“I want kids to know, because they can’t fathom that these kinds of injustices existed in the USA. We have to continually tell them this happened in the past. It wasn’t a video game, a TV series, a movie with a prequel or sequel. It happened.” Carole Boston Weatherford, speaking on the award-winning, picture book, Freedom in Congo Square
The International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade is observed on March 25th. The purpose of the day is to “honour and remember those who suffered and died at the hands of the brutal slavery system…[and] to raise awareness about the dangers of racism and prejudice today.” The children’s and young adult books featured offer a wide-range of historical fiction and nonfiction stories of slavery in America and throughout the African Diaspora. They tell of the enslaved who lived, died, fought for freedom, experienced victory and defeat, and the lingering effects on their descendants well into the 21st century. The International Day of Remembrance challenges society to learn from the past and progress toward a more just and humane world. The 2021 Theme is “Ending Slavery’s Legacy of Racism: A Global Imperative for Justice.” For more information go here.
1 William Still and His Freedom Stories: The Father of the Underground Railroad
Don Tate | Peachtree Publishing Company | November 1, 2020 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
2 BOX: Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom
Carole Boston Weatherford | Michele Wood | Candlewick | April 14, 2020 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
3 Freedom Bird: A Tale of Hope and Courage
Jerdine Nolen | James Ransome | S & S/Paula Wiseman | January 14, 2020 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
4 The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read
Rita Lorraine Hubbard | Oge Mora | Schwartz & Wade | January 7, 2020 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
5 Freedom Soup
Tami Charles | Jacqueline Alcántar | Candlewick | December 10, 2019 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
6 Ona Judge Outwits the Washingtons: An Enslaved Woman Fights for Freedom
Gwendolyn Hooks | Simone Agoussoye | Capstone | October 1, 2019 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
7 The Escape of Robert Smalls: A Daring Voyage Out of Slavery
Jehan Jones-Radgowski | Poppy Kang | September 1, 2019 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
8 The Bell Rang
James E. Ransome | Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy | January 15, 2019 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
9 Light in the Darkness: A Story about How Slaves Learned in Secret
Lesa Cline-Ransome | James E. Ransome | Little, Brown BYR | February 19, 2013 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
10 The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom
Bettye Stroud | Erin Susanne Bennett | Candlewick | January 13, 2005 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
11 Great Escapes #2: Journey to Freedom, 1838
Sherri Winston | James Bernardin | HarperCollins | April 28, 2020 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
12 Lest We Forget: The Passage from Africa into the Twenty-First Century
Velma Maia Thomas | becker&mayer! Books | January 15, 2019 | Amazon | IndieBound
13 The Middle Passage: White Ships / Black Cargo
Tom Feelings | Dial Books | January 2, 2018 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
14 Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by Ashley Bryan
Ashley Bryan | Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books | September 13, 2016 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
15 Freedom in Congo Square
Carole Boston Weatherford | R. Gregory Christie | little bee books | January 05, 2016 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
16 Birchtown and the Black Loyalists
Wanda Taylor | Nimbus Publishing | November 3, 2014 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
17 Elijah of Buxton
Christopher Paul Curtis | Scholastic | February 1, 2009 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
18 My Name Is Sally Little Song
Brenda Woods | Putnam Juvenile | September 7, 2006 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
19 Rebels Against Slavery: American Slave Revolts
Patricia C. McKissack | Fredrick L. McKissack | Scholastic Press | January 1, 1996 | Amazon | IndieBound
20 The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales
Virginia Hamilton | Leo Dillon | Diane Dillon | Knopf BYR | January 13, 1985 | Amazon | Bookshop | Indiebound
21 Cane Warriors
Alex Wheatle | Black Sheep | October 20, 2020 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
22 Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning
Jason Reynolds | Ibram X. Kendi| Little, Brown BYR | March 10, 2020 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
23 Making Our Way Home: The Great Migration and the Black American Dream
Blair Imani | Ten Speed Press | January 14, 2020 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
24 Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. | Tonya Bolden | MG | Scholastic | January 29, 2019 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
25 Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge: George and Martha Washington’s Courageous Slave Who Dared to Run Away, Young Readers Edition
Erica Armstrong Dunbar | Kathleen Van Cleve | Aladdin | January 8, 2019 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
26 Crossing Ebenezer Creek
Tonya Bolden | Bloomsbury USA Childrens | May 30, 2017 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
27 Day of Tears
Julius Lester | Hyperion | April 1, 2007 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
28 Copper Sun
Sharon M. Draper | Atheneum BYR | January 1, 2006 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
29 47
Walter Mosley | Little, Brown BYR | May 4, 2005 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
30 Fortune’s Bones: The Manumission Requiem
Marilyn Nelson | Front Street | November 1, 2004 | Amazon | Bookshop | IndieBound
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