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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45 matching books
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Any Child 16
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Cross Group 45
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Folklore 2
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Fiction 45
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Boy/Man 34
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Girl/Woman 30
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Joint Main 15
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Secondary 36
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
I walk with Vanessa
An elementary school girl witnesses the bullying of another girl, but she is not sure how to help.
I am human
A child recognizes his own humanity, his capacity for doing harm and being harmed, his ability to feel joy and sadness, and his belief in hope and promise to keep learning.
Henry’s freedom box
A fictionalized account of how in 1849 a Virginia slave, Henry "Box" Brown, escapes to freedom by shipping himself in a wooden crate from Richmond to Philadelphia
Two friends
This story imagines what it was like when Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass got together for a cup of tea and discussed their struggle for civil rights.
Make a change
"During the civil rights movement, little Marvin doesn't want to be left out of a protest being held at a store that only allows whites at its lunch counter. When a young white man approaches the scene, the child is unsure what to expect"--|cProvided by publisher
Up the learning tree
A young slave boy risks his life to learn how to read and, with the unsuspecting help of a teacher from the North, begins to realize his dream
Mississippi morning
Amidst the economic depression and the racial tension of the 1930s, a boy discovers a horrible secret of his father's involvement in the Ku Klux Klan. It was 1933 and life was good for James William. Piece by piece, however, his comfortable life begins to unravel. First he learns that the burning of a black man's house was not accidental. Then his fishing buddy LeRoy tells him about the hanging tree and the Klan. Though he accepts that blacks and whites can't drink from the same fountains because "that's the way it is," James William can't believe that racial hatred exists in his own community until he comes face to face with a Klan member. A thought- provoking story of one boy's loss of naivete in the face of harsh historical realities, Mississippi Morning will challenge young readers to question their own assumptions and confront personal decisions
Cheyenne again
In the late 1880's, a Cheyenne boy named Young Bull is taken to a boarding school to learn the white man's ways.
Brick by brick
Describes the building of the White House, the home of the United States president, and how it took many hands, several of them slaves', who will be remembered throughout history for their extraordinary feat