotment and she started receiving royalties from a drilling company.  Along with the new wealth came problems such as who could be trusted to be her financial guardian.  Bolden sets the story skillfully in historical context of the slavery and the West.  Since facts about Sarah Rector are sparse and not always reliable, Bolden shares her research process with readers.  A gorgeous piece of bookmaking, the volume integrates photographs and other graphics to convey time, place, and people. Back matter includes an author’s note, glossary, source notes, bibliography, and index.

Reading Information Std #3: Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.  One of the key elements in Rector's story is the relationship between the Creek Indians and their African-American slaves, including what happened after the Civil War.  Have students trace that relationship through this book, and also compare each group's relationship with whites.  Interested students might pursue research about the Seminole Indians and black slaves.

An American Plague

Murphy, Jim. An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793. Clarion, 2003. 165pp. Lexile 1130.

In 1793, yellow fever swept Philadelphia, then the nation’s temporary capital, a tragedy brilliantly recounted in this Sibert Award Winner and Newbery Honor Book.  The topic is inherently intriguing and Murphy’s enthusiasm for the topic comes across clearly. The author brings to life key figures like Dr. Benjamin Rush and lesser known ones such as members of the Free African Society who nursed the sick.  The dynamic text, which targets the reader’s senses with quotes about sights, sounds, and smells, looks at how yellow fever came to the city, how it spread, and how various segments of the city reacted.  Doctors tried to treat it, with very limited knowledge, disagreeing with each other on the best approach.  With the national government centered in Philadelphia, the political consequences were severe.  A readable open design effectively uses maps, newspaper clippings, etchings, and other visuals that combine with the excellent writing to make this one of the best nonfiction books for teens.

Fiction tie-ins:  Pair this with Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson or Path of the Pale Horse by Paul Fleischman (out of print), both excellent novels about the yellow fever epidemic, set in Philadelphia.

Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty

Bolden, Tonya. Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty. Abrams, 2012. 120pp. Lexile 1160.

In Robert Frost’s poem, “Directive,” he speaks of the past as a time “made simple by the loss of detail.”  Here Tonya Bolden examines details about Abraham Lincoln and his views on slavery, creating a picture that is far from simple.  While most people assume Lincoln was always adamantly against slavery, Bolden shows that his public stance shifted over time.  His main focus during the Civil War was to reunite the nation, even if it meant delaying the end of slavery, an attitude that infuriated abolitionists.  This fine book provides context about the war and what led up to it. The thoughtful narrative brims over with quotes from primary sources and scholars. It offers numerous visuals from photographs to documents with long captions that add information, and wraps up with a timeline, glossary, index, and bibliography.

Reading Std #9 for grades 6-8: Compare/contrast texts on similar themes or topics. Have students compare this to any more traditional biography of Lincoln, contrasting how the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln’s views on slavery are portrayed.

Reading Std #6: Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text. Bolden opens and closes the book using a first person plural narrative voice of abolitionists, black and white, who weren’t sure Lincoln would actually issue the proclamation.  The rest of the book is a traditional third-person point of view.  Have students analyze the use of these two points of view and the purposes they serve.

Little Rock Girl 1957: How a Photograph Changed the Fight for Integration

Tougas, Shelley. Little Rock Girl 1957: How a Photograph Changed the Fight for Integration. Compass Point, 2012. 64pp. Lexile 1010.

This is an entry in a terrific series called Captured History, in which each book focuses on a photograph that changed American history: the Migrant Mother photograph from the Great Depression; raising the flag at Iwo Jima; Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon; black children being sprayed with water by police in Birmingham, 1963; and a Lewis Hine photo of boy miners.  In each book, short chapters provide background and then explore the significance of the photograph and the impact it made.  In Little Rock Girl 1957, the photograph is of Elizabeth Eckfort, one of the nine students to integrate Little Rock High. Because she didn't get a phone message, she ended up walking into the school alone, surrounded by angry whites.  The photograph alerted the world to the ugliness of racial hatred, even against a teen wanting better education.  Eckfort and the screaming white girl behind her met years later in a temporary highly publicized reconciliation, prompted in part by the photographer, covered in one chapter.  The book also addresses inequality in schools at that time and now.  Sidebars and many more photographs add information throughout.  This is an excellent, accessible book for students at a range of reading levels, that can serve as an introduction to the civil rights movement and the story of a courageous teen.  Available in hardcover and paperback

Reading Std #7:  Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, visually and quantitatively, and in words.  The entire series addresses this facet of the CC standards, speaking to the power of visual images.  The book would lend itself to any response--discussion, debate, essay writing--on the topic.  It could also be easily compared and contrasted with other books in the series.

Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don't You Grow Weary

Partridge, Elizabeth. Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don't You Grow Weary. Viking, 2009. 80pp. Lexile 960.

“The first time Joanne Blackmon was arrested, she was just ten years old,” opens this powerful tribute to young people who participated in the Civil Rights movement.  Blackmon was arrested when she accompanied her grandmother who was trying to register to vote as an African-American in Selma, Alabama, in 1963.  From this gripping incident, Partridge takes readers to 1965, when Martin Luther King, Jr., came to Selma to further the cause.  Based in part on extensive interviews, the book dramatically documents the role of children and teenagers in protest marches where they were attacked by dogs, tear gas, clubs, and even cattle prods.  Three thousand young people were arrested, yet they continued to practice non-violence.  Their fear and determination come across in the narrative, quotes, and photographs, some of which show the violence.  Notes, bibliography, index.  A remarkable book about the role of courageous young people in our history.

Reading Std #2: Determine central ideas or themes and analyze their development; summarize key supporting details and ideas.  One key theme throughout this moving book is the role of music including spirituals and protest songs in keeping up the spirits of the young people involved.  Have students find specific evidence of this theme to see how Partridge develops it.

Reading Std #9 for grades 6-8: Compare/contrast texts on similar themes or topics.:  Pair this with Cynthia Levinson's. We've Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March. (Peachtree, 2012) to see how the two authors address similar material about children involved in civil rights.

Tell All the Children Our Story: Memories and Mementoes of Being Young and Black in America

Bolden, Tonya. Tell All the Children Our Story: Memories and Mementoes of Being Young and Black in America. Abrams 2001. 128pp. Lexile 1130.

An elegant book design paired with excellent visual elements on nearly every page make this a real pleasure to read.  It was the first book for young people to trace the history of being young and black in America, starting in Colonial times including a black child born in Jamestown and going through the late 1990s.  While it touches on some well-known figures such as Frederick Douglass and Benjamin Banneker, most those named are not famous. Themes about the effects of racism and courage of individuals appear throughout the book. Bolden, a well-respected chronicler of black history, makes good use of primary sources such as diaries, letters, newspaper articles, and excerpts from books.  Quotes from children throughout U.S. history appear in frequent sidebars.  Photographs, paintings, etchings, posters, advertisements, and artifacts give the feeling of a scrapbook over which readers will want to linger.  Outstanding in every respect.

Reading Std #5: Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and/or larger portions of the text relate to each other and the whole.  Bolden uses sidebars effectively to add the voices of real children to her chronological narrative.  Have students consider the value of such quotes from primary sources and what they add to Bolden’s narrative.

The Greatest: Muhummad Ali

Myers, Walter Dean. The Greatest: Muhummad Ali. Scholastic, 2001. 172 pp. Lexile 1030.

Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay, has been called the greatest athlete of the twentieth century.  Renowned YA writer Walter Dean Myers clearly admires Ali as an athlete and as a political activist.  This compelling biography emphasizes the public man and his sport, with little about his personal life.  Sports fans will appreciate the level of detail throughout about Ali’s boxing.  Myers also thoroughly addresses Ali’s famous conversion to Islam and refusal to fight in Vietnam, discussing the largely negative reaction of sportswriters and fans but also the inspiration at the time to young black men such as Myers himself. As he says in his introduction, “Heroes that looked anything like me were hard to come by when I was a kid growing up in Harlem.”  With a black-and-white photograph in almost every chapter and a timeline of fights at the end, this will be an appealing choice for a biography or history unit, or pleasure reading.

Reading Std #7:  Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, visually and quantitatively, and in words.  Students who like boxing may be interested in viewing the Oscar-nominated documentary, "When We Were Kings," about the heavyweight championship fight in Zaire--now the Democratic Republic of the Congo--between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, which took place in 1974, after Ali had an earlier championship title taken away when he refused to serve in the military.  (Some students may find the boxing footage disturbing.)  Have students compare the tone of the movie and its attitude towards Ali with that of the Myers biography.

Claudette Colvin: Twice toward Justice

Hoose, Phillip M. Claudette Colvin: Twice toward Justice. Melanie Kroupa Books, 2009. 144pp. Lexile 1000.

This is a great addition to the increasing number of books about teens who made a difference in our history.  Hoose spent years trying to get an interview with Claudette Colvin, who as a fifteen-year-old was arrested for, and convicted of, not giving up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery in 1955.  Colvin was also one of the plaintiffs when civil rights leaders sued in federal court to end segregation on the buses.  Yet before the publication of Hoose’s book, Colvin was minimized in historical texts, sometimes mentioned as an unwed mother (she became pregnant after her conviction when she was isolated and scared).  When Colvin finally agreed to meet, Hoose interviewed her fourteen times.  Her words shine through in the text, providing an extraordinary character study of a brave teen set in the context of the civil rights movement.  Winner of the National Book Award as well as a Newbery Honor and Sibert Honor Award book.  Black-and-white photographs, sidebars, extensive bibliography/webliography, endnotes, and index.

Writing Std #3: Write narratives to develop real experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details and well-structured event sequences.  This book is an excellent model for research and writing.  It would be particularly helpful for students conducting oral interviews.  Hoose addresses the process of getting and conducting his interviews in his Author’s Note and the Notes section.  He also does an exemplary job of weaving the quotes into the text.

Black Frontiers: A History of African American Heroes in the Old West

Schlissel, Lillian. Black Frontiers: A History of African American Heroes in the Old West. 1995. 80pp. Lexile 1090.

After the Civil War, many blacks moved West, hoping for a better life.  This beautifully designed book introduces a range of individuals and groups that pursued this often dangerous goal.  Among them is Jim Beckwourth, a mountain man famous for his trapping and prowess as a guide.  Black cowboys Nat Love and Bill Pickett each have a short chapter as does “Stagecoach Mary” Fields, a women who became a stagecoach driver at age fifty.  Less showy but also important were the black homesteaders and business people who formed communities in the West. Black-and-white photographs make the past more immediate in this attractive book about a lesser-known aspect of the West.

Fiction Tie-in:  In Black Storm Comin' by Diane Lee Wilson, a fine adventure story set just before the Civil War, a biracial adolescent boy whose white father has run off must take care of his ailing mother and his younger siblings on a wagon train heading West.  Colton's mother, who is black, urges her son to ride ahead to Sacramento to deliver freedom papers to her enslaved sister in there.  How does he hope to get to California?  By becoming a rider for the Pony Express.   A terrific story with plenty of action alongside serious issues.

Bad Boy: A Memoir

 Myers, Walter Dean. Bad Boy: A Memoir. 2001. 224 pp. Lexile 970.

Walter Dean Myers is one of the most important, honored, and widely read writers for teens.  Any unit on biography, autobiography or memoir, or units on Myers’ novels would benefit from this inspiring story of his childhood and teen years until he joined the army at age seventeen.  He grew up with adoptive parents in 1940s Harlem, where he had real problems in school.  Constantly teased for a speech defect, he took to fighting, which made the problems worse, but he still gained admission to Stuyvesant, the prestigious Manhattan public high school.  His growing love of books and then of writing redeemed his life but also divided him from his friends and family.  Especially touching is his account of learning to read from his mother’s True Romance novels.  The memoir looks at how how racism affected his life and his view of his future, and concludes with how he made his way back to writing after his military service.  Absorbing and inspiring.

Fiction Tie-in:  Walter Dean Myers won the first Printz Award for literary excellence in young adult literature for his novel, Monster.  In common with his own memoir, Monster is about a teenage boy who gets in trouble and who expresses himself in writing.  As the protagonist, Steve, deals with being in prison and on trial as an accused accomplice to murder, he writes a screenplay of the trial.  The ambiguity, moral issues, and unusual combination of formats make this popular for teaching as well as independent reading.

Maritcha: A Remarkable Nineteenth-Century Girl

Bolden, Tonya. Maritcha: A Remarkable Nineteenth-Century Girl. 2004. 48pp. Lexile 1190.

Much of what teens read about black history concerns slavery, racial bias, and/or the Civil Rights Movement.  This short, inspiring book offers a look at a girl in a middle class family in the nineteenth century.  Maritcha Remond Lyons, whose striking image looks out at readers from a photograph on the cover, was born in 1848 to parents who ran a prosperous boarding house in New York City.  When their business was ruined by the Draft Riots during the Civil War, they moved to Providence, R.I., where her father started an ice cream and catering business, and her mother worked as a hairdresser.  When Maritcha found that Providence had no high school open to blacks, she wouldn't accept being shut out of an education.  She took her cause to the legislature and succeeded in persuading them of the justness of her cause, after which she passed a rigorous entry exam.  She went on to become a teacher and then an assistant principal in Brooklyn for fifty years.  Bolden based this eye-opening book on an unpublished memoir Lyons wrote for her own family.  The book, which puts the subject’s life in historical context, is enriched with wonderful photographs and etchings from the era. An author’s note discusses Bolden's research and some of her decisions about what to include in the book.

Reading Std #2: Determine central ideas or themes and analyze their development; summarize key supporting details and ideas.  Although Maritcha Remond Lyons as a free black was in a better position than those who were slaves when she was born, she and her family nevertheless suffered from racism in a variety of ways.  Have students trace that racism through this short book, a task possible even for less skilled readers.

Fiction Tie-In  Maritcha's family lost their business during New York's Draft Riots.  The novel Riot by Walter Dean Myers uses a screenplay format in its dramatic look at the riots through the eyes of several characters, most importantly, a biracial girl whose family runs an inn in Manhattan.

Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance

Hill, Laban.  Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance.  2004. 160 pp. Lexile: 1270.  Available in paperback.

A National Book Award finalist, this beautifully designed book conveys a sense of time and place through its visual elements as well as its text.  Jazzy reproductions of artwork, photographs, and artifacts, including posters and book jackets, fill the pages.  The narrative provides an overview of Harlem’s history from about 1900 through the early 1930s, explaining why so many blacks headed to New York City from the South and exploring the resentment and violence they encountered in the North. Readers learn that Harlem’s clubs and music became popular with whites, a financial boon to the community, but at the same time, black culture was distorted in minstrel shows and other theatrical productions, a source of disappointment to Harlem’s intellectuals.  A host of visual artists, performers, and writers important to the Harlem Renaissance are introduced including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, William H. Johnson and more.  Quotes from articles, poems, and speeches give an immediacy to the narrative.

Reading Std #3: Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.  Have students analyze Hill’s choices in how he organized this history.  It begins with a chronological structure but then switches to chapters 6-9 that cover the same time period.  Why start with the chapter on the Dark Tower?  What connections are drawn among these four chapters?  This book has a high Lexile (1270) but a limited amount of text, with many visual images that reinforce the text, making it a possible choice for less advanced readers.

Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans

Nelson, Kadir. Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans. 2011. 108pp. Lexile 1050

Magnificent paintings on full pages and double-page spreads fill this overview of African-American history.  Nelson narrates his story, from the role of blacks in Colonial America to the election of President Obama, using the voice of an old woman who recalls her grandfather’s life, that of her parents, and her own.  Slavery, the Civil War, Westward expansion, the Great Migration, the world wars, and the civil rights movements are covered, along with important figures such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  Nelson’s talents as artist and writer serve his audience beautifully here.  Back matter includes a timeline, bibliography, and index.

Reading Std #4: Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including technical, connotative, and figurative meanings; analyze role of specific word choices.  Consider the conversational fictional narrator of this otherwise informational text.  Analyze phrases like “touched in the head” and “painted the town red,” and how the informal tone affects the impact of the text.  Specifically note references to Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.