Meet Jelaya (jeh-LAY-uh.) She hates wash day. The tugs! The scrubs! The pinching and pulling! Jelaya can't think of a worse way to spend the day. That is, until her big sister Jasmine explains thatthis wash day will be different. Jelaya is going to wash Jasmine's hair instead!Wash Dayis a sweet and honest exploration of the beauty and tradition of wash days.Offering gentle guidance and framing the all-day affair as an act of self-care, this picture...

"The Weary Blues" is the powerful and ground-breaking collection of poetry by American author Langston Hughes. An important contribution to the growing Harlem Renaissance art movement, "The Weary Blues" was Hughes' first poetry collection and was published in 1926 when the author was only 24, though some of the poems had appeared earlier in magazines. An immediate critical success, Hughes created a new form of poetry, called jazz or blues poetry,...

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in Harvard University's library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve "American culture" in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are...

The Jungle is a 1906 work of narrative fiction by American muckraker novelist Upton Sinclair. Sinclair's primary purpose in describing the meat industry and its working conditions was to advance socialism in the United States. However, most readers were more concerned with several passages exposing health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meat-packing industry during the early 20th century, which greatly contributed to a public outcry...

She Had Told Him She Was Headed for Blessing. Why Would He Not Take Her There? The Bjorklund family has received word that Augusta Bjorklund is on her way from Norway to join them in North Dakota. When the train arrives in the town of Blessing with no Augusta aboard, the worried family hopes she will be on the train in the morning. But only her trunk arrives, so Bridget Bjorklund insists that Hjelmer, Augusta's brother, go find her. Augusta, after...

When six students are chosen to participate in a weekly talk with no adults allowed, they discover that when they're together, it's safe to share the hopes and fears they have to hide from the rest of the world--

Dr. King’s best-selling account of the civil rights movement in Birmingham during the spring and summer of 1963 
 
On April 16, 1963, as the violent events of the Birmingham campaign unfolded in the city’s streets, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., composed a letter from his prison cell in response to local religious leaders’ criticism of the campaign. The resulting piece of extraordinary protest writing, “Letter...

Grasp how the events of the American Revolution affected the Southern colonies and their population of the enslaved. Learn about the implications of the new federal government and Constitution for the Southern states and slaveholders, and how Congress both granted concessions to the slave system and sought to restrict it. Follow the gradual emancipation of slaves in the Northern states.

Here, assess the role of religion in the culture of Southern society and in the culture of slavery. Learn how British Anglicanism came to be replaced in the South by evangelical Christianity. Observe how this faith included blacks, and became a source of strength and survival for the enslaved, yet also reinforced, for whites, the social status quo and the conceptual justifications for slavery.

Examine economic conditions within Virginia before slavery, and growing discontent among English indentured laborers. Trace the rise of slavery in the British Caribbean, the factors that made it a practical business model in Virginia, and how colonists rationalized slaveholding. Observe how Virginia set the blueprint for slave society in what would become the American South.