Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-ins tells this story through the eyes of a fictional eyewitness who wants to eat at the whites-only lunch counter. Here’s a bookmark with a banana split recipe to share with your students.

MLK would be 90 on January 15. Observe his holiday with my un-biography YOU CAN BE A KING: DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.’S DREAM AND YOU (illustrated by James Ransome). With a service-learning project and reader’s theater built-in, the text lends itself to multiple narrators and a chorus. Add props, music and slides. Or combine the reading with a live paint or quick draw of a King mural. Here’s a planning guide and reader’s theater script. Do share!

ILA’s Literacy Daily blog featured a list of read alouds for ages 4 to 15+. The Legendary Miss Lena Horne, illustrated by Elizaabeth Zunon was the pick for ages 15 and up.

Several years ago, a librarian once introduced me prior to a keynote by saying, “Carole Boston Weatherford doesn’t write picture books; she writes illustrated books for adults.” I don’t know if that’s true or not, although I will admit to tackling provocative subjects and themes. In a way, aren’t picture books just lavishly illustrated short stories characterized by an economy of language? Here are some other picture books of mine that might fit the bill for teen read alouds.

 

 

Do or have you read aloud to teen? What picture books would you share with teens?

  

Besides making several shortlists, SCHOMBURG and THE LEGENDARY MISS LENA HORNE also won a few awards. I am so proud of both books and grateful to the ancestors for letting their stories flow from me. Ashe’

For THE LEGENDARY MISS LENA HORNE

Arnold Adoff Early Readers Poetry Award

For SCHOMBURG: THE MAN WHO BUILT A LIBRARY

SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction

We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) Walter Award

Carter G. Woodson Honor, National Council for the Social Studies

Jefferson Cup Honor, Virginia Library Association

 

 

 

Teaching for Change compiled this list that includes Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-ins and Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement. Also appropriate for middle grades: Birmingham, 1963, which won multiple awards.

 

In her Golden Globe speech, Oprah told girls, “A new day has come!” This picture book shows how the media  mogul got her start–speaking in a rural Mississippi church during the Jim Crow era. She wanted to be paid to talk when she grew up. Could she talk her way into the Oval Office?

 

 

 

Updates to come…

Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library, illustrated by Eric Velasquez (Candlewick)

School Library Journal Best Nonfiction

Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature Best Books

New York Public Library 100 Best Books for Children and Teens

Kirkus Reviews Best Picture Books of 2017 for Budding Social-Justice Warriors

Shelf Awareness Best Picture Books

Fuse 8 Productions 31 Days, 31 Lists: Unique Biographies

2017 Nerdies: Best Nonfiction

 

In Your Hands, illustrated by Brian Pinkney (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster)

School Library Journal Best Picture Books

Booklist Top 10 Religion & Spirtuality Books for Youth

Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2017

 

The Legendary Miss Lena Horne, illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster)

Booklist Lasting Connections

Society of Illustrators, Original Art Show

Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature Best Books

Evanston Public Library’s 101 Great Books for Kids

Chicago Public Library’s Best Informational Books for Younger Readers

A Mighty Girl’s Books of the Year

 

Dorothea Lange: How the Phogorapher Found the Faces of the Depression, illustrated by Sarah Greene (Albert Whitman)

A Mighty Girl’s Books of the Year

 

Jeffery Weatherford, illustrator of You Can Fly: The Tuskegee Airmen (2016, Atheneum/Simon & Schuster), reads the poem “Pearl Harbor,” to mark this week’s anniversary of the 1941 Japanese attack that decimated the Pacific Fleet and drew the U.S. into World War II.