Black Authors & Illustrators - Grades 4-6

"Discovering a book of Langston Hughes' poetry in the library helps Langston cope with the loss of his mother, relocating from Alabama to Chicago as part of the Great Migration, and being bullied." --

"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...

Arcade is a twelve-year-old boy who has a unique gift that allows him to travel into another dimension with the special token he received from a mysterious woman. However, he doesn't have an answer when his teachers ask his class the same simple question every year: What do you want to be when you grow up' Arcade begins to pick up books on everything from entrepreneurship to football to piano to card tricks. As he dives into books, he discovers that...

"It's 1963, and things are changing for Jezebel Turner. Her beloved grandmother has just passed away. The local police deputy won't stop harassing her family. With school integration arriving in South Carolina, Jez and her twin brother, Jay, are about to begin the school year with a bunch of new kids. But the biggest change comes when Jez and Jay turn eleven and their uncle, Doc, tells them he's going to train them in rootwork. Jez and Jay have always...

Twelve-year-old Rory and his friend Izzy try to foil the plans of Lord Foxglove, for whom Rory works as a valet, and his inhuman accomplices from taking over the world.--

Thirteen-year-old twin basketball stars Josh and Jordan wrestle with highs and lows on and off the court as their father ignores his declining health. --

"Twelve-year-old Candice Miller is spending the summer in Lambert, South Carolina, in the old house that belonged to her grandmother, who died after being dismissed as city manager for having the city tennis courts dug up looking for buried treasure--but when she finds the letter that sent her grandmother on the treasure hunt, she finds herself caught up in the mystery and, with the help of her new friend and fellow book-worm, Brandon, she sets out...

"Ten-year-old Anthony Joplin has made it to double digits! Which means he's finally old enough to play in the spades tournament every Joplin Man before him seems to have won. So while Ant's friends are stressing about fifth grade homework and girls, Ant only has one thing on his mind: how he'll measure up to his father's expectations at the card table. Then Ant's best friend gets grounded, and he's forced to find another spades partner. And Shirley,...

"Thirteen-year-old Amari, a poor African American girl from the projects, gets an invitation from her missing brother to join the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs and join in the fight against an evil magician."--

Enduring an isolated existence in hardscrabble Addis Prime, a star underground augmented reality gamer finds his small family targeted by city-razing monsters waging a galaxy-spanning war. "Yared Heywat lives an isolated life in Addis Prime -- a hardscrabble city with rundown tech, lots of rules, and not much to do. His worrywart Uncle Moti and bionic lioness Besa are his only family... and his only friends. Often in trouble for his thrill-seeking...