Emancipation Proclamation, by Tonya Bolden

Summary:  This book offers readers a unique look at the events that led to the Emancipation Proclamation. Filled with little-known facts and fascinating details, it includes excerpts from historical sources, archival images, and new research that debunks myths about the Emancipation Proclamation and its causes.

Abrams

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Lincoln’s Grave Robbers, by Steve Sheinkin

Summary: A dramatic account of the 1875 attempt to steal the 16th president’s body describes how a counterfeiting ring plotted to ransom Lincoln’s body to secure the release of their imprisoned ringleader and how a fledgling Secret Service and an undercover agent conducted a daring election-night sting operation.

Scholastic

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Zora!: the life of Zora Neal Hurston, By Dennis Brindell Fradin

Summary:  Zora Neale Hurston was confident, charismatic, and determined to be extraordinary. As a young woman, Hurston lived and wrote alongside such prominent authors as Langston Hughes and Alain Locke during the Harlem Renaissance. But unfortunately, despite writing the luminary work Their Eyes Were Watching God, she was always short of money. Though she took odd jobs as a housemaid and as the personal assistant to an actress, Zora often found herself in abject poverty. Through it all, Zora kept writing. And though none of her books sold more than a thousand copies while she was alive, she was rediscovered a decade later by a new generation of readers, who knew they had found an important voice of American Literature.

Clarion

Abraham Lincoln & Frederick Douglass: the story behind an American friendship, by Russell Freedman

Summary:  Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were both self-taught, both great readers and believers in the importance of literacy, both men born poor who by their own efforts reached positions of power and prominence–Lincoln as president of the United States and Douglass as the most famous and influential African American of his time. Though their meetings were few and brief, their exchange of ideas helped to end the Civil War, reunite the nation, and abolish slavery.

Clarion

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Ice!: the Amazing History of the Ice Business, by Laurence Pringle

Summary:  In this riveting book, acclaimed writer Laurence Pringle describes the key inventions and ideas that helped the ice business flourish. He points to the many sources of ice throughout the East and Midwest and spotlights Rockland Lake, “the icebox of New York City,” to offer a close-up look at the ice business in action. Pringle relied on primary documents, including archival photographs, postcards, prints, and drawings, to capture the times when everyone waited for the ice man and his wagon to deliver those precious blocks of ice.

Calkins Creek

A Black Hole is Not a Hole, by Carolyn DeCristofano

Summary:  A black hole isn’t really a hole, is it? Find out what black holes are, what causes them, and how scientists first discovered them.

Charlesbridge

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Moonbird, by Phillip Hoose

Summary:  B95 can feel it: a stirring in his bones and feathers. It’s time. Today is the day he will once again cast himself into the air, spiral upward into the clouds, and bank into the wind. Scientists call him the Moonbird because, in the course of his astoundingly long lifetime, this gritty, four-ounce marathoner has flown the distance to the moon and halfway back! Most perish somewhere along the great hemispheric circuit, but the Moonbird wings on. He has been seen as recently as November 2011, which makes him nearly twenty years old. Shaking their heads, scientists ask themselves: How can this one bird make it year after year when so many others fall?

Farrar Straus Giroux

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Miles to go for Freedom, by Linda Barrett Osborne

Summary:  Told through unforgettable first-person accounts, photographs, and other primary sources, this book is an overview of racial segregation and early civil rights efforts in the United States from the 1890s to 1954, a period known as the Jim Crow years. Multiple perspectives are examined as the book looks at the impact of legal segregation and discrimination on the day-to-day life of black and white Americans across the country.

Abrams

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Bomb, by Steve Sheinkin

Summary:  In December of 1938, a chemist in a German laboratory made a shocking discovery: When placed next to radioactive material, a Uranium atom split in two. That simple discovery launched a scientific race that spanned 3 continents. In Great Britain and the United States, Soviet spies worked their way into the scientific community; in Norway, a commando force slipped behind enemy lines to attack German heavy-water manufacturing; and deep in the desert, one brilliant group of scientists was hiddenaway at a remote site at Los Alamos. This is the story of the plotting, the risk-taking, the deceit, and genius that created the world’s most formidable weapon. This is the story of the atomic bomb.

Flash Point

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Invincible Microbe Tuberculosis, by Jim Murphy

Summary:  This is the story of a killer that has been striking people down for thousands of years: tuberculosis. After centuries of ineffective treatments, the microorganism that causes TB was identified, and the cure was thought to be within reach–but drug-resistant varieties continue to plague and panic the human race. The “biography” of this deadly germ, an account of the diagnosis, treatment, and “cure” of the disease over time, and the social history of an illness that could strike anywhere but was most prevalent among the poor are woven together in an engrossing, carefully researched narrative.

Clarion

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The Giant and How He Humbugged America, by Jim Murphy

Summary: When a 10-foot tall purported “petrified man” is unearthed from a backyard in upstate New York in 1869, the discovery immediately turns into a spectacle of epic proportions. News of the giant spreads like wildfire, and well over a thousand people come to view him in the first five days alone!
Soon the interests of world-renowned scientists and people from around the globe are piqued as arguments flare over who he is, where he came from, and if he is real–or just a hoax.

Scholastic

Stars in the Shadows: the Negro league all-star game of 1934, by Charles Smith

Summary:   Come step back into 1934 in Chicago to see the best of the best Negro League players take each other on in this All-Star Game. This exhilarating play-by-play is  a complete imagining of the radio broadcast of that thrilling game. You’ll meet the legendary players, step into the stands with the fans, and even hear the radio commercials!

Atheneum

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We’ve Got a Job: the 1963 Birmingham Children’s March, by Cynthia Levinson

Summary: Discusses the events of the 4,000 African American students who marched to jail to secure their freedom in May 1963.

Peachtree

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Trapped: How the World Rescued 33 Miners from 2,000 Feet Below the Chilean Desert, by Marc Aronson

Summary:  Tells the story of thirty-three miners trapped in a copper-gold mine in San Jose, Chile and how experts from around the world, from drillers, to astronauts, to submarine specialists, came together to make their remarkable rescue possible.

Atheneum

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Lemonade and other poems squeezed from a single word, by Bob Raczka

Summary: Part anagram, part rebus, part riddle – this brand new poetic form turns word puzzles into poetry.

Roaring Brook Press

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