In 1947, twelve-year-old Pattie Mae is sustained by her dreams of escaping Rich Square, North Carolina, and moving to Harlem when her Uncle Buddy is arrested for attempted rape of a white woman and her grandfather is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor.

With his ability to travel through time by using baseball cards, Joe goes back to 1947 to meet Jackie Robinson, turning into a black boy in the process.

After his son helps him learn to write his name, Samuel T. Blow goes to the courthouse in his Southern town to cast his ballot on the first election day ever on which African Americans were allowed to vote.

Great Aunt Lucy tells a story of her days as a slave, when she and her brother, Albert, learned the quilt code to help direct other slaves and, eventually, Albert himself, to freedom in the north.

Twins Maureen and Francine try to distinguish themselves for the first time by pursing separate interests at the beginning of the sixth grade.

Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father--the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids. Coretta Scott King author award book : 2000.

A teenaged boy's death in a hazing accident has lasting effects on his pregnant girlfriend and his guilt-ridden cousin, who gives up a promising music career to play football during his senior year in high school.

Shortly after the Civil War a black family travels to Kansas to take advantage of the free land offered through the Homestead Act.

On Valentine's Day during the sixties, Marcus, an African-American boy in a newly integrated school, uses St. Valentine as a role model to heal the hate in his classroom.

One night when Mama is away, Daddy and child seek a good place to count the stars in the night sky.