AGES 9-12 / GRADES 4-5

Jean Merrill (A)

List Price: $9.99 (Paperback – Toothpaste Inventor  – 2006)

Sixth-grader Rufus Mayflower doesn’t set out to become a millionaire. He just wants to save on toothpaste. Betting he can make a gallon of his own for the same price as one tube from the store, Rufus develops a step-by-step…

Walter Dean Myers (A), Leonard Jenkins (ILT)

List Price: $8.99 (Paperback – Biography / Leader / Revolutionary – 2003)

“I believe in recognizing every human being
as a human being, neither white, black, brown, nor red.”

This was just one of the messages that Malcolm X brought to people of…

A friendship hypothesis—and one failed experiment—leads one girl to investigate the science of middle school friendship makeups and breakups in this hopeful and heartwarming story from Tanita S. Davis, author of Partly Cloudy and Serena Says.

Rylee Swanson is beginning eighth grade with zero friends.

A humiliating moment at the end-of-seventh-grade pool party involving a…

Nico Medina (A) Who HQ and Gregory Copeland (ILT)

List Price: $6.99 (Paperback – Biography / Legendary Singer – 2018)

There is only one QUEEN OF SOUL!  Discover why Aretha Franklin garners so much R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Aretha Franklin is a musical and cultural icon who created an amazing legacy spanning six decades! Born in…

Janice N. Harrington (A) and Theodore Taylor lll

List Price: $18.50 (Hardcover – First Black Entomologist – 2019)

Can spiders learn? How do ants find their way home? Can bugs see color? All of these questions buzzed endlessly in Charles Henry Turner’s mind. As the first Black entomologist, he was fascinated by plants and…

Kofi A. Annan (A), Dudley J. Thompson (A) and Barrington A. Watson (ILT)

List Price: $15.00 (Paperback – Biographies / Pan Africanists – 2005)

This book celebrates the lives of seventeen Black leaders who have made outstanding contributions to the liberation, unity and solidarity of Africa and African peoples throughout…

Chris Crowe (A) and Tim Okamura (ILT)

List Price: $5.99 (Paperback – Fictionalized True Story / Emmett Till – 2002)

Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black teenager from Chicago, was unused to the mores of the segregated South. While visiting his uncle in the summer of 1955, he allegedly made flirtatious remarks…

Tiki Barber (A), Ronde Barber (A), Paul Mantell (Contri)

List Price: $7.99 (Paperback – Series / Sports/ Football – 2014)

The Hidden Valley Eagles have high hopes for the football championship in this novel from NFL superstars and bestselling authors Tiki and Ronde Barber.

Tiki and Ronde are ready to end junior high…

Varian Johnson (A) Who HQ (A) and Steven Marchesi (ILT)

List Price: $7.99 (Paperback – Sports / Baseball Pioneers – 2020) 

This baseball league that was made up of African American players and run by African American owners ushered in the biggest change in the history of baseball.

In America during the early twentieth century,…

G. Neri (A) and Randy Duburke (ILT)

List Price: $16.95 (Paperback –   South Side Gang Member  – 2010)

Eleven-year old Roger is trying to make sense of his classmate Robert “Yummy” Sandifer’s death, but first he has to make sense of Yummy’s life. Yummy could be as tough as a pit bull…

April Jones Prince (A) and Robert Squier (ILT)

List Price: $5.99 (Paperback – Biography / Abolitionist / Orator – 2014)

Born into slavery in Maryland in 1818, Frederick Douglass was determined to gain freedom–and once he realized that knowledge was power, he secretly learned to read and write to give himself an advantage.…

NIcole D. Collier (A)

List Price: $9.99 (Paperback – Needs to Break Out of Her Shell – 2023)

In this heartfelt middle grade novel…

Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu (A)

List Price: $8.99 (Paperback – Fantasy / Futuristic Africa / Friendship – 2008)

In the Ooni Kingdom, children born dada—with vines growing in their hair—are rumored to have special powers. Zahrah Tsami doesn’t know anything about that. She feels normal. Others think she’s different—they fear her. Only Dari, her best…

Linda Williams Jackson (A)

List Price: $9.99 (Paperback – Social Injustice  – 2017)

It’s Mississippi in the summer of 1955, and Rose Lee Carter can’t wait to move north. For now, she’s living with her sharecropper grandparents on a white man’s cotton plantation. Then, one town over, an African American boy, Emmett Till, is…

Virginia Hamilton (A) and Diane Dillon and Leo Dillon (Cover) Symmeon Shimin (ILT)

List Price: $8.99 (Paperback – Small Town /Farm / Friendships – 2006)

Well spend the whole summer on the farm with Uncle Ross. I ought to make up something special just because we’ve…

Samhita Arni (A) and Mona Chirakar (ILT) 

List Price: $24.95  (Hardcover –  India / Graphic Novel / War /  A  Woman’s Opinion -2011)

The Ramayana is an epic poem by the Hindu sage Valmiki, written in ancient Sanskrit sometime after 300 BC. It is an allegorical story that contains important Hindu teachings, and it…

Kathleen Krull (A) and David Diaz (ILT)

List Price: $8.95 (Paperback – Sports / Track Athlete / Handicap / Determination – 2000)

Description: Wilma Rudolph was born in Tennessee in 1940 and contracted polio just before her fifth birthday. She was not expected to walk…

Ruby Bridges (A)

List Price: $17.99 (Hardcover – Biography / Civil Rights Activist – 2020)

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Civil rights icon Ruby Bridges—who, at the age of six, was the first black child to integrate into an all-white elementary school in New Orleans—inspires readers and calls for action in this moving…

Sharon M. Draper (A) Jesse Joshua Watson (ILT)

List Price: $6.99 (Paperback – Adventure / Stars on Stage – 2012)

The Clubhouse kids compete for a big prize—and make some creative moves—in this repackaged and talent-filled tale from bestselling author Sharon Draper.

Ziggy, Jerome, Rashawn, and Rico are sure they’re going…

Vaunda Micheaux Nelson (A) and R. Gregory Christie (ILT)

List Price: $19.99  (Library Binding – Biography Law Enforcement / U.S. Marshall – 2009)

<span class="a-declarative" data-a-popover='{"closeButtonLabel":"Close Author…

Justin A. Reynolds (A) 

List Price: $17.99 (Hardcover – Doomsday Story – 2022) 

A hilarious new middle-grade from Justin A. Reynolds that asks: What happens when five unsupervised kids face the apocalypse under outrageously silly circumstances? Twelve-year-old Eddie Gordon Holloway has concocted his most genius plan ever to avoid chores . . . especially the…

Tony Medina (A) and R. Gregory Christie (ILT)

List Price: $10.95 (Paperback – Biography / Langston Hughes -2006)

Fourteen original poems offer young readers an exciting glimpse into the life of Langston Hughes, one of America most beloved poets. Each of Medina engaging poems explores…

Walter Dean Myers (A) and Bonnie Christensen (ILT)

List Price: $17.99 (Hardcover – Biography / Activist – Journalist/ Exposed Lynching – 2008)

Ida B. Wells was an extraordinary woman. Long before boycotts, sit-ins, and freedom rides, Ida B. Wells was hard at work to better the lives…

Sharon M. Draper (A) and Jesse Joshua Watson (ILT)

List Price: $6.99 (Paperback – Adventure / Lost In The Tunnel – 2011)

Ziggy, Rashawn, Jerome, and Rico — the Black Dinosaurs — are thrilled to discover that their hometown was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Even more exciting, their new…

A moving novel about how a girl’s family and friendships are turned upside down—just as the world is changing in 1970s Los Angeles, for fans of Rita Williams-Garcia and Renée Watson.

Stevie’s life is fluctuating rapidly. She’s starting over in a brand new middle school. Quiet and observant, it’s hard for her to…

Milton J. Davis (A)

List Price: $16.95 (Paperback – Sci-Fi / Self Discovery / Super Powers – 2013)

Thirteen year old Amber Robinson’s life is full of changes. Her parents are sending her to a private school away from her friends, and high school looms before her. But little does she know that…

Ellen Labrecque (A), Dede Putra (ILT), Nancy Harrison (ILT)

List Price: $6.99 (Paperback – Biography / Author / Poet – 2016)

Born in Missouri in 1928, Maya Angelou had a difficult childhood. Jim Crow laws segregated blacks and whites in the South. Her family life was unstable at times. But much like her…

Ta-Nehisi Coates (A) and Wilfredo Torres (ILT)

List Price: $16.98 (Paperback – Graphic Novel / Black Super Hero – 2017)

Where next for the Black Panther? Find out as a sensational new arc begins! Eons ago – before Black Panthers, before Wakanda, before time itself – there were only the Orishas! The pantheon…

Karen Callender (A)

List Price: $17.99 (Hardcover – Loss, Grief and Courage – 2020)

Winner of the 2020 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature!

Winner of the 2020 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Fiction and Poetry!

In a small but turbulent Louisiana town, one boy’s grief takes him beyond…

Ronald L. Smith (A)

Clock Striker, now in graphic novel format, follows Shonen manga’s first Black female lead hero, Cast, in her quest to become a member of the SMITHS, the legendary warrior engineers.

*2024 YALSA Great Graphic Novel for Teens*
*2023 Texas Library Association Maverick Graphic Novel Reading List Winner – Starred…

Ronde Barber (A), Tiki Barber (A) and Paul Mantell (ILT)

List Price: $7.99 (Paperback – Series: Football / Identical Twins / New Coach / Team Spirit – 2008)

It Tiki and Ronde second year on their junior high school football team, the Hidden Valley Eagles. The eighth-grade season is here, and the boys…

Angela Johnson (A)

List Price: $7.99 (Paperback – Teen Fiction / Special Needs / Rare Skin Disease – 2003)

Born with a rare and dangerous allergy to sunlight, Lila’s spent her life hidden from the daylight-staying covered up and indoors until dark,…

Jacqueline Woodson (A)

List Price: $8.99 (Paperback – Foster Siblings – 2010)

The stunning companion to the National Book Award finalist–from a four-time Newbery Honor winning author

Twelve-year-old Lonnie is finally feeling at home with his foster family. But because he’s living apart from his little sister, Lili, he decides it’s his…

Penelope Arlon (A) 

List Price: $11.99 (Paperback – Ancient Egypt Guide – 2014)

A visual guide to ancient Egypt for newly confident readers.

This book is packed with exclusive photos so that kids can see ancient Egypt like never before! The images are accompanied by time lines, step-by-steps, and cross-section graphics for…

Kelly J. Baptist (A)

List Price: $8.99 (Paperback – An Uplifting Affirming Story – 2021)

A coming-of-age tale about a boy who proves that with superhero courage–and a few great sidekicks–you can take on even the toughest of odds. Adapted from a story that first appeared in Flying Lessons & Other Stories…

Laurie Halse Anderson (A)

List Price: $8.99 (Paperback – Historical Fiction / Escape to Freedom – 2008)

As the Revolutionary War begins, thirteen-year-old Isabel wages her own fight…for freedom. Promised freedom upon the death of their owner, she and her sister, Ruth, in a cruel twist of fate become the property of a…

Mo’ne Davis (A)

List Price: $9.99 (Paperback – Biography / Sports / Baseball – 2015)

Be inspired to reach for your dreams!

In August 2014, Mo’ne Davis became the first female pitcher to win a game in the Little League World Series and the first Little Leagues to be featured on the cover…

Sharon M. Draper (A) and Jesse Joshua Watson (ILT)

List Price: $6.99 (Paperback – Adventure / Buried Bones Mystery – 2011)

With their neighborhood basketball court destroyed by vandalism, Ziggy, Rashawn, Jerome, and Rico don’t know how they’re going to spend summer vacation. Then Ziggy has a brilliant idea (Ziggy…

Mildred D. Taylor (A)

List Price: $9.99. (Paperback – Logan Family Saga #2 – 1976)

With the land to hold them together, nothing can tear the Logans apart. Why is the land so important to Cassie family? It takes the events of one turbulent year – the year of the night…

Jewell Parker Rhodes (A)

List Price: $8.99 (Paperback – Family / Katrina Tragedy / Survival – 2012)

Twelve-year-old Lanesha lives in a tight-knit community in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. She doesn’t have a fancy house like her uptown family or lots of friends like the other kids on her street. But what she…

New York Times bestselling author Jerry Craft is back with the newest adventures of Jordan, Drew, Liam, and all the characters that fans first met in New Kid, winner of the Newbery Award and the Coretta Scott King Author Award!

In this…

Frederick Douglass (A)

List Price: $6.00 (Paperback – Autobiography / Former Slave / Self Taught / Abolitionist – 1995)

Former slave, impassioned abolitionist, brilliant writer, newspaper editor and eloquent orator whose speeches fired the abolitionist cause, Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) led an astounding life. Physical abuse, deprivation and tragedy plagued his early years, yet…

Diane Bailey (A)

List Price: $6.99 (Paperback –  Biography / Journalist/ She Exposed Lynching – 2019)

Jeter Publishing presents a brand-new series that celebrates men and women who altered the course of history but may not be as well-known as their counterparts.

Ida B. Wells was an African-American journalist and activist…

The code isn’t all it’s cracked up to…

Yona Zeldis McDonough (A), Nancy Harrison (ILT) and Stephen Marchesi (ILT)

List Price: $5.99 (Paperback – Biography – Activist /Civil Rights Leader – 2010)

In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. This seemingly small act triggered civil rights protests across America and earned…

From the Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Award winning author Kwame Alexander, comes the first book in a searing, breathtaking trilogy that tells the story of a boy, a village, and the epic odyssey of an African family.

In his village in Upper Kwanta, 11-year-old Kofi loves his family, playing oware with his grandfather and swimming in…

This lyrical celebration of Juneteenth, deeply rooted in Black American history, spans centuries and reverberates loudly and proudly today.

After 300 years of forced bondage;
hands bound, descendants of Africa
picked up their souls—all that they owned—
leaving shackles where they fell on the ground,<span…

Outgrow your piggy bank―an intro to investing for kids ages 8 to 12

Did you know that the sooner you understand money, the sooner you can make more of it? It’s true! Investing for Kids can help make you money savvy, showing you how to earn it, how to start a savings plan, and the…