Multicultural Stories

Esperanza Ortega possesses all the treasures a young girl could want: fancy dresses; a beautiful home filled with servants in the bountiful region of Aguascalientes...

Celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Newbery and Coretta Scott King Honoree about an unforgettable family on a road-trip during one of the most important times in the civil rights movement....

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was only 25 when he helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott and was soon organizing black people across the country in support of the right to vote, desegregation, and other basic civil rights....

Island of the Blue Dolphins is the remarkable story of a strange and beautiful Indian girl who lives a serene and courageous life as the solitary survivor on a rocky island off the California coast...

It all started with a birthday present that Omri didn't want: a small plastic Indian that was no use to him at all. But an old wooden cupboard and a special key brought his unusual toy to life...

Set in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, this is the story of one family's struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and independence in the face of racism and social injustice....

Even as a child, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shocked by the terrible and unfair way African-American people were treated. When he grew up, he decided to do something about it - peacefully, with powerful words....

Elaine Harlowe has manipulated her way into becoming prime minister, using her mind control ability to force the Bureau to take up her vicious grudge against magiciankind.

Mia Tang has a lot of secrets. She lives in a motel, not a big house. Every day, while her immigrant parents clean the rooms, 10-year-old Mia manages the front desk of the Calivista Motel and tends to its guests. Her parents hide immigrants. The mean motel owner can't find out....

In her own award-winning style, Sharon Creech intricately weaves together two tales....

This biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. brings his life and the profound nature of his message to young children through his own words....

When ten-year-old Lina Gao steps off the plane in Los Angeles, it’s her first time in America and the first time seeing her parents and her little sister in five years! She’s been waiting for this moment every day while she lived with her grandmother in Beijing....

She was named Omakakiins, or Little Frog, because her first step was a hop. Omakakiins and her family live on an island in Lake Superior. Though there are growing numbers of white people encroaching on their land, life continues much as it always has....

When Amos Fortune was only 15 years old, he was captured by slave traders and brought to Massachusetts, where he was sold at auction....

Two boys - one white, one Indian American - gain strength from each other from afar as they struggle to navigate middle school, family, and friendships....

At first, beautiful, hardworking Tiana is not impressed when she meets spoiled Prince Naveen. But when the two of them are transformed into frogs, they quickly realize that they will have to learn to like each other, warts and all, if they hope to get out of the Louisiana bayou alive....

Humanity has nearly destroyed its world through global warming, but now an even greater evil lurks. The indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream....

Under the cover of night, 12-year-old Homer flees Southerland Plantation with his little sister Ada, unwillingly leaving their beloved mother behind. Much as he adores her and fears for her life, Homer knows there’s no turning back....

Award-winning author of The Undefeated Kwame Alexander presents a celebration of the history of Black music in America.

A companion book for young listeners based on 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, the groundbreaking best seller by Charles C. Mann....

Ghost. Lu. Patina. Sunny. Four kids from wildly different backgrounds. But they are also four kids chosen for an elite middle school track team....

But by the time the castaways arrive on a small island, Phillip's head injury has made him blind and dependent on Timothy....

In this galvanizing original poem by presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman, girls and girlhood are celebrated in their many forms, all beautiful, not for how they look but for how they look into the face of fear.

This “timely and compelling” (Kirkus Reviews) middle grade novel about courage, hope, and resilience follows an Asian American boy fighting to keep his family together and stand up to racism during the initial outbreak of the coronavirus....

The letter waits in a book, in a box, in an attic, in an old house in Lambert, South Carolina. It's waiting for Candice Miller. When Candice finds the letter, she isn't sure she should read it. It's addressed to her grandmother....

Who are we? We are a billion voices, bright and brave; we are light, standing together in the fight. Girls are strong and powerful alone, but even stronger when they work to uplift one another. In this galvanizing original poem by presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman, girls and girlhood are celebrated in their many forms, all beautiful, not for how they look but for how they look into the face of fear. Creating a rousing rallying cry, Gorman reminds us how girls have shaped our history while marching boldly into the future.

Listen to the sound of survival, courage, and democracy—the soundtrack of America. Hear Billie Holiday's raspy, mournful voice, and tap your foot to Louis Armstrong's trumpet. Scream with James Brown and bop your head to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Can you spot the 80+ references to artists like Robert Johnson, Ella Fitzgerald, Jimi Hendrix, Whitney Houston, Lauryn Hill, and Beyonce?

Some kids have one job: to be a kid! Cecilia has two. When she isn't on the soccer field scoring goals, she's accompanying her parents to all kinds of grown-up places, like the DMV, the accountant's office, and the auto shop. She helps them translate from Spanish to English and from English to Spanish. It’s an important job, and it can even be fun. It’s also hard work. Sometimes Cecilia's second job is so much responsibility, it feels like she'll split in two! Is it time for Cecilia to blow her whistle and call for a time-out?

Hace mucho tiempo—a long time ago—there lived a beautiful young woman named Adelita. So begins the age-old tale of a kindhearted young woman, her jealous stepmother, two hateful stepsisters, and a young man in search of a wife. The young man, Javier, falls madly in love with beautiful Adelita, but she disappears from his fiesta at midnight, leaving him with only one clue to her hidden identity: a beautiful rebozo—shawl. With the rebozo in place of a glass slipper, this favorite fairy tale takes a delightful twist. This is a Cinderella story like no other.

It’s 1889, barely twenty-five years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and a young Black family is tired of working on land they don’t get to own. So when Will and his father hear about an upcoming land rush, they set out on a journey from Texas to Oklahoma, racing thousands of others to the place where land is free—if they can get to it fast enough. But the journey isn’t easy—the terrain is rough, the bandits are brutal, and every interaction carries a heavy undercurrent of danger.

Before he became the president, Barack Obama was a little boy called Barry. Amid a happy childhood, he also yearned for a better understanding of Black history and culture, and a better sense of his own identity as a Black American. Spurred by conversations around race, injustice, and inequality, he became a community organizer, practiced civil rights law, and was elected to the US Senate. “Yes we can!” became a rallying cry for his message of hope and change throughout the 2008 presidential election—which resulted in Barack Obama becoming the first Black president of the United States.

We are living in the civil rights movement of our day. But the challenges of the present call us to remember the past. Throughout American history, there has always been a resilient group of people who, motivated by their faith, resisted oppression and pushed for greater equality and liberty for all. From well-known figures like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Harriet Tubman, to those time has nearly forgotten, all these people tapped into an abiding spirit of justice to pursue the dignity of all people.

The fight for civil rights in America didn’t begin in the 1960s—Black Americans have been working for justice, freedom, and equality since the first slave ships came to its shores. In I Am the Spirit of Justice, Jemar Tisby demonstrates that that arc of history bends toward equality. Throughout, the spirit of justice is personified as it moves through time, loving the oppressed and supporting the freedom fighters. The poetic text not only informs listeners of the countless and often nameless people who have taken up the fight, it also inspires them to continue working for equality for all.

As school begins in 1963, Cooper Dale wrestles with what it means to “shine” for a black girl in a predominantly white community near Pittsburgh. Set against the historic backdrop of the Birmingham church bombing, the Kennedy assassination, and Beatlemania, Radiant is a finely crafted novel in verse about race, class, faith, and finding your place in a loving family and a complicated world.

Ajay Anthonipillai has a million-dollar problem. Ajay has lived his life dutifully following the rules set by his Tamil parents. Rule #3: Straight As only. Rule #5: There is no such thing as a no-homework day. Rule #10: Never watch scary movies. However, moving to a new school gives Ajay a new rule to follow: Get on seventh-grade all-star Jacob Underson’s good side. When Jacob asks him to steal a Mercury bar from Scary Al’s convenience store, Ajay feels this is his chance to finally “get cool” and stop eating alone.