Here are 100 books that Onyx & Beyond fans have personally recommended if you like
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I have authored four verse novels myself and crafting imagery is my favorite part of writing in the form; most recently, one that revolves around earth imagery, Lilac and the Switchback. I also teach many verse novel classes and have studied the form a great deal, particularly on how to create a successful image system for your novel in verse. When reading verse novels, I am always keeping an eye out as to how the imagery and symbolism help to reveal character growth and change.
The multimodal format is perfect for this moving new book by Kate Messner.
I loved how the main character learned new things about himself with every peak he climbed, the number of obstacles that were in his way, and how directly he examined metaphorical language.
The backstory about the father really came to a satisfying conclusion, and I felt like it was well-earned.
I have authored four verse novels myself and crafting imagery is my favorite part of writing in the form; most recently, one that revolves around earth imagery, Lilac and the Switchback. I also teach many verse novel classes and have studied the form a great deal, particularly on how to create a successful image system for your novel in verse. When reading verse novels, I am always keeping an eye out as to how the imagery and symbolism help to reveal character growth and change.
This book has so many stand-alone beautiful poems while maintaining the voice of a realistic middle school character.
The loss of a beloved landscape to wildfire is such a real-world issue, and Chris Baron manages to tackle this in a way that isn’t frightening but somehow hopeful by the end.
I also absolutely love the bearded dragon named Watermelon!
As a community recovers from a devastating wildfire, two friends find their way back to each other and their homes, by award-winning author Chris Baron.
Perfect for fans of Alan Gratz and Lauren Tarshis.
Finn and his friend, nicknamed Rabbit, live in a rural area that's been hit hard by wildfires. Families were displaced and school was interrupted. Moreover, their beloved forest is suffering -- animals and plants haven't been able to come back, and the two friends wonder if there's anything they can do to help. Rabbit's uncle, a science teacher, is part of a study that may help…
I have authored four verse novels myself and crafting imagery is my favorite part of writing in the form; most recently, one that revolves around earth imagery, Lilac and the Switchback. I also teach many verse novel classes and have studied the form a great deal, particularly on how to create a successful image system for your novel in verse. When reading verse novels, I am always keeping an eye out as to how the imagery and symbolism help to reveal character growth and change.
This book takes place in NYC, where the main character longs to be a pilot.
In a beautiful, keystone poem about the blues in the sky (hence the name of the book), Sage sees all of what is beautiful and sorrowful in the world. During the course of the story, she processes the grief surrounding losing her best friend in a way that feels believable.
# 1 New York Times bestselling and Newbery Honor author Renée Watson explores friendship, loss, and life with grief in this poignant novel in verse and vignettes.
Sage's thirteenth birthday was supposed to be about movies and treats, staying up late with her best friend and watching the sunrise together. Instead, it was the day her best friend died. Without the person she had to hold her secrets and dream with, Sage is lost. In a counseling group with other girls who have lost someone close to them, she learns that not all losses are the same, and healing isn't…
A gay retelling of the classic fairy tale--a scrumptious love story featuring ungrateful stepsiblings, a bake-off, and a fairy godfather.
Cinderelliot is stuck at home taking care of his ungrateful stepsister and stepbrother. When Prince Samuel announces a kingdom-wide competition to join the royal staff as his baker, the stepsiblings…
I have authored four verse novels myself and crafting imagery is my favorite part of writing in the form; most recently, one that revolves around earth imagery, Lilac and the Switchback. I also teach many verse novel classes and have studied the form a great deal, particularly on how to create a successful image system for your novel in verse. When reading verse novels, I am always keeping an eye out as to how the imagery and symbolism help to reveal character growth and change.
I love how this LGBTQ+ verse novel combines magical realism, hurricanes, and family conflict to create a compelling read!
Murray’s deep connection to the ocean is something that shifts and changes through the course of the story as the storm forces her to literally move and for family dynamics to shift.
The water imagery helps reflect Murray’s character growth during the story.
* A Stonewall Award Honor Book * ALA Notable Book * Bank Street Best Book of the Year *
Perfect for fans of Rebecca Stead, Natalie Lloyd, and Jasmine Warga, this beautiful novel in verse explores one girl's struggle to regain her magic after a hurricane forces her to move away from her beloved ocean that, she believes, has given her special powers.
Bighearted and observant twelve-year-old Murray O'Shea loves the ocean. Every chance she gets, she's in it. It could be because the ocean never makes her apologize for being exactly who she is—something her family refuses to do—but…
I have studied Black politics since I was an undergraduate student at Savannah State College. My principal mentor at Savannah State was Hanes Walton, Jr. Walton (1941-2013) devoted his career to laying the intellectual foundations for the study of Black politics as a subfield in American political science. I have spent my career researching and teaching Black politics. I have authored and/or edited eight books. I am an expert on American politics, urban politics, and racial and ethnic politics.
In 1972, Black politics was at a crossroads. Leonard N. Moore’s examination of the National Black Political Convention of March 1972 is a wonderful and comprehensive study of perhaps the most important political gathering of Black political leaders.
Moore’s concise and readable account of the convention is riveting and at times dramatic. The reader can feel the tension in the Gary, Indiana high school gymnasium between the disparate ideological factions of Black political leadership at the time – the Black integrationist and moderates versus the Black nationalists and radicals.
Black leaders convened in Gary to confront a central question about the future of Black politics: whether Black voters should work separately or in coalition with other racial minorities and liberal whites to advance their policy goals.
Moore details how the coalition approach won out at the convention and connects what happened in Gary, Indiana in 1972 to the political incorporation…
For three days in 1972 in Gary, Indiana, eight thousand American civil rights activists and Black Power leaders gathered at the National Black Political Convention, hoping to end a years-long feud that divided black America into two distinct camps: integrationists and separatists. While some form of this rift existed within black politics long before the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his death- and the power vacuum it created- heightened tensions between the two groups, and convention leaders sought to merge these competing ideologies into a national, unified call to action. What followed, however, effectively crippled the Black…
I was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and raised in Virginia, so I am very familiar with America’s southern lands and culture. The South—also known as the Deep South—is a unique part of America’s tapestry of identities, and I love books set in this locale. Southern literature tends to focus on themes such as racial politics, one’s personal identity, and rebellion. When I wrote my book, I knew the story would have to take place in the southern states.
I must be honest: this is perhaps my favorite novel. I love Stockett’s narrative voice, showcased wonderfully in the POVs of three characters: Abilene, Minnie, and Skeeter. Stockett recreates the Jackson, Mississippi, of the early 1960s, and I easily got sucked into the dramas of each character. The only downside to this book is that it’s a one-hit wonder without a sequel. The movie was excellent, too.
The #1 New York Times bestselling novel and basis for the Academy Award-winning film-a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't-nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read.
Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, who's always taken orders quietly, but lately she's unable to hold her bitterness back. Her friend Minny has never held her tongue but now must somehow keep secrets about her employer that leave her speechless. White socialite Skeeter just graduated college. She's full of ambition, but without a husband, she's…
I’m pretty sure I’m about to die in space. And I just turned twelve and a half.
Blast off with the four winners of the StellarKid Project on a trip to the International Space Station and then to the Gateway outpost orbiting the Moon! It’s a dream come true until…
I’m a historian at the University of Pennsylvania and an op-ed writer for numerous publications. I’m also a former Peace Corps volunteer and high school teacher. I’ve spent my adult life studying the ways that human beings imagine education, across space and time. Schools make citizens, but citizens also make schools. And we’re all different, so we disagree—inevitably and often profoundly—about the meaning and purpose of “school” itself. In a diverse nation, what should kids learn? And who should decide that? There are no single “right” answers, of course. I’m eager to hear yours.
This is one of those books that reminds you of something that was hiding in plain sight, but that you somehow overlooked: Black students who desegregated schools in the South were disproportionately female. Take the Little Rock Nine, for example: six women, three men. Rachel Devlin takes us inside the lives of these brave Black girls, who incurred enormous risks to help America live out its founding creed: all men (and, now, women) are created equal. We are all in their debt, whether we realize it or not.
A new history of school desegregation in America, revealing how girls and women led the fight for interracial education
The struggle to desegregate America's schools was a grassroots movement, and young women were its vanguard. In the late 1940s, parents began to file desegregation lawsuits with their daughters, forcing Thurgood Marshall and other civil rights lawyers to take up the issue and bring it to the Supreme Court. After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, girls far outnumbered boys in volunteering to desegregate formerly all-white schools.
In A Girl Stands at the Door, historian Rachel Devlin tells the remarkable…
Ever since I can remember, I have observed people. I was curious about why people are the way they are, and why do some people have fulfilling lives while others don’t. Something I have learned over the years is meaningful actions require courage first. This world certainly needs people who will live courageously in their day-to-day lives by being authentic, speaking up, being kind, lending a hand, and becoming the best versions of ourselves. When we set the example, it gives others hope that they can also be courageous. I hope you choose to live courageously!
My daughter and I read this book together which started a conversation about Rosa Parks, racism, and courage. We liked reading from a child’s perspective because it evoked deeper emotions and made it more relatable to my daughter. The ending beautifully articulated how our courage gives others hope that they can also be courageous.
It seems like any other winter day in Montgomery, Alabama. Mama and child are riding where they're supposed to--way in the back of the bus. The boy passes the time by watching his marble roll up and down the aisle with the motion of the bus, until from way up front a big commotion breaks out. He can't see what's going on, but he can see the policeman arrive outside and he can see Mama's chin grow strong. "There you go, Rosa Parks," she says, "stirrin' up a nest of hornets. Tomorrow all this'll be forgot." But they both know…
I have been shocked in recent years by the bitter partisanship in America, and by how our politics have turned into a sort of sports grudge match – my team versus yours, no matter what – with very little interest in seeking the truth or working for the national good. So when I discovered a number of years ago that Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt built an alliance with Republicans that led the country to victory in World War II, I immediately set out to understand how such an extraordinary bipartisan alliance could take place – and whether America might do such a thing again. Uniting Americaprovides an answer.
Walter White served as the executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1931 until his death in 1955. A light-skinned Black man often mistaken for white, he used his appearance to infiltrate the white-supremacy power structure and then work for civil rights.
In his evocative autobiography, A Man Called White, White recounts how in 1941 he and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph pushed President Franklin Roosevelt to take a major step forward in the struggle for civil rights – creating the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC). It’s a gripping tale about an often-overlooked part of the civil rights movement
The FEPC worked to desegregate the war industries, a mission that reshaped American politics and set the Democratic Party on the path of becoming the party of civil rights.
The autobiography of the Civil Rights activist, Walter White, during his 30 years of service to the National Association of Service for the Advancement of Colored People. Although African American, White's blue eyes and fair skin enabled him to cross the colour line and gather vital information.
For those who enjoy fantasy adventure, the Faerie Tales from the White Forest series offers a new twist on the traditional faerie tales so loved by young readers.
From devastating curses to death-defying quests, Brigitta and her growing collective of misfit friends face greater and greater challenges when destiny calls…
I have spent 10 years building Scopio, which stands for “Scope It Out” to build an accessible platform for anyone, anywhere to tell their story and share their images. I have used technology to change stereotypes and archive historical moments to our everyday imagery. I like to consume information easily and actionably and these are my recommendations! We did that in writing The Year Time Stopped so people can enjoy and get value out of 200 images and stories for the next century.
Why We Can't Wait is an easy way to get into the psychology of MLK. It is a 1964 book by Martin Luther King Jr.about the nonviolent movement against racial segregation in the United States, and specifically the 1963 Birmingham campaign. The way it is written makes it understandable from a 1:1 perspective. I am connected to this because it helps a person be actionable in their own way about causes they care about. No frills, just action!
This is the momentous story of the Civil Rights movement, told by one of its most powerful and eloquent voices. Here Martin Luther King, Jr. recounts the pivotal events in the city of Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 that propelled his non-violent campaign for racial justice from a movement of lunch counter sit-ins and prayer meetings to a phenomenon that 'rocked the richest, most powerful nation to its foundations'.
As inspiring and resonant as it was upon publication, Why We Can't Wait is both a unique…
