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Book List: Get Ready for Black Children’s Book Week!

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February 27-March 5 will be the first celebration of Black Children’s Book Week, which extends Black History Month into March.

Black Children’s Book Week is a global celebration of Black children and the people who ensure Black children are represented in books and other children’s media. While the week is administered by Black Baby Books, events are hosted by both the Black Children’s Book Week Committee, and celebrants throughout the world!

Read Across America Day is also during the first week of March, so look for that week to be a huge celebration of children reading!  To get you started, here’s a short list of some really cool scary books to share with kids next week,  or really any time!

 

cover art for Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston

Amari and the Night Brothers  by B.B. Alston  (Bookshop.org)

Thirteen-year-old Amari Peters, on a mission to find her missing older brother,  mysteriously receives a scholarship to the training camp for the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs, which has the mission of keeping supernatural creatures secret while also protecting humans. Amari navigates both the supernatural and social obstacles she encounters with her street-smarts, resourcefulness, and resilience.  Read the full review here.

 

 

 

 

cover art for The Forgotten Girl by India Hill Brown

The Forgotten Girl by India Hill Brown (Bookshop.org)

India Hill Brown joins Mary Downing Hahn as a true storyteller of the middle-grade ghost tale. Iris discovers an abandoned cemetery in a wooded area near her neighborhood. Soon she is having nightmares and is drawn back to the cemetery by the ghost of Avery Moore, a girl buried there. She and her friend Daniel discover it is a Black cemetery, dating back to when Black and white people were segregated even after death. Although they bring it to their town’s attention successfully, Avery won’t be satisfied until she has Iris as a “forever friend”. While there are many similarities to Hahn’s Wait Till Helen Comes,  Brown takes the story to a new and more complex level that deals with racism, segregation, and student activism among the scares.

 

 

 

The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural by Patricia McKissack, illustrated by Brian Pinkney. (Bookshop.org)

These stories have the eerie feeling of truth to them, possibly because of McKissack’s introduction, where she describes listening to the stories the adults around her told when she was a child. This is a Caldecott Award winner, and also a Coretta Scott King award winner, but beyond that, it’s just really good storytelling, made even better by the dramatic illustrations. This is one of the books that you really need to hold in your hands and see the artwork complementing the story across a double page spread, to truly appreciate. Don’t let the award for children’s book illustration fool you: this book is often used with and appreciated by middle school aged kids and older.

Everyone talks about how seminal Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is, but The Dark-Thirty is just as essential.

 

cover art for Root Magic by Eden Royce

Root Magic by Eden Royce (Bookshop.org)

After Jezzie’s grandmother, a root worker, dies, her grandfather decides to teach her the basics of root magic, for purposes of protection, and she starts to develop supernatural powers. Her “witchiness” is causing her problems at school, though, and a racist police officer who knows her family are root workers is harassing them. Root Magic takes place around the time of the Kennedy assassination, during the time of Jim Crow. Eden Royce has written an excellent Southern Gothic novel with vivid description and plenty of scares about the traditions of the little-known Gullah-Geechee people. Read our full review here.

 

 

Book Review: Amari and the Night Brothers (Supernatural Investigations #1) by B.B. Alston

cover art for Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. AlstonBookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

Amari and the Night Brothers (Supernatural Investigations #1)  by B.B. Alston

Balzer + Bray, 2021

ISBN-13 : 978-0062975164

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Thirteen year old Amari Peters has some big footsteps to fill: her older brother Quinton was the highest performing student at ritzy Jefferson Academy. Since his disappearance (or possibly death) six months ago, Amari’s grades, and behavior, are slipping, and on the last day of school, she shoves a mean girl who makes a dig about her brother and loses her scholarship, her best opportunity to get out of the Rosewood Projects and go to college. Grounded indefinitely, Amari hasn’t been home long when the doorbell rings and she’s asked to sign for a package that, oddly, has been delivered to Quinton’s closet. Opening the package, Amari discovers she has been nominated by her missing brother for a scholarship to the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs training camp. The Bureau of Supernatural Affairs keeps supernatural creatures secret while also protecting innocent humans. Quinton and his partner, “special agents” for the Bureau, have gone missing from the Bureau as well, and Amari decides to attend the camp in hopes of discovering what happened to her brother.

Early on, Amari is discovered to have tremendous magical potential, but this turns out to be a major problem when her supernatural power is discovered to be magic, as magicians are universally considered bad and magic is illegal. Among a throng of privileged “legacy” trainees, Amari’s race, socioeconomic status, and illegal magic make her a pariah among the other trainees, and more determined than ever to qualify to become a Junior Agent and find the answers that will lead to her brother.

While individual elements of the story may sound familiar (a mysterious letter, a summer camp for teenage legacies, mythical and supernatural creatures hidden in plain view, and evil magicians all show up in either Harry Potter or Percy Jackson) B.B. Alston has mixed them up to create something very different. A big piece of that is that Amari, a smart and determined Black girl who already has to prove herself in the outside world, is the point of view character, so we get to see a resourceful character working hard who keeps going even when she’s discouraged by hostility and racism. Nobody hands her a destiny or quest to fulfil, does her homework for her, or makes decisions for her, although she occasionally gets a boost of encouragment from a friend. Alston is also incredibly creative in his world-building (talking elevators with individual personalites, delightful and spooky departmental names and descriptions, gorgeously described magical illusions, magic that can manipulate technology, gossip rags that give you juicy tidbits only when you ask the right questions, and so much more).

Although there are some terrifying creatures and spells, the scariest parts of the book really involve the people who interact with Amari: spoiled mean girl Lara van Helsing, who spreads nasty rumors; evil magician Raoul Moreau, one of the “Night Brothers”; racist kids who draw malicious graffiti on the walls of Amari’s bedroom; Bureau directors certain Amari is a danger to the supernatural world. Amari and the Night Brothers is more of a dark urban fantasy and coming-of-age story than it is a horror story, but it is a great #OwnVoices title that provides a fresh point of view in a genre that seems to be telling the same story over again and again. I’m looking forward to book #2. Highly recommended for grades 4-8