A HOME FOR MR. EASTER
by Brooke A. Allen
Tesana has never really fit into anything before but her daydreams. But when making an attempt to connect to her peers by joining in a pep rally planning committee she suddenly discovers a little white rabbit that lays brightly colored eggs. Realizing that she may have found the real life Easter bunny, Tesana embarks on an epic quest in an effort to get him back to his natural habitat and into safe hands. However as she progresses on her fanciful journey she gains more and more undesired attention until the quest becomes an increasingly madcap race to stay ahead of greedy pursuers and find a safe place for her new friend...wherever that place may be.

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.

JASON & KYRA
by Dana Davidson
Handsome and popular Jason tries to come to terms with his irascible, often absent father and his growing attraction to the quiet, studious Kyra.

MARE'S WAR
by Tanita S. Davis
Octavia and Tali are dreading the road trip their parents are forcing them to take with their grandmother over the summer. But somewhere on the road, Octavia and Tali discover there’s more to Mare than what you see. She was once a willful teenager who escaped her less-than-perfect life in the deep South and lied about her age to join the African American battalion of the Women’s Army Corps during World War II.

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.

PEMBA'S SONG: A GHOST STORY
by Tonya Hegamin and Marilyn Nelson
As fifteen-year-old Pemba adjusts to leaving her Brooklyn, New York, home for small-town Connecticut, a Black history researcher helps her understand the paranormal experiences drawing her into the life of a mulatto girl who was once a slave in her house.

SILHOUETTED BY THE BLUE
by Traci L. Jones
After the death of her mother in an automobile accident, seventh-grader Serena, who has gotten the lead in her middle school play, is left to handle the day-to-day challenges of caring for herself and her younger brother when their father cannot pull himself out of his depression.

LIAR
by Justine Larbalestier
Micah will freely admit that she's a compulsive liar, but that may be the one honest thing she'll ever tell you. Over the years she's duped her classmates, her teachers, and even her parents, and she's always managed to stay one step ahead of her lies. That is, until her boyfriend dies under brutal circumstances and her dishonesty begins to catch up with her. But is it possible to tell the truth when lying comes as naturally as breathing?

SECRET SATURDAYS
by Torrey Maldonado
Twelve-year-old boys living in a rough part of New York confront questions about what it means to be a friend, a father, and a man.

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?

SHOOTING STAR
by Fredrick McKissack, Jr.
Jomo Rogers, a naturally talented athlete, starts taking performance enhancing drugs in order to be an even better high school football player, but finds his life spinning out of control as his game improves.

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.

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.

GHETTO COWBOY
by Greg Neri
Twelve-year-old Cole's behavior causes his mother to drive him from Detroit to Philadelphia to live with a father he has never known, but who soon has Cole involved with a group of African-American "cowboys" who rescue horses and use them to steer youths away from drugs and gangs.

AKATA WITCH
by Nnedi Okorafor
Twelve-year-old Sunny Nwazue, an American-born albino child of Nigerian parents, moves with her family back to Nigeria, where she learns that she has latent magical powers which she and three similarly gifted friends use to catch a serial killer.

THE SHADOW SPEAKER
by Nnedi Okorafor
In West Africa in 2070, after fifteen-year-old "shadow speaker" Ejii witnesses her father's beheading, she embarks on a dangerous journey across the Sahara to find Jaa, her father's killer, and upon finding her, she also discovers a greater purpose to her life and to the mystical powers she possesses.

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.

TEENAGE LOVE AFFAIR
by Ni-Ni Simone
I'm seventeen, but I'm grown and have been for a long time. I have my own ride, my mama doesn't clock my time, and my boyfriend, Ameen, is getting money like you wouldn't believe. There's only one problem: when Ameen gets mad, sometimes he takes his anger out on me. And yeah, maybe I could leave him, but there's no way Ameen could imagine being without me. So now I'm all confused, especially since my first love, Malachi, is back in my life. Ameen is not giving up without a fight, and no matter how hard I try, the love I have for Malachi won't go away. And did I mention that Malachi has a girl? Needless to say, my days are filled with drama.

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.

KEEPING THE NIGHT WATCH
by Hope Anita Smith
A thirteen-year-old African American boy chronicles what happens to his family when his father, who temporarily left, returns home and they all must deal with their feelings of anger, hope, abandonment, and fear.

THE OTHER SIDE OF DARK
by Sarah Smith
Since losing both of her parents, fifteen-year-old Katie can see and talk to ghosts, which makes her a loner until fellow student Law sees her drawing of a historic house and together they seek a treasure rumored to be hidden there by illegal slave-traders.

FLYGIRL
by Sherri L. Smith
Ida Mae’s passion for flying leads her into the dangerous life of an African American trying to pass as white in the early days of World War II, in this vivid depiction of military life as well as the many challenges faced by a young black girl who wants to follow her dreams.

RUCKER PARK SETUP
by Paul Volponi
While playing in a crucial basketball game on the very court where his best friend was murdered, Mackey tries to come to terms with his own part in that murder and decide whether to maintain his silence or tell J.R.'s father and the police what really happened.

BECOMING BILLIE HOLIDAY
by Carole Boston Weatherford
Jazz vocalist Billie Holiday looks back on her early years in this fictional memoir written in verse.

SELL-OUT
by Ebony Wilkins
NaTasha loves her life of affluence in Park Adams, but her grandmother fears she has lost touch with her roots and whisks her off to Harlem, where NaTasha meets rough, street-wise girls at a crisis center and finds the courage to hold her own against them.

ONE CRAZY SUMMER
by Rita Williams-Garcia
Fourteen-year-old Gayle is in trouble again. This time mama is determined to change things, sending her to relatives down South to experience a life drastically different from the urban environment she's always known.

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.

WHEN THE BLACK GIRL SINGS
by Bil Wright
Adopted by white parents and sent to an exclusive Connecticut girls' school where she is the only black student, fourteen-year-old Lahni Schuler feels like an outcast, particularly when her parents separate, but after attending a local church where she hears gospel music for the first time, she finds her voice.

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.

SERIES

THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING, TRAITOR TO THE NATION SERIES
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.

SO FOR REAL SERIES
BOOK ONE: STEP TO THIS
by Nikki Carter
Gia doesn't have the hair or the clothes, but she's got the moves and the attitude to make her sophomore year at Longfellow High unforgettable. But not everyone agrees, so Gia decides it's time for a makeover. With her stylish new look, she scores a date with hottie football player, Romeo, snags a spot on the Hi-Steppers dance squad, and makes a ton of new friends.

DRAMA HIGH SERIES
BOOK ONE: THE FIGHT
by L. Divine
When sixteen-year-old Jayd Jackson returns to South Bay High, she discovers that her former best friend is out to get her and her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend wants to fight, which forces Jayd to turn to Mama and her bag of tricks for help.

THE JERICHO TRILOGY
BOOK ONE: THE BATTLE OF JERICHO
by Sharon M. Draper
A high school junior and his cousin suffer the ramifications of joining what seems to be a "reputable" school club.

KIMANI TRU SERIES
BOOK ONE: INDIGO SUMMER
by various authors
When fifteen-year-old Indigo's perfect world falls apart she turns to her neighbor, sixteen-year-old Marcus Carter, for help but now that she has realized what a great guy he is, so does someone else.