Ron Butler

Millie danced to jazz in her Italian neighborhood. Pedro danced to Latin songs in his Puerto Rican neighborhood. It was the 1940s in New York City, and they were forbidden to dance together… until, first, a band and, then, a ballroom broke the rules. Machito and His Afro-Cubans hit the scene with a brand-new sound, blending jazz trumpets and saxophones with Latin maracas and congas creating Latin jazz: music for the head, the heart, and the hips....

Chester Pierce broke racial barriers by joining his college football team during segregation in the United States. Despite breaking the law, his team played on.

In the summer of 1988, twelve-year-old Chuck Bell is sent to stay with his grandparents, where he discovers jazz and basketball and learns more about his family's past.

In 1930s Alabama, twelve-year-old Hoodoo Hatcher is the only member of his family who seems unable to practice folk magic, but when a mysterious man called the Stranger puts the entire town at risk from his black magic, Hoodoo must learn to conjure to defeat him.

Highlights the life and legacy of Arturo Schomburg who worked during the Harlem Renaissance to raise awareness of Afro-Latin American and African American achievements and the contributions they made to society. Includes a timeline.

"The astonishing untold history of America's first black millionaires - former slaves who endured incredible challenges to amass and maintain their wealth for a century, from the Jacksonian period to the Roaring Twenties - self-made entrepreneurs whose unknown success mirrored that of American business heroes such as Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and Thomas Edison. Between the years of 1830 and 1927, as the last generation of blacks born into slavery...

"It was the night before his wedding, fifteen years ago, that the nightmare began for Jay Crawford--locked up for a crime he never committed. Now, he's escaped prison and wants nothing more than to clear his name and protect his family. To get justice, he'll need the help of the three best friends who have always had his back--Wil, Kyle and Allan. But a man on the run requires absolute trust...and Jay may just be setting himself up for the ultimate...

The narrator was with her best friend, Sarah, when the Virgil County High School Massacre happened. She and Sarah were in the bathroom, and the story is that Sarah died after confessing her faith to the gunman. Sarah's parents are about to publish a book about it, so this is the narrator's last chance to tell her version of the truth--what did and did not happen, and why Sarah really died.

The founders of "National Novel Writing Month" offer practical advice on how to organize and commit to writing stories and novels, and includes motivating essays from such popular authors as John Green and Scott Westerfeld.

A collection of short stories explore what it is like to be young and black, centering on the experiences of black teenagers and emphasizing that one person's experiences, reality, and personal identity are different than someone else.