For age 4-8 years A young African-American girl describes the familiar mother-daughter nightly ritual of combing the tangles out of her hair. When she cries because it hurts, her sympathetic mother tells her how lucky she is to have such beautiful hair. Imaginatively, the woman goes on to say that she can spin it into a fine, soft bun or "plant rows of braids" along her scalp, prompting her daughter to think of other wonderful things she likes about her hair. The superb watercolor illustrations move from the intimacy and security of Keyana's bedroom to the neighborhood streets and finally to the whole world as her mother's imagery becomes reflected in the art. (Exerpt)                                                                                

Four slave women accompany their masters to a resort in the free state of Ohio in the mid-1850s. Lizzie actually loves Drayle, the father of her two children—a brown-skinned boy named for his father and a girl white enough to pass. Reenie is the half sister of her owner, a cruel man who passes her along to the resort manager. Sweet is pregnant and has a relatively amiable relationship with her master, while Mawu is a wild red-haired woman bent on freedom from a cruel and violent owner. Frustrations mount as they consider their options, tempted to take advantage of the help offered by free blacks and a Quaker woman. But they are guilt-ridden about the prospect of leaving their children behind. The women rely on each other for support as they come together for three summers, catching up on their lives of woe and occasional joy. Drawing on research about the resort that eventually became the first black college, Wilberforce University, the novel explores the complexities of relationships in slavery and the abiding comfort of women’s friendships. --Vanessa Bush

Sibling rivalry can escalate to open hostility, especially if your sister has married your rich ex-fiancé. But somehow, Isis and Egypt manage to get along. In fact, together they’ve founded a unique book club, The Big Girls Book Club, where members have to be at least a size 14. Egypt moves into Rashid and Isis’ mansion, but the arrangement starts to go south when Egypt realizes her feelings for Rashid, with whom she was involved for 10 years, haven’t completely died. Popular author Weber (The Preacher’s Son, 2005; Up to No Good, 2009) fills his books with lifelike characters—flawed, confused, frustrated, and sometimes plus-sized. His latest is perfect for readers looking for an emotion-filled human drama, and Big Girls Do Cry will be a welcome addition to any library’s African American fiction collection. --Shelley Mosley

In this first of five volumes of autobiography, poet Maya Angelou recounts a youth filled with disappointment, frustration, tragedy, and finally hard-won independence. Sent at a young age to live with her grandmother in Arkansas, Angelou learned a great deal from this exceptional woman and the tightly knit black community there. These very lessons carried her throughout the hardships she endured later in life, including a tragic occurrence while visiting her mother in St. Louis and her formative years spent in California--where an unwanted pregnancy changed her life forever. Marvelously told, with Angelou's "gift for language and observation," this "remarkable autobiography by an equally remarkable black woman from Arkansas captures, indelibly, a world of which most Americans are shamefully ignorant." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.