Black Authors & Illustrators - Middle School

National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson's stirring novel explores how a family moves forward when their glory days have passed. For as long as ZJ can remember, his dad has been everyone's hero. As a charming, talented pro football star, he's as beloved to the neighborhood kids he plays with as he is to his millions of adoring sports fans. But lately life at ZJ's house is anything but charming. His dad is having trouble remembering things and...

"Framed. Bullied. Disliked. But I know I can still be the best. Sometimes, 12-year-old Donte wishes he were invisible. As one of the few black boys at Middlefield Prep, most of the students don't look like him. They don't like him either. Dubbing him "Black Brother," Donte's teachers and classmates make it clear they wish he were more like his lighter-skinned brother, Trey. When he's bullied and framed by the captain of the fencing team, "King" Alan,...

"Featuring exclusively Black characters, this multi-genre story collection--drawing from contemporary, historical, fantasy, sci-fi, magical and realistic--celebrates and redfines the many facets of Blackness and geekiness, both in the real world and those imagined."--

"Thirteen-year-old Genesis tries again and again to lighten her black skin, thinking it is the root of her family's troubles, before discovering reasons to love herself as is." --

"Something is wrong with twelve-year-old Zee, who has returned after a year's absence; nobody knows where he was or what happened to him, but now he is distracted and violent, freaking out when he sees his friends, Justin, Nia, and Lyric, playing an odd game of hide-and-seek, and talking wildly about some danger that is approaching--and soon his friends are pulled into a shadowy world ruled by a monstrous, shape-shifting Seeker, forced to play a terrifying...

"It is 1983 and Vanessa Martin, a thirteen-year-old African American girl in Newark's public housing, dreams of following in the footsteps of the first black Miss America, Vanessa Williams; but with a dysfunctional family (mother in jail, father withdrawn, drunken grandfather, gay cousin) the odds are against her--until a new teacher at school organizes a beauty pageant and encourages Vanessa to enter." --

Jason Reynolds conjures ten tales (one per block) about what happens after the dismissal bell rings, and weaves them into one funny, poignant look at the detours we face on the walk home, and in life.

Beach-loving surfer Alberta has been the only black girl in town for years. When the bed and breakfast across the street finds new owners, Alberta is ecstatic to learn the family is black and they have a 12-year-old daughter, Edie. When the girls discover a box of old journals in Edie's attic, they team up to figure out exactly who's behind them and why they were left behind. Soon they discover shocking and painful secrets of the past and learn that...

"Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking." -- "Harlem. Ever since her body grew into curves, Xiomara Batista has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. She pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers-- especially...

"In Atlanta, just before Christmas, twelve teens band together to help a friend pull off the most epic apology of her life during the storm of the century, which results in a magical moment that changes everything. "--