James Ransome

A slave family is distressed when they discover their son Ben has run away.

For Helen Keller, "w-a-t-e-r" was a cool, slippery splash. "S-u-n" was the warm afternoon glow coating her skin. "L-i-l-y" was a sweet-smelling petal, soft and delicate to her touch. After an illness left her blind and deaf, Helen relied on her senses of touch and smell to help compensate for her loss. And then she met her teacher, Annie Sullivan, who showed her a new way to give meaning to the world around her. But most of all, Annie gave Helen a...

"The award winners behind Before She Was Harriet explore the story of the saxophone, from its beginnings in 1840s Belgium all the way to New Orleans, where an instrument in a pawn shop caught the eye of musician Sidney Bechet and became the iconic symbol it is today"--

Louis Armstrong has been called the most important improviser in the history of jazz. Although his New Orleans neighborhood was poor in nearly everything else, it was rich in superb music. Young Louis took it all in, especially the cornet blowing of Joe King Oliver. But after a run in with the police, 11-year-old Louis was sent away to the Colored Waif's Home for Boys where he became a disciplined musician in the school's revered marching band. By...

In the antebellum South, two siblings shelter a large, mysterious, wounded bird and eventually follow it west toward freedom.

When they try to find out who is doing their chores while they are working in the field, a childless couple discovers that the two stones they have brought home are actually two bewitched orphans.

A young girl and her grandmother visit the girl's father in prison.

A collection of African folktales originating in the storytelling tradition.

The daughter of a free Black man who worked as a blacksmith in Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1800s recalls the stories from the Bible that her father shared with her, relating them to the experiences of African Americans.