Bahni Turpin

As the year passes, the narrator's favorite dress goes through a series of creative changes, from dress to shirt to tank top to scarf and so on, until all that's left of it is a good memory. Assisted by her patient and crafty mama, the narrator finds that when disaster strikes her favorite things, she doesn't need to make mountains out of molehills: she 'makes molehills out of mountains' instead! Structured around the days of the week, the story is...

Like her classmates, builder Iggy and inventor Rosie, scientist Ada, a character of color, has a boundless imagination and has always been hopelessly curious. Why are there pointy things stuck to a rose? Why are there hairs growing inside your nose? When her house fills with a horrific, toe-curling smell, Ada knows it's up to her to find the source. Not afraid of failure, she embarks on a fact-finding mission and conducts scientific experiments, all...

Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or astronauts walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used their knowledge, pencils, adding machines, and writing paper to calculate the orbital mechanics needed to launch spacecraft. Katherine Johnson was one of these mathematicians who used trajectories and complex equations to chart the space program. Even as Virginia's Jim Crow laws were in place in the early...

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway,...

"One of the most celebrated and revered writers in the history of American literature gives us a new nonfiction collection--a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades. The Source of Self-Regard is brimming with all the elegance of mind and style, the literary prowess and moral compass, that are Toni Morrison's hallmarks. It is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a...

The shake-shake of maracas vibrates down to my toes. Ti Gran's feet tap-tap to the rhythm. Every year, Haitians all over the world ring in the new year by eating a special soup, a tradition dating back to the Haitian Revolution. This year, Ti Gran is teaching Belle how to make the soup-Freedom Soup-just like she was taught when she was a little girl. Together, they dance and clap as they prepare the holiday feast, and Ti Gran tells Belle about the...

In a New England university town of Elm Harbor a murder begins to crack the veneer that has hidden the racial complications of the town's past, the secrets of a prominent family, and the most hidden bastions of African-American political influence.

It's 1894. Jordan Wallace and Sadie Wagner appear to have little in common. Jordan, a middle-aged black teacher, lives in segregated Chicago. Two thousand miles away, Sadie, the white wife of an ambitious German executive, lives in more tolerant Oakland, California. But years ago, their families intertwined on a plantation in Virginia. There, Jordan and Sadie's mothers developed a bond stronger than blood, despite the fact that one was enslaved and...

At one point, the word "computer" referred to the people who used their knowledge, pencils, adding machines and paper to calculate complex equations needed for space travel. As one of these mathematicians at NACA's Langley laboratory, Katherine Johnson's skills were in high demand and she was trusted by administrators and astronauts alike to be accurate and reliable.

When sixteen-year-old Bri, an aspiring rapper, pours her anger and frustration into her first song, she finds herself at the center of a controversy.