Africa Nonfiction

In Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15, 1963, it is one little girl's 10th birthday. Excited about Youth Day at the 16th Street Baptist Church, she puts on her patent leather shoes and practices her choir solo. But her birthday will include no cake and no candles this year. A group of men have tucked a bundle of dynamite under the church's steps, and when it goes off, four girls are dead: AddieMae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Denise McNair.

Jackie Robinson became the first black Major League baseball player of the modern era when he stepped onto the field as a Brooklyn Dodger in 1947. In simple, engaging language, this audiobook follows Jackie from childhood through his career as an MVP-award winning baseball player and a hero of the civil rights movement. This book is perfect for Black History Month and the start of spring training!

In the early 1960s, tired of reprisals for attempting to register to vote, Selma's black community began to protest. The struggle received nationwide attention when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a voting rights march in January 1965 and was attacked by a segregationist. In February, the shooting of an unarmed demonstrator by an Alabama state trooper inspired a march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery.

Thirty diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators - including Renee Watson (Piecing Me Together), Grace Lin (Where the Mountain Meets the Moon), Meg Medina (Merci Suarez Changes Gears), and Adam Gidwitz (The Inquisitor's Tale) - engage young people in frank discussions about racism, identity, and self-esteem. Featuring stories filled with love, acceptance, truth, peace, and an assurance that there can be hope for a better tomorrow, The Talk is an inspiring anthology and must-have resource published in partnership with Just Us Books.

Simone Biles was raised by her grandparents and had to overcome many hardships as a child. After trying gymnastics for the first time on a field trip from elementary school, Simone continued with the sport, working hard and reaching professional levels. She persisted in the field and went on to become the most decorated US gymnast of all time. Through it all, she inspired kids everywhere to follow their dreams.

What would it be like to live in Kenya? How is Kenya's culture unique? Explore the sights, traditions, and daily lives of Kenyans!

After decades of war, South Sudan became an independent country in 2011. Though its people face struggles as they build their new nation, they do have reason for national pride. Their country contains Bandingilo National Park, which hosts one of the largest annual animal migrations. This title describes the birth of South Sudan and its efforts to create a national identity.

Find out what an African elephant has in common with a wildebeest. Learn what sets an African elephant apart from a snow leopard. Listeners will compare and contrast key traits of African elephants - their appearance, behavior, habitat, and life cycle - to traits of other mammals. Through gathering information about similarities and differences, listeners will make connections and draw conclusions about what makes this animal a mammal and how mammals are alike and different from each other.

Fresh with discovery of African rhythms, a beginning djembe player tries to fit in with the local jam group, bucking the convention of cover tunes led by frontmen with guitars. On the one hand, he’s emboldened by freedom’s mantra, “It’s all good.” But harmony is not a given, when anxiety and impatience meet ego and status. Leaning on the upbeat and offbeat, a compromise might be struck in the reggae mode, a Third World feel. One way or another, the drop-ins and old hands at the Friday Night Jam have to find a way to get along, and more: to find gold in the moment. Part prose riff ...

This brilliant memoir-in-verse tells the moving story of how a nation learned to celebrate a hero. Through years of protests and petition, Kathlyn's story highlights the foot soldiers who fought to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday.

The eerie silence was broken only by the sound of scuffling feet as marchers approached the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. The mood was sober. Hundreds of men, women, and children had been protesting in Selma for weeks to win black Americans the right to vote. They’d been threatened. Been arrested. Jailed. This march was likely to end in violence, yet they went anyway. But when state troopers attacked with billy clubs and tear gas, the brute force was a shock.

Adapted from her adult memoir, this is the autobiography of Coretta Scott King–wife of Martin Luther King, Jr., founder of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (the King Center), and twentieth-century American civil and human rights activist.

The African savanna is home to many kinds of animals, including me! I am spotted, but I am not a giraffe. I am strong, but I am not an elephant. Listen to the clues and try to guess which animal I am before the end of the book!

Before she traveled the country speaking out against discrimination, Bessie was a little girl with a big imagination that took her to the sky, through the clouds, and past the birds. Knocking down barriers one by one, Bessie endured racism and grueling training to become the first Black female pilot and an inspiration to Mae Jemison, Josephine Baker, and many more influential people of color for years to come.

This Highlights Listen & Learn! Audio Study, intended for those in grade three, introduces listeners to a variety of animals that are native to the savannah in Africa. As listeners learn about these animals, they are also introduced to the multiple seasons that occur, while also spotlighting the Maasai people who have lived in East Africa for centuries. This audio study focuses on identifying a sequence of events, how to compare and contrast, and key vocabulary words throughout the nonfiction narrative.

Katherine knew it was wrong that African Americans didn't have the same rights as others - as wrong as 5+5=12. She knew it was wrong that people thought women could only be teachers or nurses - as wrong as 10-5=3. And she proved everyone wrong by zooming ahead of her classmates, starting college at 15, and eventually joining NASA, where her calculations helped pioneer America's first manned flight into space, its first manned orbit of Earth, and the world's first trip to the moon!

Growing up as the child of former sharecroppers in a segregated Baltimore, Elijah Cummings saw firsthand how injustice could run rampant, even in a democracy that promises fairness and equality. But with a strong support system and fiery self-discipline, Elijah utilized the momentum of the civil rights movement to overcome the obstacles of poverty and racism to effect change at a time when our country so badly needed it.

This is the story of one brave family: Mildred Loving, Richard Perry Loving, and their three children. It is the story of how Mildred and Richard fell in love, and got married in Washington, DC. But when they moved back to their hometown of Virginia, they were arrested (in dramatic fashion) for violating that state's laws against interracial marriage. The Lovings refused to allow their children to get the message that their parents' love was wrong, and so they fought the unfair law, taking their case all the way to the Supreme Court - and won!

Giraffes are the tallest animals in the world. Baby giraffes grow fast. Soon they are almost as tall as their mothers. Baby giraffes' coats blend in with the African grasses. This keeps them safe from lions and leopards. How do baby giraffes grow and change? Listen to this book to find out!

Dovey Johnson Roundtree was most famous for her successful defense of an indigent Black man accused of the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer, a prominent White Washington, DC, socialite, in 1965. Despite her triumph in this high-profile case, Roundtree continued to represent the poor and the underserved. She was the first lawyer to bring a bus-desegregation case before the Interstate Commerce Commission, clinching the ruling that enabled Robert F. Kennedy to enforce bus integration. She was also among the first Black women to enter the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.