Citations

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House,                 1970. Print.

Fleischman, Paul, and Judy Pedersen. Seedfolks. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Print.

 Gordon, Sheila. Waiting for Rain: a Novel of South Africa. New York: Orchard, 1987. Print.

Henkes, Kevin. Chrysanthemum. New York: Greenwillow, 1991. Print.

 Hesse, Karen. Out of the Dust. New York: Scholastic, 1999. Print.

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mocking Bird. London: Arrow, 1997. Print.

Lovell, Patty, and David Catrow. Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2001. Print.

  Lowry, Lois. Number the Stars. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. Print.

 Myers, Walter Dean. Harlem Summer. New York: Scholastic, 2007. Print. 

  Ryan, Pam Muñoz. Esperanza Rising. New York: Scholastic, 2000. Print.

  Stead, Rebecca. When You Reach Me. New York: Wendy Lamb, 2009. Print.

Wolff, Virginia Euwer. Make Lemonade. New York: Henry Holt and, 2006. Print.

Wong, Janet S., and Margaret Chodos-Irvine. Apple Pie 4th of July. San Diego: Harcourt, 2002. Print.

Wood, June Rae. The Man Who Loved Clowns. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1992. Print.

Woodson, Jacqueline, and Earl B. Lewis. The Other Side. New York: Putnam's, 2001. Print.

Out of the Dust - By Karen Hesse

Like the Oklahoma dust bowl from which she came, 14-year-old narrator Billie Jo writes in sparse, free-floating verse. In this compelling, immediate journal, Billie Jo reveals the grim domestic realities of living during the years of constant dust storms: That hopes--like the crops--blow away in the night like skittering tumbleweeds. That trucks, tractors, even Billie Jo's beloved piano, can suddenly be buried beneath drifts of dust. Perhaps swallowing all that grit is what gives Billie Jo--our strong, endearing, rough-cut heroine--the stoic courage to face the death of her mother after a hideous accident that also leaves her piano-playing hands in pain and permanently scarred.

Meanwhile, Billie Jo's silent, windblown father is literally decaying with grief and skin cancer before her very eyes. When she decides to flee the lingering ghosts and dust of her homestead and jump a train west, she discovers a simple but profound truth about herself and her plight. There are no tight, sentimental endings here--just a steady ember of hope that brightens Karen Hesse's exquisitely written and mournful tale. Hesse won the 1998 Newbery Award for this elegantly crafted, gut-wrenching novel. 

Summary and review provided by: Amazon.com- Gail Hudson

Out of the Dust, written by Karen Hesse. New York: Scholastic, 1999. 

This is a great book about overcoming inner and outward obstacles and finding inner strength. This would be a great time to talk about the dust bowl and what life was like in it. This is a great story about fitting in with family and finding your place. I think it could be a readers circle book or even an introduction to a history lesson. 


ISBN: 0613119533

Make Lemonade- by Virginia Euwer Wolff

This book is absolutely unforgettable. It's just a story about fourteen-year-old La Vaughn who takes on a babysitting job. She needs to work her way through school to save enough money to get through college. That's how it is in America. She means to study, to get a better job, to escape the poverty that she is growing up in.

She babysits for Jolly, a lone and inadequate, seventeen-year-old mother of two, Jeremy and Jilly. Now, the place where this little family live is absolutely disgusting. Like La Vaughn says, you really don't want to know this, but she tells you anyway. The children are filthy and deprived of all the good things in life. No decent food, no bus trips out anywhere, no learning at home, no stable basics at all. But, Jolly loves them fiercely.

Things go well enough at first. Jolly works an evening shift and La Vaughn babysits from the finish of school until late in the evening. La Vaughn works hard to look after the children and complete all her homework every night. And she takes pride in herself and her work because she's nicely brought up. She really does her best for Jeremy and Jilly. She spends time playing with them and teaching them and cleaning them and comes to love them. While Jolly is working she can afford to pay La Vaughn and La Vaughn's bank account, her own escape route, grows satisfactorily.

But Jolly gets the sack. Now Jolly and La Vaughn are friends and it is only at this point that La Vaughn really comprehends what a terrible trap Jolly is in. Jolly has no family to fall back on. She never went to school much, so she is almost totally illiterate. She cannot find another job, and if she does it most likely won't last very long. She fears to take the Welfare handouts in case she loses her children. La Vaughn continues to babysit for free while Jolly considers her non-existent options:

Me sitting the kids free is like Jolly gets Welfare right at home
from somebody almost a child herself, me.
And that's most definitely not right.
I should be paid for my services.
But then like it says Help Your Neighbor.
And like they say in Steam (Self-esteem) Class:
One good thing you do in a day for somebody else
don't cost you.
But then they go on about you have to find the good thing
that ain't the wrong good thing,
like for somebody going to abuse you,
or like you expect some big banquet of thanks for it
which you ain't going to get.
They make you give examples of both kinds.

So I end up not knowing
after I thought about it
no more than I did
in the first place.

La Vaughn persuades Jolly to go back to school. It is unbelievably moving. Read it for yourself and see.

Don't let the lay-out put you off. I must say, I groaned a bit myself when I saw it. It's just a narrative. La Vaughn tells us what happened in her own words. Each little incident is related in a separate little block or chapter. The lay-out actually makes it very quick and easy to read.

Quick and easy to read, but you won't shrug this book off quickly. There are some monumental ideas here about friendship and self-respect and pulling yourself up by your own bootlaces. Like La Vaughn and Jolly, I was thrilled by that story about making lemonade. What do you do if somebody hands you a lemon in life?

Excellent. Another one for the girls.

Review and Summary provided by: Reading Matters: Book Review - http://www.readingmatters.co.uk/book.php?id=50

Make Lemonade, written by Virginia Euwer Wolff. New York: Henry Holt, 1993. Print. 

This story deals with a very tough subject: teen pregnancy. This is a great one for teachers because this is something that could possible happen in your classroom. This is great for students too because it helps them confront this issue. This is also useful because some students may have teen mom's as well. 


ISBN: 9781603708210

Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon- By Patty Lovell

Meet Molly Lou Melon: she's "just taller than her dog," with "buck teeth that stuck out so far, she could stack pennies on them," and a voice that brings to mind "a bullfrog being squeezed by a boa constrictor." She also possesses huge insect-like eyes. In fact, young readers may actually gasp when they get a good look at the fearless first-grader in Catrow's (She's Wearing a Dead Bird on Her Head) double spread, extreme close-up portrait. Thanks to her grandmother, the protagonist possesses seemingly indomitable self-esteem but will it survive a move to a new school and a bully named Ronald Durkin? Newcomer Lovell doesn't offer any real surprises in her fable there's never any doubt that Molly Lou Melon will charm her classmates with her eccentric talents (which include making a paper snowflake the size of a school room), or that even Ronald Durkin will capitulate and join her fan club. What keeps the storytelling fresh is the crisp prose and the heroine's full-speed-ahead determination; the story never dallies too long on the potentially saccharine message. Catrow's full-bleed pencil-and-watercolor illustrations, awash in ripe colors and animated by slapstick exaggeration, radiate a winningly eccentric elegance.


Summary and Review provided by: Publishers Weekly-    Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon, Illustrated by David Catrow. New York: Putnam, 2001. Print. 


This is a wonderful story of being confident in who you are and what you look like. Its a great book to talk about what your classroom community should look like or should not look like. This would also be a great time to address bullying. Such a fun book, and hilarious illustrations. 


ISBN: 9780439120418

To Kill A Mocking Bird- By Harper Lee

A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel—a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man's struggle for justice—but the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

Review provided by: http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Mockingbird-50th-Anniversary/dp/0061743526/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288557553&sr=1-1

To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee.  Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Company, 1960.

This is a great book for students to discuss the issues of racism. Its a great story that tells of the overcoming of racism and the friendships that came along with it. This book is banned in many schools, however, I feel like its a great read for middle aged students and is a classic among many audiences. 

Apple Pie 4th of July- Janet Wong

This simply told story explores a child's fears about cultural differences and fitting in with understanding and affection. A Chinese-American girl helps her parents open their small neighborhood grocery store every day of the year. However, today is the Fourth of July and her parents just don't understand that customers won't be ordering chow mein and sweet-and-sour pork on this very American holiday. As she spends the day working in the store and watching the local parade, she can't shake her anxiety about her parents' na‹vet‚. When evening arrives along with hungry customers looking "for some Chinese food to go," she is surprised but obviously proud that her parents were right after all: Americans do eat Chinese food on the Fourth of July. Nighttime finds the family atop their roof enjoying fireworks and sharing a neighbor's apple pie. Done in a "variety of printmaking techniques," Chodos-Irvine's illustrations are cheerfully bright and crisp, capturing the spirit of the day as well as the changing emotions of the main character. This second successful collaboration by the creators of Buzz (Harcourt, 2000) is one you won't want to miss.

-Alicia Eames, New York City Public Schools

Summary and Review provided by: School Library Journal - Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Apple Pie 4th Of July, illustrated by Margaret Chodos- Irvine. Sandpiper, 2006. Print.

This would be a great book to use in the classroom because it shows the insecurities of a child's heritage and how those preconcieved notions are proved wrong. This is a great lesson about being okay with who you are and where you come from. It also depicts an American tradition from a new perspective. 

Harlem Summer- By Walter Dean Myers

Sixteen-year-old musician Mark Purvis longs to break into the jazz scene of 1925 Harlem, but when he becomes embroiled in a bootlegging scheme with real-life jazzman Fats Waller, he has to find a way to pay off an angry mob boss for losing the liquor. Mark has a job at The Crisis, a magazine headed up by W. E. B. DuBois and published by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. As expected, his lovably carefree and occasionally clueless personality gets him into an insurmountable pile of trouble, yet it energizes both the plot and era with a contemporary vitality that today's hip-hop and pop-culture fans will appreciate. In this quickly paced and laugh-out-loud narrative, Myers brings Mark face-to-face with a dazzling host of Harlem Renaissance A-listers, including Marian Anderson, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen. Their swift, red-carpetlike entrances and exits ignite the hot New York City summer setting with the electricity of creativity and reform. As the story progresses, Mark's awareness of his surroundings and contributions to the cause grow stronger and stronger, and no doubt that's exactly what Myers hopes his readers will realize for themselves as Mark's story unfolds.

—Hillias J. Martin, New York Public Library

Summary and Review provided by: School Library Journal - Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

 
Harlem Summer, written by Walter Dean Myers. New York:Scholastic, 2007.Print. 


This is a great story about friendship across the racial divide. This is a great story about overcoming obstacles and pushing yourself. The book would be a good introduction to the NAACP and the history of the Harlem renaissance and what that looked like for people living in Harlem. This would be a good book to have a discussion about racial tensions and the history of Jazz and NAACP in Harlem.