On a move by Terry Bisson

Calling attention to the plight of death row activist, journalist and NPR contributor Abu-Jamal, award-winning science fiction author Bisson attempts a full-scale portrait of the controversial figure implicated in a police slaying in Philadelphia nearly two decades ago. What he delivers is a well-intended rehash of mainstream media accounts. The book's real value is in its chronicle of Abu-Jamal's bold, inquisitive youth on Philadelphia's mean streets, inspired by his exceptional mother to become a compulsive reader with a deeply curious mind. In school, Abu-Jamal discovered the causes of black liberation and black power, and became a natural student leader. In his early teens, he faced his first police run-in at one of George Wallace's presidential campaign rallies and was "beaten so badly that his own mother didn't recognize him." His tenure with the Black Panthers during their glory days awakened his talent for writing and activism, and so impressed his comrades in Philadelphia that they made him lieutenant of information at age 15. Abu-Jamal's tireless efforts on behalf of the Panthers brought him to the attention of Hoover's FBI, placing him on the infamous Cointelpro target list. A series of painful episodes of police harassment and intimidation against Abu-Jamal followed, ultimately leading to that fateful night in 1981 when Abu-Jamal was shot and seriously wounded while defending his brother during a conflict that ended in the shooting death of an officer. Labeled a "cop-killer," Abu-Jamal faced a highly charged trial that ended in a death sentence that has stirred international interest. Written in short, energetic vignettes, Bisson's tribute occasionally fails to fill in the gaps in Abu-Jamal's travails, choosing heated rhetoric over researched substance at a time when more information and less fist pumping would suit the imprisoned writer's cause well.
Review from:amazon.com

Roll Of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildrws D. Taylor

In this fictionalized account, Mildred D. Taylor recounts her own memories of growing up in a large family and being faced with racial discrimination. This story tells of a black family's struggle to survive racism and poverty in Mississippi during the Depression Era. Nine-year old Cassie Logan learns of the social injustice in her as her happy world collapses. Cassie begins to see that the Anglo community sees her as inferior to themselves because of the color of her skin. Through house burnings, night riders, and extreme hatred, Cassie and her family fight to keep the land that belongs to them.

Critics have addressed Taylor's ability to write about the horrors of racism with pride, strength, and respect for humanity. Readers are touched by the turmoil that Cassie and her family have to go through. Middle school students would be intrigued by the action, as well as able to see life through Cassie's eyes.


Review from:edb.utexas.edu

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

Rutherford Calhoun, a freed slave from the cotton fields of the south, finds himself in New Orleans, a city where he immediately feels at home. He describes the town as having an air of steamy sexuality, its citizens seemingly in the constant pursuit of sin, and the women, who are beautiful, always smell of roses. Rutherford admits to being a thief and living off others. Unable to find work in the salons and Negro bars, he turned to stealing, which comes naturally to him. Reverend Chandler, his master, had noticed Rutherford's manual dexterity when he was a young child and could do nothing to stifle the boy's tendency for thievery, although he tried to teach him penmanship and Biblical virtues. Rutherford reveals that he has always been drawn to extremes, to sensations and to new experienc...
Review from:bookrags.com

The Coldest Winter Ever by: Sister Souljah

The Coldest Winter ever represents the strength, trust, indepedence and self control that one has to successfully

obtain in order to survive a certain life altering situation. Living in Brooklyn, New York, a young lady by the name of Winter Santiaga has to learn how to independently live her life the hard way after her drug dealing father, Ricky Santiaga is arrested for a number of criminal acts. After Winters mother turns to drugs and her two little sisters are turned over to child services, Winter does whatever she has to do to survive. She ends up using her body and whatever else it takes to gain the life that she is accustomed to but soon after, her life takes an even tighter hold of her and she has to fight even harder to cut that hold loose. So will she survive or will she let this unexpected lifestyle take a grip of her and twist her life upside down
Review from:shvoong.com

Diary of a Groupie by Omar Tyree

Tabitha Knight lives a very peculiar life. A child of foster care who has grown into an attractive and ambitious adult, she now finds solace, excitement, and security in the company of rich and famous men whom she dates as a discreet and charming groupie.

Everyone wants to be loved. Tabitha understands that. She shares her gifts with those who seek and, perhaps, need love the mostmale celebrities. She remains anonymous by changing her name, age, and address as often as she changes the men she dates.

Only a few things remain constant in her life: the continued love and support of her foster sisters in Seattle and the record she keeps of her life in her secret diary.

When a wealthy banker offers Tabitha a huge paycheck to help bring to justice a high-profile celebrity who is known to have sex with underage women, Tabitha finds herself on the wrong side of desperate men, some of whom have more to lose than just their privacy. Those who want the information in her diary to stay secret threaten Tabitha, her sisters, and anyone who comes to know its contents.

Omar Tyree, the "New York Times" bestselling author, is back with a suspenseful thriller of what happens when a young woman threatens the famous and powerful.

Review from: flipkart.com

Tyrell by Coe Booth

Now that his father is in jail, nothing seems to be going right for 15-year-old Tyrell. His mother's refusal to work and her stint with welfare fraud have forced them into homelessness and life in a roach-infested shelter in Hunts Point. At the shelter, Tyrell soon realizes that his attraction to another resident, Jasmine, could derail his dreams of a future with his girl, Novisha. Torn between the needs of the women in his life and his seven-year-old brother, Tyrell is determined to stay clean as he agonizes over creating a new life for his family. This is a thrilling, fast-paced novel whose strong plot and array of vivid, well-developed characters take readers on an unforgettable journey through the gritty streets of New York City's South Bronx. At its heart is the painful choice the teen must make as he realizes the effect of his mother's failure to do right by their family.
Review from :sellerslibraryteens.blogspot.com

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

"I Know Why the Caged Bird sings is the autobiography of Maya Angelou. She tells of the hardships she experienced in her youth, beginning with her parents' divorce when Angelou was only three years old. As a result of the divorce, Maya and her older brother are sent to live with their grandmother in a small, Arkansas town. Here, she experiences the horrors of racism and learns to hate herself for not being white. When she is eight, Maya goes to live with her mother in St. Louis. There, she is sexually abused by her mother's live-in boyfriend, and is emotionally scarred by the terrible experience. Finally, after Maya has become aware of racial prejudice and religious hypocrisy, she begins to find her voice. Maya's mother marries a man who proves to be a positive father figure, and the family moves to Los Angeles. Here, Maya spends her teenage years being defiant and getting herself into a lot of trouble. When she becomes pregnant in her senior year of high school, however, she gains the confidence to become a strong woman and a good mother to her child."
Review by: Judy Berman

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Life of Pi is the story of a 16-year old Indian boy adrift at sea for 227 days with only a dangerous Bengal tiger for a companion. Pi Patel's journey, and survival through the use of his wits and sheer determination, is one that grabs you and never lets go. It's a story that seems both too real and surreal at the same time. Yann Martel is a master story teller and he weaves a tale that is entertaining and thought-provoking and at the end, he challenges you to believe it all. A top-notch read. From our review, "Life of Pi is a delicious treat to savor."
Review from: reviewsofbooks.com

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

In this brilliant 1937 novel, Hurston tells the story of a beautiful African-American woman and the trials of love she enjoys or endures. We meet Janie when she returns to the gossiping neighbors gathered on the porches of a little Florida town. She opens up to tell her story to her curious best friend Phoeby. Janie wanted to love and live life in a broadly adventurous way. When still a girl, her grandmother warned her to settle with a man for security. Love would come later, she advised. Janie wouldn't stand for that, though, and walked out into a life she hoped to make her own. This book is small, but dense with Janie's life with three different men. The tale is thick with a country drawl that takes a little getting used to, and an atmosphere in which the characters, and particularly Janie, seem tossed on a sea of circumstance. Janie sees a lot of southern Florida, and comes home in the end, unhappily, but with her horizons broad, and with a sense of satisfaction. Hurston touches lightly on issues of her day, including the percieved differences between light and dark skinned African-Americans, and the struggle of people to make their way in an unequal society. The book is popular, and heavily studied, so that this edition (Harper Perennial, 1990) sports both a foreword and an afterword. Try not to let the academic analysis keep you from experiencing the pure intensity of this novel.
Review by: John Q McDonald
Review from: sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu

City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende

Alexander Cold, a fifteen-year-old California boy, is sent to stay with his grandmother in New York while his mother is being treated for cancer. After arriving at the airport to find no one waiting for him, he wanders through an alternate-dimension New York where no one will give directions to a polite out-of-towner, has all his belongings except his passport stolen by a girl around whom, had the plot not demanded it, he'd never have dropped his guard for a second, and eventually winds up at the door of his grandmother's apartment. Grandma Kate is a reporter for International Geographic, so of course she promptly takes Alex off on an expedition to Brazil, to track a yeti-like creature reported to inhabit remote portions of the Amazonian jungle. (This expedition is, of course, the reason his passport couldn't be stolen.) The Amazonian version is known simply as the Beast, and the North American version, i.e., sasquatch, or "Bigfoot," has apparently never been heard of, or at least is never mentioned. The Beast is also rumored to have a city, hence the title of the book.
Excerpt of a review by Elisabeth Carey
Review from: nesfa.org

The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis

This Newbery honor book, The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963, is a novel written by Christopher Paul Curtis. This book is about the Watson family going to Birmingham because one of the children (Byron) is acting bad and needs some shaping up with his grandmother. When they go to Birmingham they encounter the unexpected. Kenny (the middle child) and his brother Byron (the oldest) are two of the main characters in the book. They learn a lot of things from each other like their gestures. This book teaches you many important lessons in life. It’s a very dramatic book. The Watsons are very realistic. We recommend this book because it is a novel that you would like for entertainment and to learn a life lesson.
Review from: teenspace.com

Between Madison and Palmetto by Jacqueline Woodson

Maizon and Margaret are both living on Madison Street again, but somehow everything seems different. Maizon has changed since her semester at boarding school, and Margaret has become withdrawn since her father's death. Added into the mix is Caroline, a white girl who's new in town and threatens Maizon and Margaret's closeness, and Maizon's father, who left her as a baby but shows up unexpectedly just when she thought her life couldn't get any more mixed up.
Review for: powells.com

Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman follows the life of one woman from her emancipation as a slave in the 1860s to her initiation into the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s. A work of historical fiction, the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman takes place in rural Louisiana. It opens with an encounter between the ostensible "editor" of the novel, a high school history teacher, and Miss Jane Pittman, a woman who is about 110 years old. He wants to use her life story to teach his students history as it has affected real people. The editor attests that he has tried to reproduce Jane's story in her own words, and the rest of the novel is narrated from her point of view.
Review from: answers.com

Night by Elie Wiesel

Night, by Elie Wiesel, provides a short and moving account of Wiesel's experience in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. The subject matter is difficult to think about, but it is important to deal with and remember nonetheless. Night is well written, and a good resource for teenagers and adults who are reading about the Holocaust for the first time or studying the subject in depth.
By: Erin Collazo Miller
Review from: about.com

Always Running by Luis J. Rodriguez

Many people have lives that are filled with one fortunate event after another. Even as they watch the news, they don’t understand how the other half, the less fortunate half, lives. Luis J. Rodriguez in his autobiography, Always Running, brings the reader into his world with in-depth descriptions of the violence, poverty, racism and fear that surrounded him in his youth.
Excerpt of a review by Alex S.
Review from: teenink.com

The Tequila Worm by Viola Canales

The stories in The Tequila Worm are heart-warming and lovely. There were so many little things that I loved about it, that it's hard to write about just a few without giving away the whole book.

The book is about Sofia, a young girl living in a poor Mexican barrio. She has an amazing family that is rich in tradition, love and wisdom. Her strong community teaches her many things, all designed to make her a comadre, a title of honor within her barrio. Being a comadre is something sacred to aspire to; it is being a woman and more, that spiritual extra that imbues the Mexican/Chicana woman
Excerpt of a review by Gina Ruiz
Review from:blogcritics.org

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquirel

"Laura Esquivel’s bestselling first novel, Like Water for Chocolate is a mouth-watering tale of love, passion and food. Tita, the youngest of three daughters lives in constant fear of Mama Elena. Since her husband’s untimely death, Mama Elena has ruled with an iron fist. Tita is raised with the help of the loving cook Nacha and spends most of her time growing up in the kitchen. It is there that Tita can seek some refuge from the harsh Mama Elena. As Tita gets older, the strict rules of her mother seem impossible to live by, for Tita has fallen in love. When Pedro comes to ask for her hand in marriage, Tita’s mother refuses, saying that her youngest daughter must never marry and must care for her until she dies. In a naïve act of love, Pedro agrees to marry Tita’s older sister Rosaura just so that he can be near Tita, the love of his life, forever. It is when Tita is forced by her mother to make her sister’s wedding cake that Tita’s strange magic in the kitchen comes to light. Grieving and distraught, her tears fall into the batter and every guest who eats the wedding cake the following day is overcome with sickness and misery. Tita continues to spend her time in the kitchen, as the head chef, and her emotions are transferred into whatever dish she is creating. Whether it is lust, anger or love, Tita’s deep feelings go right into her food and then into whoever eats it. Set in turn of the century Mexico, Like Water for Chocolate is an exquisite novel that will leave you intrigued and hungry."
By Amanda Linsmeier
Review From: writersnewsweekly.com

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

"The House on Mango Street covers a year in the life of Esperanza, a Chicana (Mexican-American girl), who is about twelve years old when the novel begins. During the year, she moves with her family into a house on Mango Street. The house is a huge improvement from the family's previous apartment, and it is the first home her parents actually own. However, the house is not what Esperanza has dreamed of, because it is run-down and small. The house is in the center of a crowded Latino neighborhood in Chicago, a city where many of the poor areas are racially segregated. Esperanza does not have any privacy, and she resolves that she will someday leave Mango Street and have a house all her own."
Excerpt of a review by Jeff Geddes, Resident Scholar
Review from: Allreaders.com

Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons

When I was young, I would think of ways to kill my daddy."

So begins Kaye Gibbon's debut novel, Ellen Foster, a powerful story told by the epononymous Ellen, an 11-year orphan whose violent father is responsible for her mother's suicide. Ellen is eventually taken out of her father's care and placed in a series of temporary homes — first with her grandmother, where she is made to toil in the fields as twisted payback for her father's brutality, and then with a neglectful aunt and her spoiled daughter, Dora. Told as a dual narrative, Ellen Foster follows the heroine's ordeals both chronologically and in reflection, and ends with her wish of a "new mama" fulfilled.

Review from: powells.com

Monster by Walter Dean Myers

"This story is about a 16-year-old teenage black boy, Steve Harmon, who is caught up in a series of accused murder and robbery. He is accused of so because there were people that claimed that they saw him there at the scene of the crime. He battles to prove his innocence and battle the prosecution with sheer determination.

Steve also inserts entries of his diary into this novel, he talks about how tough his life is in prison and the kind of problems he has to face and endure. Through it all, he learns to survive and live each day as it comes in prison.

A bigger part of this novel is made into a courtroom drama, where the trial goes for the state to prosecute Steve for murder and Steve's defense lawyer who battles the prosecution and eliminates proof against Steve.
"
Xinrou Tan, Resident Scholar
Review from: Allreaders.com

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

"The debut of the phenomenal "children's" series about an English boy who, on his eleventh birthday, discovers his parents were wizards killed when he was one, and that he is destined to attend Hogwarts School and become a great wizard (although it's a seven-year course and the events of each year will take a separate book to relate). The characters are various and imaginative, the plot suitably gripping, and there is plenty of humor -- broad for kids and a few subtle things for older readers. You'll learn about a wizard sport called Quidditch, and some of the odd magical creatures that supposedly operate under the noses of Muggles (regular, un-magical folks like you and me). Read it to your kids ... or to your spouse, as I did."
David Loftus, Resident Scholar
Review from: Allreaders.com

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

"The Color Purple is the story of Cecil. She is raped when she is a young girl and then is married off to Albert. Albert is cruel and is in love with Shug Avery. Shug is a famous entertainer. The letters Cecil writes are to her sister who is in Africa who has not written Cecil back in years. The story is about women, their strengths, and their struggles. The book is about a hard life but it keeps true to the idea that what goes around comes around and good things come to those who wait. "
Kristy Pastore, Resident Scholar
Review from: Allreaders.com