Dion Graham

Over the last two decades a new type of song has emerged. Today's hits bristle with "hooks," musical burrs designed to snag your ear every seven seconds. Painstakingly crafted to tweak the brain's delight in melody, rhythm, and repetition, these songs are industrial-strength products made for malls, casinos, the gym, and the Super Bowl halftime show. The tracks are so catchy, and so potent, that you can't not listen to them. Traveling from New York...

There is a Florida, that has nothing to do with Disney World. Nothing to do with palm trees or Holiday Inns. Tourists are neither courted nor coddled in this Florida, and you can go a hundred miles and never find a golden arch. So says author Darryl Wimberley, and it's a Florida he knows. He knows, too, that in towns like Pepperfish Keys, there are those who still can't believe that a black man could rise to a high position in the state police. But,...

Literary powerhouse and Coretta Scott King Honor- and Boston Globe / Horn Book Honor-winning author of The Parker Inheritence Varian Johnson explores themes of toxic masculinity and family legacy in this heartfelt, hopeful story of one boy discovering what it really means to be a man. SECRETS ARE ALWAYS A GAMBLE 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...

Scholastic's next multi-platform mega-event begins here!History is broken, and three kids must travel back in time to set it right!When best friends Dak Smyth and Sera Froste stumble upon the secret of time travel -- a hand-held device known as the Infinity Ring -- they're swept up in a centuries-long secret war for the fate of mankind. Recruited by the Hystorians, a secret society that dates back to Aristotle, the kids learn that history has gone...

In this winner of the Coretta Scott King Honor, bestselling and award-winning author Nikki Grimes uses free-verse poetry to powerfully tell the story of two boys, living in different times and lands, who both struggle with their faith as they watch their families fall apart. Sam's father was always a strong Christian, and so when his dad leaves Sam and his mom for another woman, and then announces his new wife is pregnant, Sam feels abandoned-even...

The Denzel Principle is the belief that the perfect man-in the form of Denzel Washington-actually exists off screen and that all Black women can snag a Denzel of their very own. So what does your very own Denzel look like? Well, he's rich but earthy, handsome but not pretty, doting but not docile, tough but vulnerable, political but not radical, passionate but not hysterical, ambitious but not overbearing, well-read but not nerdy, manly but not...

From a talented young journalist on the rise, a deeply reported, timely new biography of the Notorious B.I.G., publishing for what would have been his 50th birthday The Notorious B.I.G. was one of the most charismatic and talented artists of the 1990s. Born Christopher Wallace and raised in Clinton Hill/Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, Biggie lived an almost archetypal rap life: young trouble, drug dealing, guns, prison, a giant hit record, the wealth and international...

In Maryrose Wood's stunning middle-grade novel, Alice's Farm, a brave young rabbit must work with her natural predators to save her farmland home and secretly help the farm's earnest but incompetent new owners. When a new family moves into Prune Street Farm, Alice and the other cottontails are cautious. The new owners are from the city; the family and their dog are not at all what the rabbits expect, and soon Alice is making new friends and doing...

Discovering a book of Langston Hughes's 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.

The second book in the hit Young Prince series from Ronald L. Smith, recipient of the 2016 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Author Award. I'm T'Challa. The Prince of Wakanda. Son of T'Chaka. And one day, I will wear the mantle. Thirteen-year-old T'Challa can't wait to go back to America to visit his friends Sheila and Zeke, who are staying with Sheila's grandmother in Beaumont, a small Alabama town, over their summer break. He's thrilled...