Books like Ben's Trumpet
By Rachel Isadora
For the kid who air-drums to every song on the radio and means it with their whole chest, Ben's devotion to a trumpet he doesn't even own will feel instantly familiar. Moody, jazz-soaked, and quietly hopeful, with city-night energy on every page.
A determined young dancer in the 1930s and 40s trains for ballet despite discriminatory schools, then refuses to paint her skin white for a company's offer — and rises to become the Met Opera's first Black prima ballerina.
A young left-handed girl picks up her brother's guitar, flips it upside down to play it her own way, and by age eleven has written "Freight Train," a song the world would come to know.
A biography of jazz pioneer Duke Ellington, tracing his rise from playing pool halls and cabarets as a teenager to leading his orchestra through a groundbreaking Carnegie Hall performance of Black, Brown, and Beige.
A legendary railroad worker, born with a hammer in his hand and stronger than anyone around, takes on a steam drill to see who can dig through a mountain faster.
A spirited young girl navigates segregated 1950s Nashville alone, facing Jim Crow signs and painful moments on her way to the one welcoming place in town: the public library.
A Black boy growing up in segregated 1940s North Carolina loves to draw everything around him, but becomes a football star instead — until his dream of making art finds its way to him.
A picture-book biography traces Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s path from a childhood in the segregated South to becoming a minister and civil rights leader, told through his own powerful words.
A lyrical journey through the history of Black music in America, from spirituals and blues to jazz, soul, and hip-hop, packed with over 80 references to real artists like Billie Holiday and Kendrick Lamar.
A girl from the Muscogee Creek Nation dreams of jingle dancing at the next powwow, but her dress has no jingles — so she turns to the women in her family and community to borrow theirs.
A real-life picture book biography follows young Alma Thomas from a childhood soaking up color in Georgia to becoming a celebrated painter — teaching art for decades before beginning her own boundlessly colorful paintings near age seventy.
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 young Japanese American artist grows up determined to draw, even as her family is sent to a WWII internment camp — and she goes on to create groundbreaking picture books that show children of every race together.
