Frizzy Haired Zuzu is a children's picture book about accepting and loving your appearance. Zuzu loves riding her bike and dancing to all kinds of music. Her curly red hair would bounce when she danced. But Zuzu hates her hair. The older she gets, the bigger it grows. With her sisters and mother, she tries several hilarious—yet disastrous—solutions to tame her frizzy hair. Finally she saves up all her money to visit a salon. But with straighter hair, will she still feel like herself? Zuzu must dig deep down to sort out her feelings about what is beautiful to others…and herself.

I vow that this will be my first successful fast for Ramadan. My family does this every year, even though I’ve been to a mosque exactly twice. My oppressive parents also forbid dating, even though Peter might be my soul mate. How can I get him to notice me? Will I ever feel like a typical American girl?

NCSS-CBC 2021 Notable Social Studies Trade Book One of Bank Street’s 2021 Best Children’s Books of the Year STARRED REVIEW! “Armed with her own unique power phrase—'I’m Lulu Lovington, the ONE and only!’—Lulu feels empowered to handle any questions that come her way…. This book does more than simply tell a single story of biracial experience: it talks about navigating everyday racism in sensitive, but frank, ways. This affirmation is just as important as the power phrase…. All children will benefit from this pitch-perfect discussion of race, identity, complexity, and beauty.”--Kirkus Lulu loves her family, but people are always asking What are you? Lulu hates that question. Her brother inspires her to come up with a power phrase so she can easily express who she is, not what she is. Includes a note from the author, sharing her experience as the only biracial person in her family and advice for navigating the complexity of when both parents do not share the same racial identity as their children.

Humor and heart come unleashed in this adventure about a boy living with anxiety who must join with his therapy dog to save dogkind from a dog-hating secret agent. Tonio is not allowed to let anyone know that he can communicate fluently with his therapy dog, Buster. But when dogkind requires that Tonio make friends with a bully, are Tonio and Buster going to go through a ruff patch... or learn some new tricks to keep the dogs in their town safe?

The Heart of Mi Familia follows a young girl who is of a multicultural descent as she visits her abeula and her grandma. NCSS-CBC 2021 Notable Social Studies Trade Book Follow a young girl as she works with her abuela and her grandma to create a wonderful birthday present for her brother that celebrates her multicultural family and honors both sides and generations of her family.

NEA'S READ ACROSS AMERICA 2019-2020 CALENDAR Like every good garden, my hair must be cared for and nourished, tilled, and weeded. After a day of being taunted by classmates about her unruly hair, Mackenzie can't take any more and she seeks guidance from her wise and comforting neighbor, Miss Tillie. Using the beautiful garden in the backyard as a metaphor, Miss Tillie shows Mackenzie that maintaining healthy hair is not a chore nor is it something to fear. Most importantly, Mackenzie learns that natural black hair is beautiful.

Don't panic - I'm Islamic! Amal is a 16-year-old Melbourne teen with all the usual obsessions about boys, chocolate and Cosmo magazine. She's also a Muslim, struggling to honour the Islamic faith in a society that doesn't understand it. The story of her decision to "shawl up" is funny, surprising and touching by turns.

In A Free Man of Color, Fever Season, and Graveyard Dust, Benjamin January penetrated the murkiest corners of glittering old New Orleans to bring murderers to justice. Now, in bestselling author Barbara Hambly's haunting new novel, he explores a vivid and violent plantation world darker than anything in the city.... Sold Down the River. The crisp autumn air of 1834 awakens the French Town to a new season of balls and operas. But this November there will be no waltzes played by Benjamin January, no piano lessons for Creole children. For a shadow has emerged from his past-Simon Fourchet, the savage man to whom he was bound in slavery until the age of seven. When someone he cannot refuse asks the favor, Benjamin reluctantly agrees to reenter the realm of his childhood on Fourchet's upriver sugar plantation. Abandoning his Parisian French for the African patois of a field hand, Benjamin sets out to uncover who and what lies behind the sinister happenings there. On All Souls' night, at the dark of the moon, a fire was started in the mill. A field gang's food has been poisoned and the butler murdered. And voodoo curse marks appear everywhere. If the villain cannot be discovered, every slave on Mon Triomphe will be condemned to what passes for justice. Cutting cane from dawn to nightfall, until his bones ache and his musician's hands bleed, Benjamin strives to unlock the riddle. Are these the omens of a slave revolt, or something more personal? As acts of sabotage mount and voodoo signs multiply, he ponders the family in the big house: Fourchet's pale and pious new wife, his two grown sons, and his shrewish daughter-in-law. Then the inhabitants of the slave quarters: a proud and secretive cook, young lovers torn apart by a brutal overseer, men and women who long for loved ones sold away. And what of the neighboring planter, feuding with Fourchet over a piece of land... or the elusive river trader who knows so many of the servants' secrets? Somewhere in the warp and weft of these people's lives lurks Benjamin's quarry-whose scheming could destroy not just Fourchet but all his kin and every human being he owns. And Benjamin January must use all his intelligence and cunning to find the killer, before he finds himself... Sold Down the River.

After finally adjusting to life on a family farm with two brand new step-sisters, a young girl faces an even bigger challenge - figuring out where she fits in at her first year in middle school. This middle grade graphic novel explores family, friendship, and change! Jen is just getting used to her life on Peapod Farm with her new stepsisters, Andy and Reese. But when the school year starts, there are even more changes in store for her. Jen has to navigate new friends and new challenges--but at least she'll have Andy with her, right? As she starts the sixth grade, she finds that her stepsister seems way more interested in crushes and boys than hanging out with her, while Jen wants to know when the world decided boys and girls couldn't be "just friends" anymore. Jen's story continues in the standout sequel to Stepping Stones that captures everything awesome (and scary) about growing up.

Welcome to Willoughby Close… a charming cluster of cozy cottages, each with a story to tell and a happy ending to deliver… After her husband unexpectedly dies, Ava moves to Willoughby Close, trying to keep her chin up and herself to herself as she’s always done—not answering questions, not making friends, and not seeing much of a future. Her marriage was far from perfect, but it offered her a much-needed security that has now been ripped away. She’s not sure what to do now that she’s thirty-five, widowed, penniless… and unexpectedly pregnant with her late husband’s child. Jace Tucker is the over-the-top sexy caretaker of Willoughby Manor, and he can see beneath Ava's glamor girl act to the hurt she's been hiding for so long. She has secrets for a reason—and so does he. The last thing she needs right now is a fling with a man who hides a past as regrettable as her own. But with a baby to think about, and neighbors determined to be her friends, Ava finds herself starting to change and even more alarmingly, beginning to hope. Can Willoughby Close work its everyday magic on a woman like her? And when the past comes calling for both her and Jace, will they have to answer for their previous mistakes?