Books like Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad
By Ellen Levine
For families ready to talk with kids about slavery and courage, this is a true story told with unflinching honesty and deep tenderness. Solemn, urgent, ultimately triumphant.
A young Armenian boy leaves behind his home and everyone he has known to search for refuge, carrying his story until he finally finds the courage to share it.
Born into slavery, a woman hears the voice of God calling her north and escapes through the woods with only her faith, beginning the journey that will make her Moses to her people.
A four-year-old boy and his Japanese American family are forced from their California home into incarceration camps during World War II, moving through three different sites over three years while his parents work to keep the family safe.
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.
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 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 young girl is separated from her mother at the last moment and must sail to America alone, only to discover the address for her family in New York has smudged into illegible ink.
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 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.
A boy who longs to be a trumpeter can only play an imaginary horn, until a musician from the neighborhood night club notices his ambition and takes him seriously.
