Satchel Paige

Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow
By James Sturm and Rich Tommaso

Leroy "Satchel" Paige was the most popular, highest paid and most photographed baseball player in the Negro League from the 1920s to the 1940s.  Satchel Paige was a master pitcher who got the crowds laughing with his warm-up tricks and jokes.  This was all during a time in U.S. history when African American athletes were not allowed to play on the same teams as white athletes--so they formed their own professional leagues.  This graphic novel tells the story of one great ball player and the obstacles he overcame because he loved the game so much.

Blood and Chocolate

 

Blood and Chocolate
By Annette Curtis Klause

16-year-old Vivian is a beautiful, strong and confident high school student--and a sleek werewolf by night.  When she falls in love with a boy at school, a "meat-boy," her life gets more complicated.  She must decide whether or not to share her real identity with gentle Aiden, and what consequences this could have for the rest of her pack...
Recommended for ages 13 and up.

Notes from a Liar and her Dog

Notes from a Liar and her Dog
By Gennifer Choldenko

I really enjoyed this funny, realistic story about a girl struggling with her place in her family, and who loves her dog above all else.  Here's a brief summary from KidsReads.com:
Twelve-year-old Antonia MacPherson, better known as Ant, is having a tough time. She's the middle child, right in between older sister "Your Highness Elizabeth" and younger sibling "Katherine the Great." At this point, Ant's dog Pistachio and her best friend Harrison are the only beings that matter to her. And it certainly helps that Ant is a quick thinker and a great liar --- skills that get her through and create some good laughs. But one of Ant's teachers suspects there's some hidden truth behind the lies. Will she discover it? 

Malcolm X

Malcolm X:  By Any Means Necessary
By Walter Dean Myers

Walter Dean Myers has written a fascinating account of the life--and death--of one of the greatest and most influential but also most controversial leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.
Malcolm X was the "militant leader of hundreds of thousands in the Nation of Islam, a Muslim minister, a target of the F.B.I., a guest of Arab princes, at one time a streetwise, blade-sharp teenager" on the streets of Harlem.  He spent 6 1/2 years in prison as a young man, and used that time to read and learn, emerging as a powerful force for change in the years afterward.

Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World

Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World:  The Extraordinary True Story of Shackleton and the Endurance
By Jennifer Armstrong

Talk about incredible survival stories...talk about serious misery, crazy subzero conditions, a diet of penguin and seals for months, blizzards and toppling icebergs, tippy, leaking lifeboats, and mountaineering feats up and down sheer glacial ice...Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 28 men survived against all odds--and then some--during a failed trans-Antarctic expedition in 1915.  This book will truly make you feel lucky to have a warm bed and a hot shower.  Marvel at the photos that somehow survived the many different disasters this brave, strong crew endured...this is a story you will never forget once you hear it.