Our collection of picture books featuring Black and Indigenous people and People of Color (BIPOC) is available to the public. *Inclusion of a title in the collection DOES NOT EQUAL a recommendation.* Click here for more on book evaluation.
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22 matching books
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Folklore 22
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Egyptian 1
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Greek 1
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Unspecified 22
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Activism 1
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Fiction 22
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Boy/Man 22
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Girl/Woman 22
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Secondary 20
Grandma Lena’s Big Ol’ Turnip
"Grandma Lena takes good care of the turnips she plants in her garden. One turnip grows so big that Grandma can't pull it out of the ground! Even when Grandpa, Uncle Izzy, and the dog help Grandma yank and tug, the big ol' turnip doesn't budge. 2007-2008 Show Me Readers Award preliminary list (Missouri) 2005 Aesop Accolade, American Folklore Society Grandma Lena believes that something worth doing is worth doing right. So she takes good care of the turnips she plants in her garden. One turnip grows to an enormous size—Baby Pearl thinks it's a big potato! It is big enough to feed half the town. And it's so big that Grandma can’t pull it out of the ground! Even when Grandpa, Uncle Izzy, Aunt Netty, and the dog help Grandma yank and tug, the big ol’ turnip doesn’t budge. Still, this African-American family, including Baby Pearl, knows how to pull together." -- publisher
Boo Stew
"Award-winning storyteller Donna L. Washington has cooked up a delightfully spooky fractured fairy tale with a diverse cast of characters and an imaginative twist on the classic “Goldilocks.” Curly Locks is a good-hearted girl, but she’s an awful cook. All the townspeople of Toadsuck Swamp know to steer clear of her culinary concoctions—like the batwing brownies and toad eye toffees. So when one of her dishes goes missin’ from her windowsill, word spreads like a kerosene fire about how the Scares have been terrorizin’ the town at mealtime. They shriek “Gitchey Boo, Gitchey Bon! Gitchey Goo, Gitchey Gone!” and send folk runnin’ from their dinner plates. With everyone else tremblin’ and squawkin’ about the Scares, Curly Locks gets an inklin’. Can she use her smarts and unique talents to help corral those Scares for good? Internationally known, award-winning storyteller Donna L. Washington uses her tremendous skill to breathe new life into the classic Goldilocks tale. Her clever, can-do protagonist and joyful language paired with Jeffrey Ebbeler’s charming, imaginative illustrations will tempt readers into a ghostly, yet enchanting landscape that they won’t want to leave!" -- publisher
It’s Not Little Red Riding Hood
"Little Red likes to play by the rules. So when the narrator comes along and asks her to follow the story set out in her fairy tale, she grabs the basket for Grandma and goes. After all, she loves her grandma. But unfortunately, none of the other characters are quite what they’re expecting.… As Little Red attempts to follow the narrator’s directions (which, frankly, seem kind of dangerous!), she is beset by fill-in characters, confusing instructions, and even a fierce battle! Will Little Red ever make it to Grandma’s house? And who will she find when she gets there? Complete with some unusual “guest appearances,” this laugh-out-loud Little Red Riding Hood retelling will have kids giggling all the way to Grandma’s house! Ding-dong!" -- publisher
Help wanted :
"Shailey loves bedtime until her father gets distracted by a new job, so she advertises for a replacement "Bedtime Storyteller" and finds herself interviewing her favorite fairytale characters." --
Cinderella of the Nile
"In this ancient version of Cinderella, a pair of beautiful slippers leads a rosy-cheeked girl to the King of Egypt. Beautifully retold by the award-winning author Beverley Naidoo, this earliest-known version of Cinderella is brought to life for the modern day reader. Rhodopis is a Greek girl who is sold into slavery by bandits and taken to Egypt. Along the way she becomes friends with the storyteller Aesop and a host of playful animals. Her master gives her a pair of beautiful rose-red slippers, making three other servants jealous. But when Horus, the falcon, sweeps in to steal her slipper, Rhodopis has little idea that this act will lead her to the King of Egypt." -- publisher
Tallulah the Tooth Fairy CEO
"In this clever, funny, and modern picture book, the tooth fairy is a high-powered black businesswoman named Tallulah." -- publisher
Sing a Song
"In Jacksonville, Florida, two brothers, one of them the principal of a segregated, all-black school, wrote the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing” so his students could sing it for a tribute to Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in 1900. From that moment on, the song has provided inspiration and solace for generations of Black families. Mothers and fathers passed it on to their children who sang it to their children and grandchildren. Known as the Black National Anthem, it has been sung during major moments of the Civil Rights Movement and at family gatherings and college graduations." --publisher
Snow White’s seven patches
Beautiful but vain Ivy locks away her infant daughter, Snow, because she is born with a skin disorder, and later forces her to write children's books until Snow escapes and finds shelter in the forest, in this story based on the Grimm fairy tale.
The princess and the pea
When a prince sets out to find a princess to marry, he soon discovers this is not a simple task. There is no shortage of so-called princesses, but how can he tell whether or not they are what they claim to be? Then one night a great storm rages, there comes a knock on the palace gate, and the prince's life is never the same.
The people could fly
Resplendent, powerful paintings by these two-time Caldecott-winning artists bring new life to the title story from the late Hamilton's 1985 collection, The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales . Making dramatic use of shadow and light, Leo and Diane Dillon (whose half-tone illustrations also graced the original volume) ably convey the tale's simultaneous messages of oppression and freedom, of sadness and hope. "They say the people could fly. Say that long ago in Africa, some of the people knew magic," opens the narrative, as the full-color artwork reveals elegant, beautifully clothed individuals with feathered wings serenely ascending into the sky. On the following spread, images of the Middle Passage set a fittingly somber tone, depicting Africans who "were captured for Slavery. The ones that could fly shed their wings. They couldn't take their wings across the water on the slave ships. Too crowded, don't you know." The picture-book format allows room for the relationship to develop between Sarah, who labors in the cotton fields with an infant strapped to her back, and Toby, the "old man," who utters the magic African words that give her flight. Toby helps others take flight as well (a stunning image shows seemingly hundreds linking hands and taking to the skies)- and eventually does so himself, sadly leaving some of the captives "who could not fly" behind to "wait for a chance to run." Art and language that are each, in turn, lyrical and hard-hitting make an ideal pairing in this elegant volume that gracefully showcases the talent of its creators. All ages