"Exploring the Unforgettable Legacy Through Sci/Fantasy: Must-Read Books to Celebrate Black History Month 2024"

Book Number 1: The Marvellers

Summary: Eleven-year-old Ella Durand is a New Orleans native and a conjuror like her mother and grandmother before her. She's the first of her kind to be accepted into the Arcanum Training Institute, a floating academy in the sky, where she can use her talents to become a Marveller. Being the first, however, presents challenges for Ella, who isn't accepted by her peers and is looked on with suspicion. Nevertheless, she finds friends in outcasts Jason and Brigit and finds mentorship from her teacher Masterji Thakur. Animosity towards Ella increases when a criminal escapes and appears to have received aid from a conjuror. In addition, Masterji Thakur disappears on a research trip, drawing further suspicion. Ella and her friends won't be deterred by the hate directed towards her, and work to clear her name and get to the bottom of who is responsible for the upheaval.

Book Number 2: Lotus Bloom and the Afro Revolution

Summary: Twelve-year-old Lotus Blossom is excited to be starting school at the prestigious Atlantis School of the Arts, where she can focus on playing the violin. Her best friend Rebel wants her to stay with her at their former school and thinks that Atlantis, by stealing away all the talented kids, is perpetuating the underfunding of their public middle school. Lotus decides not to get involved and instead decides to focus on playing in the orchestra. However, when bullying starts and she's reprimanded for her afro, Lotus decides to fight back by taking on the racist students and the school's anti-Black policies.

Book Number 3: Angel of Greenwood

Summary: In 1921, seventeen-year-old Isaiah Wilson lives in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is a prosperous African American community sometimes nicknamed the "Black Wall Street." Isaiah may seem like a troublemaker, but he is a secret reader and poet who studies the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois and believes in the need for a black revolution. Sixteen-year-old Angel Hill, a quiet girl who follows Booker T. Washington, believes that black people will become equals through education and tolerance--not force. The two teens meet at their job at the mobile library and grow close, but their lives change forever when a violent white mob storms Greenwood.

Book Number 4: Hoodoo

Summary: Living in 1930s Alabama, twelve-year-old Hoodoo Hatcher's family has always practiced folk magic, or "hoodoo," but Hoodoo himself can't seem to cast a spell. But when a stranger comes to town looking for a boy with Hoodoo's name, Hoodoo must learn to conjure quickly if he wants to save his town from the stranger's black magic.

Book Number 5: Tristan Strong punches a hole in the Sky.

Summary: Reading his dead best friend's journal allows seventh-grader Tristan Strong to see folk heroes John Henry and Brer Rabbit. Then, a character from the Anansi story steals the journal, and in his effort to retrieve it, Tristan accidentally rips open a hole into Alke, where African American folk characters are gods. Tristan learns that the people of Alke are suffering partly due to Tristan's actions, and in order to get back home and save his friends, Tristan, John Henry, and Brer Rabbit must seek out the god Anansi the Weaver and convince him to fix the chasm.

Resources:

Mackin. (2024). Retrieved March 1, 2024, from https://home.mackin.com/