Octavia Spencer
1) The help
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.4 - AR Pts: 23
Lexile measure
730L
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and daughters--view one another.
Publisher
Paramount Home Entertainment
Language
English
Formats
Description
When Pete and Ellie choose to start a family, they stumble headfirst into the world of foster care adoption. After they learn their perfect foster child comes with two other siblings, Pete and Ellie find themselves speeding from zero to three kids overnight and must hilariously learn the ropes of instant parenthood if they hope to become a real family.
Publisher
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Pub. Date
[2015]
Language
English
Description
The story of a grandfather who is suddenly left to care for his beloved granddaughter, but when her paternal grandmother seeks custody with the help of her brother, the little girl is torn between two families who love her deeply. With the best intentions at heart, both families fight for what they feel is right and are soon forced to confront their true feelings about race, forgiveness, and understanding.
Publisher
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Pub. Date
[2015]
Language
English
Description
The story of a grandfather who is suddenly left to care for his beloved granddaughter, but when her paternal grandmother seeks custody with the help of her brother, the little girl is torn between two families who love her deeply. With the best intentions at heart, both families fight for what they feel is right and are soon forced to confront their true feelings about race, forgiveness, and understanding.
6) Gifted
Publisher
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Pub. Date
[2017]
Language
English
Description
Frank Adler is a single man raising a child prodigy, his spirited young niece Mary, in a coastal town in Florida. Frank's plans for a normal school life for Mary are foiled when the seven-year-old's mathematical abilities come to the attention of Frank's formidable mother Evelyn, whose plans for her granddaughter threaten to separate Frank and Mary.
Publisher
Paramount Home Entertainment
Pub. Date
2019.
Language
English
Description
When Pete and Ellie choose to start a family, they stumble headfirst into the world of foster care adoption. After they learn their perfect foster child comes with two other siblings, Pete and Ellie find themselves speeding from zero to three kids overnight and must hilariously learn the ropes of instant parenthood if they hope to become a real family.
10) Ma
Publisher
Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Pub. Date
[2019]
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Sue Ann, a loner in her quiet Ohio town, is asked by Maggie, a new teenager in town, to buy some booze for her and her friends. Sue Ann sees the chance to make some unsuspecting younger friends. She offers the kids the chance to avoid drinking and driving by hanging out in the basement of her home as long as they abide by the house rules. Her hospitality starts to curdle into obsession, and what began as a teenage dream turns into a terrorizing nightmare....
11) A Kid Like Jake
Series
Publisher
IFC Films
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Claire Danes, Jim Parsons, Priyanka Chopra and Octavia Spencer star in this funny and moving look at parents struggling with how to raise their nonconforming child.
12) Small town crime
Publisher
Lionsgate
Pub. Date
[2018]
Language
English
Description
Mike Kendall (John Hawkes), a disgraced cop is fighting a losing battle with the bottle. When he finds a woman left for dead at the side of the road, Kendall turns private eye to track down her killers, taking one last shot at redemption.
13) Sparkler
Series
Publisher
Strand Releasing
Pub. Date
1997.
Language
English
Description
Melba May is a trailer park princess who decides she needs to radically change her life when she catches her husband in bed with her best friend. After a night of drinking at the local bar she befriends three recent college grads from Los Angeles who are en route to Las Vegas to hopefully win some money to pay rent. She joins them, happy to leave her husband for good -- until he finds out that she has won a million dollar sweepstakes and must hunt...
Publisher
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
Pub. Date
[2018]
Language
English
Formats
Description
An other-worldly fairy tale, set against the backdrop of Cold War era America circa 1962. In the hidden high security government laboratory where she works, lonely Elisa is trapped in a life of isolation. Elisa's life is changed forever when she and co-worker Zelda discover a secret classified experiment.
15) The shack
Publisher
Summit Entertainment
Pub. Date
[2017]
Language
English
Formats
Description
After suffering a family tragedy, Mack Phillips spirals into a deep depression causing him to question his innermost beliefs. Facing a crisis of faith, he receives a mysterious letter urging him to an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness.
16) The help
Publisher
Touchstone Home Entertainment
Pub. Date
2011.
Language
English
Description
Mississippi during the 1960s: Skeeter, a southern society girl, returns from college determined to become a writer, but turns her friends' lives, and a small Mississippi town, upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families. Aibileen, Skeeter's best friend's housekeeper, is the first to open up, to the dismay of her friends in the tight-knit black community.
Publisher
LG Premiere
Pub. Date
[2016]
Language
English
Description
Gilly Hopkins has seen more than her share of foster homes and has outwitted every family she has lived with. In an effort to escape her new foster mother Maime Trotter's endless loving care, Gilly concocts a plan that she believes will bring her mother running to her rescue. But when the ploy blows up in Gilly's face it threatens to ruin the only chance she's ever had to be part of a real family.
18) Onward
Language
English
Formats
Description
When Ian Lightfoot comes of age, his mother gives him the magical staff of his late father, which will let him cast a spell to spend one more day with his dad. But the spell goes awry and he has only 24 hours to set it right, so he and his older brother embark on an epic quest, with their mother trailing after, trying to protect them from a dangerous curse.
19) Hidden figures
Publisher
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
Pub. Date
[2017]
Language
English
Formats
Description
As the United States raced against Russia to put a man in space, NASA found untapped talent in a group of African-American female mathematicians that served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in U.S. history. Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson crossed all gender, race, and professional lines while their brilliance and desire to dream big, beyond anything ever accomplished before by the human race, firmly cemented...
20) Snowpiercer
Publisher
[Publisher not identified]
Pub. Date
[2014]
Language
English
Description
The film is set in the future (AD 2031) where, after a failed experiment to stop global warming, an ice age kills off all life on the planet except for the inhabitants of the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe and is powered by a sacred perpetual-motion engine. Its inhabitants are divided by class; the lower-class passengers in one of the last cars stage an uprising, moving car by car up to the front of the train, where the oppressive...