Books like Double Bass Blues
By Andrea J. Loney
For the kid who hums to himself on every walk home, this book turns an ordinary commute into something worth listening to. Warm, rhythmic, and full of city noise and heart.
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 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 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.
With a baby on her hip and laundry still waiting, a no-nonsense creator demands light and dark, earth and sky, and every living creature into being — then sits back satisfied with what she's made.
A young girl, her waitress mother, and her grandma save every spare coin in a big jar, hoping to finally buy a comfortable chair after a fire destroyed their old furniture.
A father speaks love to his child from day one — through truth, comfort, joy, and pride — guiding them through monsters both imaginary and real, and toward a better world.
A bricklayer works hard every day building the city, while his son works hard at school and plays at molding tiny clay bricks, until one Saturday his father surprises him with something built just for their family.
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 young boy travels before dawn with his family to Granny's farm for their annual reunion, where every child must find their own way to honor the family's history — but Lil Alan isn't sure what he'll bring.
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.
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 young boy rides the bus across town with his grandmother every Sunday, grumbling about the rain and the wait, until she helps him see the beauty and music hiding in their ordinary route.
