When an asteroid has an 84.7% chance of colliding with the Earth in four days, eleven-year-old Kemi, who loves scientific facts and probability, assembles a time capsule to capture her family's truth as she tries to come to terms with saying goodbye.

In this most intimate portrait yet of a great American hero, 'the lady who wouldn't give up her seat on the bus,' the family of Rosa Parks describes the woman who was not only the mother of the civil rights movement, but a nurturing mother figure to them as well. Her brave act on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, was just one moment in a life lived with great humility and decency. In Our Auntie Rosa, Mrs. Parks's loved ones share...

"Taja Brown, growing up in a conservative and tightly knit African American family, battles family expectations to discover a sense of self and find her unique voice and purpose"--

Told from multiple points of view, a white family on a 1959 road trip between Ohio and Florida, visiting Civil War battlefields along the way, crosses paths with a black family near Atlanta, where one of their children has gone missing.

"This is a memoir of George's boyhood in New Jersey, growing up with their brother and two cousins, all under the supervision of their larger-than-life grandmother"-- George, Garrett, Rall, and Rasul were raised by Nanny, their fiercely devoted grandmother. The boys hold one another close through early brushes with racism, memorable experiences at the family barbershop, and first loves and losses. And with Nanny at their center, they are never broken....

It is 1983 and Vanessa Martin, a thirteen-year-old African American girl in Newark's public housing, dreams of following in the footsteps of the first black Miss America, Vanessa Williams; but the odds are against her until a new teacher at school organizes a beauty pageant and encourages Vanessa to enter.

Amara visits her father's family in Harlem for her twelfth birthday, hoping to better understand her family and herself, but New York City is not what she expected.--

The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

Twelve-year-old Li'l T and his family face great losses caused by Hurricane Katrina, including leaving Buddy, their very special, three-legged dog, behind when they must evacuate.