Books like A Place Inside of Me: A Poem to Heal the Heart
By Zetta Elliott
For families looking for a way into hard conversations, this poem gives a child's big, shifting emotions a name and a shape, season by season. Tender, honest, and quietly powerful, moving from bright joy through grief into hard-won peace.
A true portrait of an enslaved man in 1800s South Carolina who became a master potter, shaping massive clay jars and carving his own poetry into them despite the world telling him he had no voice.
A duckling too odd-looking for his own barnyard is mocked and driven off, then must survive hunters and harsh seasons alone before discovering what he truly is.
A lyrical, free-verse journey traces enslaved Black Americans' path to freedom, from the moment shackles fell in 1865 Galveston, Texas to how Juneteenth is honored today.
A Puerto Rican girl grows up surrounded by love and pride in her Taíno and African heritage, but painful treatment from the world slowly dims her sense of her own beauty — until her community rallies to wake her up again.
An egg named Humpty Dumpty loves nothing more than watching birds from high on the city wall — until a great fall leaves him terrified of heights, and he must find the courage to climb again.
Enslaved people in 19th-century Louisiana count down the days through endless labor — slopping hogs, chopping logs, plucking hens — toward Sunday afternoon, when they gather in New Orleans' Congo Square to sing, dance, and briefly live free.
A boy leaving New York City and a girl leaving Mexico City each face the same nervous questions about their move — will they make friends, what will they eat, where will they play?
A three-legged kitten named Fanny and her puppy friend Ruby set out to show the other farm animals that being different doesn't mean being less able.
A teacher searches for the words to tell her class about American slavery, tracing the story from fireside tales in Africa through the Atlantic crossing to the fields of the South.
A poem-portrait of one family — brown-skinned mama, white-skinned daddy, and their two children — celebrates every skin tone between them as simply, joyfully theirs.
A child piano prodigy flees revolution in Venezuela for the United States, and despite feeling lonely and out of place, grows famous enough to be invited to play for President Lincoln at the White House.
A parent looks at a child and wonders aloud, in rhyme, about all the different people they might grow up to be — brave, clever, silly, wise — no matter what.
