BABY GIRL
by Lenora Adams
Sheree has always been a tough girl, able to take care of herself. Then she finds herself in a situation where she can't. She needs help. She needs answers. But she can't get either from the people she turns to – her parents, her friends, and especially, her boyfriend, who calls her Baby Girl and treats her like she's disposable. So who can Sheree turn to? Maybe the answer lies deep within herself, and it's truly time for her to grow up.

THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING, TRAITOR TO THE NATION, VOLUME 1: THE POX PARTY
by M. T. Anderson
Various diaries, letters and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War.

TYRELL
by Coe Booth
Fifteen-year-old Tyrell, who is living in a Bronx homeless shelter with his spaced-out mother and his younger brother, tries to avoid temptation so he does not end up in jail like his father.

NOVEMBER BLUES
by Sharon M. Draper
This stunning sequel to the Coretta Scott King Honor Book The Battle of Jericho has energy, pathos, drama and doesn't shrink from telling kids how it is to be 16 years old and pregnant.

TEARS OF A TIGER
by Sharon M. Draper
The death of high school basketball star Rob Washington in an automobile accident affects the lives of his close friend Andy, who was driving the car, and many others in the school.

BANG!
by Sharon G. Flake
A teenage boy must face the harsh realities of inner city life, a disintegrating family, and destructive temptations as he struggles to find his identity as a young man.

BRONX MASQUERADE
by Nikki Grimes
While studying the Harlem Renaissance, students at a Bronx high school read aloud poems they've written, revealing their innermost thoughts and fears to their formerly clueless classmates.

DARK SONS
by Nikki Grimes
Alternating poems compare and contrast the conflicted feelings of Ishmael, son of the Biblical patriarch Abraham, and Sam, a teenager in New York City, as they try to come to terms with being abandoned by their fathers and with the love they feel for their younger stepbrothers.

THE PEOPLE COULD FLY: AMERICAN BLACK FOLKTALES
by Virginia Hamilton
Retold Afro-American folktales of animals, fantasy, the supernatural, and desire for freedom, born of the sorrow of the slaves, but passed on in hope.

SPELLBOUND
by Janet McDonald
Raven, a teenage mother and high school dropout living in a housing project, decides, with the help and sometime interference of her best friend Aisha, to study for a spelling bee which could lead to a college preparatory program and four-year scholarship.

HARLEM HUSTLE
by Janet McDonald
Abandoned to the streets to raise himself, Eric Samson knows life won’t be easy, beginning with the choices he must make. The fast cash of the streets still tempts him, but the threat of getting locked up - again - is daunting. Maybe Eric’s way out is as Harlem Hustle, the rapper he dreams of being. At his side is Manley “Ride” Freeman, surrogate brother and best friend, and Jeannette Simpson, the college-bound “round-the-way” girl he hopes will be more than a friend. But does Eric have the strength to leave the familiar street life behind and the courage to reach for his dream?

47
by Walter Mosely
Number 47, a fourteen-year-old slave boy growing up under the watchful eye of a brutal master in 1832, meets the mysterious Tall John, who introduces him to a magical science and also teaches him the meaning of freedom.

BABYLON BOYZ
by Jess Mowry
Inner-city teenagers find a suitcase full of cocaine and must decide whether to sell it and take the opportunities the money would provide or to destroy it to keep the drug from poisoning their community.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MY DEAD BROTHER
by Walter Dean Myers
Jesse pours his heart and soul into his sketchbook to make sense of life in his troubled Harlem neighborhood and the loss of a close friend.

THE BEAST
by Walter Dean Myers
A visit to his Harlem neighborhood and the discovery that the girl he loves is using drugs give sixteen-year-old Anthony Witherspoon a new perspective both on his home and on his life at a Connecticut prep school.

FALLEN ANGELS
by Walter Dean Myers
Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.

STREET LOVE
by Walter Dean Myers
Have you ever loved someone from the wrong side of the tracks? Damien has everything going for him. His family wants him to date Roxanne. He falls for Junice, whose life is totally messed up. But Junice tells him that he's the one who needs the reality check.

WHAT THEY FOUND: LOVE ON 145TH STREET
by Walter Dean Myers
Curtis finds love in Iraq as he struggles to stay alive in a war he doesn't want to fight, and Letha discovers her own beauty in the love of her child. There is the "good daughter" who realizes that there's only one way to help her brother and her family. Other stories center on the daily drama of the Curl-E-Que beauty shop, or capture the slapstick side of passion.

BLACK POWDER
by Staton Rabin
After his best friend is shot and killed, fourteen-year-old Langston borrows his science teacher's time machine and travels from Los Angeles in 2010 to Oxford, England, in 1278 to try to prevent Roger Bacon from publishing his formula for gunpowder.

HIP HOP HIGH SCHOOL
by Alan Lawrence Sitomer
With her parents and her teachers always on her case, and her best friend pregnant and dropped out of school, Theresa turns to hip-hop for comfort. Her favorite singers seem to understand her when no one else does. Everything changes when a new man comes into Theresa's life. Devon helps Theresa face up to her own talent and ambition, and together they set off on a three-year quest to beat the SAT and get into top colleges. But then Devon gets shot in a street fight, leaving Theresa with two piles of unfinished college applications–her own and Dev's–and time running out.

THE HOUSE YOU PASS ON THE WAY
by Jacqueline Woodson
When fourteen-year-old Staggerlee, the daughter of a racially mixed marriage, spends a summer with her cousin Trout, she begins to question her sexuality to Trout and catches a glimpse of her possible future self.

MIRACLE'S BOYS
by Jacqueline Woodson
Twelve-year-old Lafayette's close relationship with his older brother Charlie changes after Charlie is released from a detention home and blames Lafayette for the death of their mother.

GANGSTA RAP
by Benjamin Zephaniah
When teenage Ray and his two friends, Prem and Tyronne, form a successful rap band in the London's East End where they live, they soon find themselves embroiled in increasingly violent gang warfare.

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