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Visit the Civil Rights Room
The Civil Rights Room is a space for education and exploration of NPL's Civil Rights Collection. The materials exhibited here capture the drama of a time when thousands of African-American citizens in Nashville sparked a nonviolent challenge to racial segregation in the city and across the South.
1) Dear Martin
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High School Project Lit Titles
Project Lit - Full List
Short YA Fiction
YA Contemporary Fiction Classics
Project Lit - Full List
Short YA Fiction
YA Contemporary Fiction Classics
Description
"Justyce McAllister is a good kid, an honor student, and always there to help a friend--but none of that matters to the police officer who just put him in handcuffs. Despite leaving his rough neighborhood behind, he can't escape the scorn of his former peers or the ridicule of his new classmates. Justyce looks to the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for answers. But do they hold up anymore? He starts a journal to Dr. King to find out. Then...
Author
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"A woman and her husband admitted to a hospital to have a baby requests that their nurse be reassigned -- they are white supremacists and don't want Ruth, who is Black, to touch their baby. The hospital complies, but the baby later goes into cardiac distress when Ruth is on duty. She hesitates before rushing in to perform CPR. When her indecision ends in tragedy, Ruth finds herself on trial, represented by a white public defender who warns against...
3) Ghost boys
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Twelve-year-old Jerome is shot by a police officer who mistakes his toy gun for a real threat. As a ghost, he observes the devastation that's been unleashed on his family and community in the wake of what they see as an unjust and brutal killing.
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After a white mob murders her father, twelve-year-old Ophelia Harrison is awakened by his ghost, who tells her to wake her mother and retreat to the woods. They comply, and escape before their home is burned to the ground by the same men. The pair move to Pittsburgh to live with relatives and take jobs at Daffodil Manor, the home of a wealthy white woman. There, Ophelia continues to see ghosts and learns she has a gift with helping them move on.
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"Get Out meets The Devil Wears Prada in this electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing. Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she's thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They've only...
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Awesome YA Books by Black Authors
High School Project Lit Titles
Nashville Reads 2023: Celebrating Our Freedom to Read!
More Lists...
High School Project Lit Titles
Nashville Reads 2023: Celebrating Our Freedom to Read!
More Lists...
Description
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. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters...
8) A mercy
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Description
In exchange for a bad debt, an Anglo-Dutch trader takes on Florens, a young slave girl, who feels abandoned by her slave mother and who searches for love--first from an older servant woman at her master's new home, and then from a handsome free blacksmith.
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6th Grade Reading
Celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Authors for Kids
Historical Fiction for Kids
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Celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Authors for Kids
Historical Fiction for Kids
More Lists...
Description
In Dakota Territory in the 1880s, half-Chinese Hanna and her white father face racism and resistance to change as they try to make a home for themselves. Includes author's note.
Author
Description
Javari, a Black boy from Bushwick, Brooklyn, finds life at STEM camp in a little Appalachian town in West Virginia shockingly different--except for run-ins with the police, which are still racist. Learning about all sorts science, tech, engineering, and math things at camp also comes with learning about racism, hidden agendas, and what rich people will do to get ahead--but when he meets and befriends Cricket, a local boy and budding activist, as well...
11) Fast pitch
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5th Grade Reading
Middle School Project Lit Titles
Project Lit - Full List
Summer Olympics: Sports Fiction for Kids
Middle School Project Lit Titles
Project Lit - Full List
Summer Olympics: Sports Fiction for Kids
Description
"Shenice Lockwood dreams of leading the Fulton Firebirds to the U12 softball regional championship. But Shenice's focus gets shaken when her great-uncle Jack reveals that a career-ending-and family-name-ruining-crime may have been a setup. It's up to Shenice to discover the truth about her family's past--and fast--before secrets take the Firebirds out of the game forever."--
13) Sorrowland
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Description
Vern escapes the religious compound where she was raised and gives birth to twins in the forest, raising them away from the influence of the outside world. Her community won't let her go that easily, however, and as they pursue, she breaks the boundaries of humanity, changing her body in uncanny ways in order to protect her family.
Author
Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “One of George’s best . . . insightful, tense, and compassionate.”—Entertainment Weekly
Balford-le-Nez is a dying seaside town on the coast of Essex. But when a member of the town’s small but growing Asian community is found murdered near its beach, the sleepy town ignites. Intrigued by the involvement of her London neighbor—Taymullah Azhar—in what...
Balford-le-Nez is a dying seaside town on the coast of Essex. But when a member of the town’s small but growing Asian community is found murdered near its beach, the sleepy town ignites. Intrigued by the involvement of her London neighbor—Taymullah Azhar—in what...
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ALA Youth Media Award Winners 2023
Summer Reading Committee's Recommended Reads
VSBA 2023-2024 -- Intermediate Nominees
Summer Reading Committee's Recommended Reads
VSBA 2023-2024 -- Intermediate Nominees
Description
"Eleven-year-old Maizy Chen visits her estranged grandparents, who own and run a Chinese restaurant in Last Chance, Minnesota; as her visit lengthens, she makes unexpected discoveries about her family's history and herself"--
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Description
In the year following their son's death, May Chen's parents face racist accusations of putting too much pressure on their son and causing his death by suicide, and May attempts to challenge the racism and ugly stereotypes through her writing, only to realize that she still has a lot to learn and that her actions have consequences for her family as well as herself.
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Description
Returning to her ancestral home in the North Carolina mountains to complete her graduate thesis, Toya, a young Black artist, sets her sights on something bigger when she encounters a still-standing Confederate monument in the heart of town and two horrific crimes split the county apart.
19) Memphis: a novel
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"In the summer of 1995, ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father's violence to the only place they have left: her mother's ancestral home in Memphis. Half a century ago, Joan's grandfather built this majestic house for her grandmother--only to be lynched, days after becoming the first Black detective in Memphis, by his all-white police squad. This wasn't the first time violence altered the course of Joan's family's trajectory,...
Author
Description
"When Selasi and Akorfa were young girls, they were more than just cousins; they were inseparable confidantes. Then Selasi begins to change, becoming hostile and quiet and losing interest in everything. The two become estranged, and it will be years before Akorfa learns what has happened. Only a crisis can ultimately bring them back together"--
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