Relates the story of the National Memorial African Bookstore, founded in Harlem by Louis Michaux in 1939, as seen from the perspective of Louis Michaux Jr., who met famous men like Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X while helping there.

Claudie Wells believes everyone has a talent - everyone except for her. She's growing up in New York City's Harlem neighborhood during the 1920s. Her world is filled with writers and poets, painters and sculptors, actors and dancers, singers and musicians. Claudie wants more than anything to be a person whose imagination can fly instead of a person whose feet are stuck on the ground. She tries dancing, singing, painting, and even baking, but none...

C.J., who aspires to be as great a jazz musician as his uncle, searches for Uncle Click's hat in preparation for an important photograph and inadvertently gathers some of the greatest musicians of 1950s Harlem to join in on the picture.

In 1921, thirteen-year-old Celeste leaves North Carolina to stay with her glamorous Aunt Valentina in Harlem, New York, where she discovers the vibrant Harlem Renaissance in full swing, even though her aunt's life is not exactly what she was led to believe.