Af Am Children's Lit/The Brown Bookshelf
 

I've been meaning to start this thread for a while so here it is.

1. Born in Sin by Evelyn Coleman

2. The Skin I'm In by Sharon G. Flake

3. Money Hungry by Sharon G. Flake

4. SHARON DRAPER books

• Tears of a Tiger
• Forged by Fire
• Romiette and Julio
• Darkness Before Dawn
• Double Dutch

As I think of others, I will share, but if you know of other books that teens will enjoy, especially Black teens, please share. :D

There is a book coming out by Angela Johnson called The First Things Last. It's about a young man who loses his girlfriend in a random act of violence and now has to take care of their child. I got a notice about it from Amazon.com and it seemed like a pretty good read for teens.

I've read several of Angela Johnson's books.

Also other books I recommend:

Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown: My mom gave it to me to read in the 7th grade. It is such a powerful book to read.

Teacup Full of Roses by Sharon Bell Mathis: Oldie but a goodie. I have a copy from the 70s.

Chill Wind by Janet McDonald: Got this book back in the winter; started it, never finished it but I did like it. I promise. :o It is sitting on the bookshelf/file cabinet.

A book that I read when I was in 7th or 8th grade is very good. It's been out for years, and I still even read it over now, it's just that good.

It's called Manchild In the Promise Land by Claude Brown.

Another really good one is called Like Sisters on the Homefront. I can't remember the author, but I've read in other threads that the author is a soror. It's about a teen mom who is sent by her mother to live with some very strict relatives down south.

Oh dang, how could I forget RITA WILLIAMS GARCIA!! That book was off the hook, very good.

Stephanie Perry Moore is a soror. I met her @ the ATL Convention and bought one of her books for one of my former students who was in a relationship with a guy who wanted to have sex but she did not. (teen series) -- spiritual fiction. It was the first in the series where a young girl loses her long time boyfriend during her senior year because she chooses to remain a virgin. Soror lives in ATL and told me she comes to Charlotte to work with Alumnae chapter's debutantes.

Here is the book I bought my student . . .
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/08...1.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Not only is Payton Skky popular, but she is also dating the best looking guy at her high school. While he is pressuring her to sleep with him, Payton is content to wait, convinced that he is the one she will marry. As the pressure increases Payton starts to wonder if waiting is really worth it, especially since she believes that they will always be together. If she gives in, will they always be together?


Book titles of Payton Skky Series:
1. Staying Pure
2. Sober Faith
3. Saved Race
4. Sweetest Gift
5. Surrendered Heart

Looks like she also has a Laurel Shadrach Series
1. Purity Reigns
2. Totally Free
3. Equally Yoked

Mildred Taylor Classics
 

How remiss of me not to mention the classics by Mildred Taylor:

1. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
2. Let The Circle Be Unbroken
3. The Road to Memphis (every time I read this book, I cry like a baby).


You have to read IMANI ALL MINE by Connie Rose Porter. One of my Caucasian students read this book my first year teaching. She told me it was a good book. THAT was an understatement. This book had me broke down crying like FUNERAL CRYING.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/06...CMZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Plot Summary:
From Publishers Weekly
"The doctor say she see it every day, babies having babies." Fifteen-year-old Tasha Dawson narrates a tale of teenage motherhood in Porter's second adult novel (after All-Bright Court). Balancing her honor-roll grades with the perils of surviving inner-city Buffalo, N.Y., Tasha gives birth to Imani?a child conceived in violence and given a name that means "faith." . The young mother expresses a powerful, protective love for her daughter even as she herself negotiates her existence among drug dealers and bigoted authorities and explores her own adolescent sexuality. She struggles to understand her mother's new relationship with a white man; her own desires, shame and pride; and the nature of a God who is both merciless and loved. Just when Tasha appears to have found a place for herself with Imani and in school, her world is devastated by a flash of injustice that changes her life forever. Porter spins the tale in a series of flashbacks, telling Tasha's story in a nonlinear fashion and with a bold dialect, mirroring the survival strategies of indirection that Tasha employs in her complex navigation of young adulthood, motherhood and urban life. Porter is also known as a young-adult fiction writer (the Addy books in the American Girls series), and at times this novel slips uncomfortably into YA simplicity, especially in its resolutely uplifting final scenes, which offer an almost cloyingly spiritual happy ending to Tasha's complicated, earthbound story. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

LOL, I forgot I reviewed this book on Amazon. . .
I gave it 5 stars, but this is what I wrote in 2001: I wholeheartedly agree with the reviewer who said that Oprah needs to find this book. I was totally blown away by the ending and was hit hard by my emotions. I loved Tasha's voice and the intelligence and reality that she bought with this novel. I only wish she could have told her mother about the rape.


Trust me, if you have not read this book, you need to.

CT4,
Do you know if these books are available everywhere yet? I just took my vow of purity and these would really be helpful nas I prepare to start the program here at my church in MS.:D

All books were found on Amazon. I have not seen them widely available at bookstores, but most bookstores will order titles for you. Also if your church has a bookstore, see if they will stock them. Maybe use the titles with teen groups. I was in the Hattie Jackson Guild Girls as a teen. :)

in my best southern accent.....
 

Thanks darling!!:) :D

I just finished reading Imani All Mine this afternoon and I was in TEARS at the end of the book. I think I will recommend it to one of my kids at the shelter the next time I see her if she has not gone home by the time I come back to work.

I remember reading about the Peyton Skyy series in my Black Expressions insert that I get every month. I think that I will see if the Saginaw library has them and recommend them to my youth group or to my young women's ministry at church.

I am sitting here ordering books from my library online which means using Amazon as well and came across some titles.

1. http://images.amazon.com/images/P/05...1.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

A vibrant collection of first-person narratives based on interviews with young African-American girls. Educator Carroll traveled the country, interviewing dozens of black girls between the ages of 11 and 20. The essence of 15 of these interviews makes up this brash and compelling oral history. While the book presents a wide range of voices from vastly different social and economic backgrounds, all of the subjects share a singular sense of independence, self-reliance, and pride. Fourteen-year-old Jo-Laine says, ``Being a part of black culture feels very good to me . . . and even though I know that no matter what I do or say, there will always be somebody who's going to try and put me down or make me feel like less of a person than they are, all I have to do is think about how far we've come.'' In their determination to succeed in a world buffeted by self-destruction and self-indulgence, sex is not something these girls take casually. Fourteen-year-old Latisha observes that the only thing many young men want is sex, ``and if we keep giving it to them, they gonna think they can get it anytime they want it. It's disrespectful.'' Religion seems to play a significant, positive role in the lives of these young women, providing strong support. Many of the interviewees have had considerable interaction with white people and express impressions ranging from distrust to genuine affection. Of particular interest is 20-year-old Sophie, who, like the author, was adopted into a white family. Having grown up among upper-middle-class whites, Sophie makes a conscious decision to marry a black man and immerse herself in his world. Carroll succeeds at both giving shape to these profiles and keeping the text convincingly real. Young black voices that move and enlighten. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

2. http://images.amazon.com/images/P/00...CMZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Ophelia Speaks by Sara Shandler is a clever response to Mary Pipher's bestselling Reviving Ophelia. Shandler reveals telling portraits of teenage girls in this book, a compilation of essays, poems, and true-grit commentary from a cross section of teenage girls (or Ophelias), throughout the country. The book succeeds because it gives voice to their deepest concerns and their too-often frenzied lives. Because she's a college student, Shandler considers herself a peer of these adolescent girls, able to tap into their collective consciousness.
Shandler is as determined as she is a sharp reporter in chronicling the lives of these young women. To research the book, she sent out a mass mailing of 7,000 letters to high school and junior high school principals, counselors, and teachers explaining her book project and urging them to encourage teenage girls to contribute.

The topics covered run the gamut, but they include parental expectations, racial relations, and faith, among others. Sadly, eating disorders are an all-too-popular topic. The good news is that Shandler's contributors offer up some real insight for their peers. In one essay titled "Food Is Not My Enemy," Elizabeth Fales "calls us to a new feminism. In the old feminism, our mothers fought for the right to choose abortion. In our generation, we must fight for the right to eat."

The book also gives practical insight for parents who may find it hard to relate to their teenage daughters. In a nutshell, it appears that adolescent girls want unconditional love from parents who can be confidants without being overly critical. --Peg Melnick


STEELTRAP, I also reserved the first teen book you mentioned in main book thread. :cool:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/08...CMZZZZZZZ_.jpg


Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes
Open Mike Friday is everyone's favorite day in Mr. Ward's English class. On Fridays, his 18 high-school students dare to relax long enough to let slip the poets, painters, readers, and dreamers that exist within each of them. Raul Ramirez, the self-described "next Diego Rivera," longs "to show the beauty of our people, that we are not all banditos like they show on TV, munching cuchfritos and sipping beer through chipped teeth." And while angry Tyrone Bittings finds dubious comfort in denying hope: "Life is cold. Future?...wish there was some future to talk about. I could use me some future," overweight Janelle Battle hopes to be seen for what she really is: "for I am coconut / and the heart of me / is sweeter / than you know" They are all here: the tall girl, the tough-talking rapper, the jock, the beauty queen, the teenage mom, the artist, and many more. While it may sound like another Breakfast Club rehash, Grimes uses both poetry and revealing first-person prose to give each character a distinct voice. By book's end, all the voices have blended seamlessly into a multicultural chorus laden with a message that is probably summed up best by pretty girl Tanisha Scott's comment, "I am not a skin color or a hank of wavy hair. I am a person, and if they don't get that, it's their problem, not mine." But no teen reader will have a problem with this lyrical mix of many-hued views. (Ages 12 and older) --Jennifer Hubert

great thread!
 

I am actually working on a book for teens! (ladies the pickings for our little sisters is verrrry slim-how sad)

Anyhoo, my pick for the little sistahs is:
Don't Give It Away!: A Workbook of Self-Awareness and Self-Affirmations for Young Women
Iyanla Vanzant, With Almasi Wilcots

You can find the book for under $4.00 on BN.com

Its a keeper !

Book Recommendation: Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes
 

This book is set in a high school English classroom. Mr. Ward the teacher has just finished a unit on the Harlem Renaissance and his kids are inspired to start sharing their poetry. They begin to have Open Mike Fridays every week and that breaks barriers in the class between the students. There is a poem or 2 for each student. It also shows that what appears to be is not always the reality. There is poetry from both males and females.

I read the book in 2 1/2 hours -- good read.

~~~~~~~~~~

Yesterday I read Sharon Draper's Double Dutch which was also a very enjoyable read for me. You have an 8th grade girl who cannot read, her best friend who is a liar, a classmate whose father is missing, and twin classmates who scare everyone INCLUDING the teacher.:eek: :eek: