Category: Nonfiction

Biography, Nonfiction

Alexander Hamilton’s Guide to Life by Jeff Wisler

Michelle

Ages 14+

hamilton

Wisler chronicles Hamilton’s life by taking lessons and advice that we can learn from everything he did and the way he lived his own life. Hamilton was a scrappy orphan who had an insatiable hunger for learning. He read everything he could get his hands on, and then he wrote as much as he could. Helping win the Revolutionary War, ratifying the Constitution and creating the country’s financial system were just some of the things that Alexander Hamilton accomplished. Wisler explains Hamilton’s basic maxims, as Hamilton liked to say, for anyone who wants success in money, romance or a good fight. Hamilton was a man before his time, and people of all generations will learn from him for years to come.

Biography, Nonfiction

Presenting Buffalo Bill: The Man Who Invented the Wild West by Candace Fleming

Michelle

Grades 6-9

buffalo-bill

This biography explains, in simple terms, what exactly Buffalo Bill Cody did in his day. The author explains both what Buffalo Bill said about himself as well as what is known about him historically. The book is filled with photos, memorabilia from shows and drawings to illustrate Cody’s shows.

Nonfiction

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…and the Rest of Y’all, Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education by Christopher Emdin

Michelle

Ages 16+

for-white-folks

This book sheds light on what it’s like to teach in city schools. The author combines his real life experience as a teacher in New York City with the research he did in order to present a new approach to teaching in an urban setting. As a man of color who felt invisible in his own school days, Emdin encourages teachers to respect the background of each child and to get students involved in their own learning. He presents his theory of Reality
Pedagogy and provides tools that teachers can use to build a community-like structure inside the classroom.

Award/Honor Books, Nonfiction

Freedom in Congo Square by Carole Boston Weatherford

Michelle

Grades 1-3

freedom

This nonfiction book tells the hopeful story of how hard-working slaves got through their week by looking forward to Sunday, when they could relax and have fun in 19th century Louisiana’s Congo Square. The book narrates what they had to do each day of the week in a poetic manner.

This is a 2017 Caldecott Honor book.

This is a 2017 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor book.

Nonfiction

Blink by Malcom Gladwell

Michelle

Ages 16+
blink
Blink is a book that examines how we analyze and make decisions in an instant – in the blink of an eye. We are thinking without thinking, but are things really as simple as they seem? There is a cast of characters in Blink who are able to understand and predict things about people while only having assessed the situation for a few seconds. How are they able to do this? Gladwell explains that it has to do with the art of “thin-slicing,” or picking the variables that matter from the ones that don’t.

Nonfiction

The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth & Harlem’s Greatest Bookstore by Vaunda Micheax Nelson

Michelle

Grades 2-3

book itch

The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth & Harlem’s Greatest Bookstore by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson tells the true story of how the National Memorial African Bookstore came to be. The narrator, Louie, tells the story of how his father, Lewis Michaux Sr. opened the bookstore. He did it so that people would be able to read, talk and learn from books and each other. Read The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth & Harlem’s Greatest Bookstore by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson to find out how one very special bookstore changed lives.