Books like Juneteenth for Mazie
By Floyd Cooper
For the kid who asks 'but why do we celebrate that?' — this book answers through family, memory, and a grandfather's voice. Warm, reflective, and rooted in family — history told with tenderness rather than a textbook tone.
Two children prepare for el Día de los Muertos, making sugar skulls and special bread, then scatter marigold petals to guide their ancestors home for a night of singing, dancing, and remembering.
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.
Across generations, the women in one family pass down the art of quilting — from a seven-year-old girl sold away from her parents who sewed secret maps to freedom, to daughters who carried her knowledge through segregation and into the fight for literacy.
An introduction to the history of Juneteenth, from the more than two years enslaved Texans waited after the Emancipation Proclamation to learn they were free, through the holiday's growth into a national celebration.
On the eve of her tenth birthday, a young enslaved girl named Huldah wakes to a life-changing announcement of freedom, and her community celebrates by sewing a flag together.
An aspiring young musician hauls his double bass through busy city streets on the long walk home from school, weaving between crowds while music fills his heart the whole way.
A simple food connects generations of a Native American family, as fry bread becomes a lens for exploring food, time, nation, and identity across communities from coast to coast.
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 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 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.
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 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.
