Jewell Parker Rhodes
1) Ghost boys
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Twelve-year-old Jerome is shot by a police officer who mistakes his toy gun for a real threat. As a ghost, he observes the devastation that's been unleashed on his family and community in the wake of what they see as an unjust and brutal killing.
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Zane is itching for an adventure that will take him away from his family's boarding house in Rockaway, Queens. So when he is entrusted with a real treasure map, leading to a spot somewhere in Manhattan, Zane wastes no time in riding the ferry over to the city to start the search with his friends Kiko and Jack and his dog, Hip-Hop. Through strange coincidence, they meet a man who is eager to help them find the treasure: John, a sailor who knows all...
4) Sugar
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In 1870, Reconstruction brings big changes to the Louisiana sugar plantation where spunky ten-year-old Sugar has always lived, including changes to her friendship with Billy, the son of her former master, and the arrival of workmen from China.
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Addy's parents were killed in a tragic fire years ago, and she still carries the trauma of this loss with her wherever she goes. When her grandmother sends her to a summer wilderness program in California, Addy finds herself learning to live in the forest with five other Black city kids. But those survival skills are soon put to the test when a forest fire erupts in the woods where they are camping.
7) Bayou magic
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Visiting her grandmother in the Louisiana bayou, ten-year-old Maddy begins to realize that she may be the only sibling to carry on the gift of her family's magical legacy.
8) Ninth Ward
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In New Orleans' Ninth Ward, twelve-year-old Lanesha, who can see spirits, and her adopted grandmother have no choice but to stay and weather the storm as Hurricane Katrina bears down upon them.
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A fictionalized account based on the true story of a white woman who accused a black man of rape in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, in order to avoid a forced marriage to the farmhand who actually raped her. The resulting riots pitted the National Guard against the community of Greenwood, known as the "Negro Wall Street," and resulted in the complete destruction of that town.
13) Soul step
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Follow one girl's journey to discover the joy and history of step dancing- an ode to sisterhood and a strong mother-daughter bond.
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Rhodes reinvents the lives of Frederick Douglass and the two women who loved him and lived in his shadow. All the fiery emotions of passion, jealousy, and resentment churn and boil to the surface as the women discover an uneasy solidarity in their shared love for him.