Willy and Max are friends in Belgium when the Nazis invade. Max and his father visit Willy’s family on the night they flee Belgium, asking the family to hide a painting. Willy hides the painting, and never sees Max again. When Willy is an adult, he is contacted by an art curator who found the painting Willy hid. Willy and the curator try to find Max.
This is the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht) as told by Benno the cat. Benno roams his neighborhood and begins to notice changes in the way different families are treated. After the Night of Broken Glass, Benno notices that certain families stay in his neighborhood and some he never sees again.
Jacqueline Woodson’s story of the strong women in her family who used their gifts of sewing to make quilts that showed the way North to slaves in the South. Colorfully illustrated by Hudson Talbott, this book uses quilting to illustrate Woodson’s historical tale.
Richard Michelson’s picture book Happy Feet (illustrated by E.B. Lewis) brings to life Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom through the eyes of Happy Feet. Through Happy Feet’s eyes we meet Stretch, Musclehead, Whitey, Long-Legged George and Big Bea, who were famous Lindy Hop dancers at the Savoy Ballroom. Celebrate dance and a bit of the history of Harlem in the 1920s by checking this out.
Shane Evans’s picture book We March follows a family as they participate with more than 250,000 other people gathering peacefully in Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963 with hopes of moving our country toward racial equality. On this day in history, the protesters marched from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial to listen to famous musicians and speakers. It was on this date that Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Shipwrecked! shares the adventures of Manjiro Nakahama who in 1841, as a fourteen-year-old fisherman, was shipwrecked along with four other fishermen on the desolate island of Torishima. After five months of surviving on the island, they were rescued by the American whaling ship, the John Howland. Because of Japan’s strict laws that isolated its people from the rest of the world, the Americans could not return Manjiro home. The highly-intelligent Manjiro spent his teens and young adult life learning about the customs and culture of the United States and the other countries he visited while working on whaling ships. Manjiro always hoped to return home to his family and share what he learned with the government of Japan, but Japanese’s laws condemned travelers from overseas to death. Manjiro lived an amazing life. Shipwrecked! contains maps, illustrations, and photographs of Manjiro’s travels.