The first time Teresa saw Brother was the way she would think of him ever after. Tree fell head over heels for him. It was love at first sight in a wild beating of her heart that took her breath. But it was a dark Friday three weeks later when it rained, hard and wicked, before she knew Brother Rush was a ghost.
Why had he come to her, with his dark secrets from a long-ago past? Was it to help Dab, her retarded older brother, wracked with mysterious pain? Was it for her mother, Vy, who loved them the best she knew how, but wasn't home enough to ease the terrible longing?
Whatever secrets he held, Tree knew she must follow. She must follow Brother Rush through the magic mirror, and find out the truth. About all of them.
This summer, young Elizabeth and her little brother are going to their uncle's farm alone. Their parents are staying home in the city. Elizabeth can't wait to run through the fields, sleep outside, and explore her uncle's big farm house. One night at the farm, Elizabeth sees a tall, thin figure floating down the road. Although at first she thinks it's a ghost, she soon finds out that it is Zeely Tayber, going to feed her hogs before dawn. In the following days, Elizabeth watches the proud, dignified woman. She is unlike anyone Elizabeth has even seen before. Could she actually be an African princess? Virginia Hamilton has won a Newbery Medal and the Hans Christian Anderson Award for her books for young readers. In Zeely, she twines lessons about individuality and courage into a fascinating story of a young girl's discovery. Award-winning actress Lynne Thigpen provides the perfect voices for both the curious Elizabeth and the mysterious Zeely.
Virginia Hamilton (1936-2002), a giant in the world of children's literature, was the first African American to win a Newbery Medal and the first children's book author to be awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant. In her prize-winning anthology of American Black folktales, The People Could Fly, Hamilton has gathered and retold a collection of stories that teach us much, move us deeply, and make us laugh out loud. Savor this bridge to both the past and future of a people and a nation as you hear these timeless tales brilliantly narrated by Andrew Barnes. Winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, this audiobook is recommended for Grades 4 and up.
Winner of the Newbery Honor, The Planet of Junior Brown is an extraordinary story of heroism, and survival, that will appeal to young and older readers alike. The only thing Junior Brown and Buddy Clark really have is the small solar system they had built in the hidden cellar room of the school. Ostracized from his classmates Junior, a 300 pound musical and artistic prodigy, depends on his imagination for companionship. Buddy is used to depending on no one but himself. Homeless, he uses his wits to survive the streets. With the help of Mr. Poole, the school custodian, the two boys discover a world, a sheltered universe of their own in the basement room. When their hiding place is discovered, and Junior loses the only place he feels safe, his imagination takes over. It will take all of Buddy's resource to protect his friend as the realities of Junior's world come crashing in around them both. Award-winning author Virginia Hamilton is best known for her ability to create stories that teach with an element of fantasy. Heralded among the top black women writers, Hamilton brings the lessons of black urban experience to life for young adults from a variety of background and ethic origins.
The kids in class call Natalie "Bluish" because her skin in tinted blue from chemotherapy. Though weak, she also wants to be independent. Dreenie is fascinated by Bluish and wants to be her friend.
In this quietly beautiful coming-of-age story, eleven-year-old Valena lives with her family in rural Ohio where she and her cousin share experiences such as surviving a tornado and going to an amazing circus. Yet Valena lives in both the present and the past as she struggles with racism in her daily life and listens to and learns from her mother's tales of her family's proud history. Moving backward and forward in time, these pieces of Valena's life blend to form an extraordinary portrait of the ties that bind a family together over generations.
"...this semi-autobiographical novel weaves together some of [Hamilton's] childhood memories of growing up in a warm, extended family in rural Ohio....The real drama, however, is in the tales Valena hears about the people who came before her."-Booklist
One hundred years ago, Dies Drear and two runaway slaves hiding in his house, an important station on the Underground Railroad, were murdered. Legend has it that the ghost of Mr. Drear still haunts the lonely old house. But Thomas Small's father, a Civil War history professor, doesn't believe the legends and buys the house. The house is fascinating, thinks Thomas, and it is filled with hidden doorways and secret passages that he can't wait to explore. But funny things keep happening-frightening things that no one, not even Thomas' father, can explain. Is someone playing a prank? Or is the ghost of Dies Drear trying to warn the Smalls of danger?
From Virginia Hamilton, the author of the Newbery Medal and National Book Award winning M.C. Higgins, the Great, comes a spellbinding mystery filled with edge-of-the-seat suspense. The House of Dies Drear wraps an important history lesson into a brilliantly imaginative story for all ages.
"Two years ago bulldozers had come to make a cut at the top of Sarah's Mountain. They began uprooting trees and pushing subsoil in a huge pile to get at the coal. As the pile grew enormous, so had M.C.'s fear of it. He had nightmares in which the heap came tumbling down. Over and over again, it buried his family on the side of the mountain."-from M.C. Higgins, the Great When M.C. Higgins climbed the 40-foot steel pole near his house, he could see over the spiky treetops and far across the rolling emerald hills.
There, on Sarah's Mountain, with his face turned toward the sun and his arms spread wide, M.C. welcomed in the morning of a brand new day. How he would have liked to stay there forever! But M.C. knew-better than his family-that strip mining had reduced the outcropping upon which their cabin was built to rubble, and soon the spoilage would come raining down, burying their home forever. When two strangers come to the mountain, M.C. thinks he's found a solution to his problem, only to discover that the real answer, like the playful voices inside his head, lies in himself.
