Go Forth and Tell: The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storytelller by Breanna J. McDaniel, illustrated by April Harrison

Go Forth and Tell is a luminous picture book biography about librarian and storyteller Augusta Baker, the first Black coordinator of children's services at all branches of the New York Public library

Art Club by Rashad Doucet

Drawn from the author’s childhood like New Kid, this contemporary graphic novel paints a picture of an aspiring young artist on a mission to prove that the arts are worth fighting for.
Dale Donavan has heard the same lecture over and over Art will get you nowhere in life. A kid with a creative streak, Dale wants nothing more than to doodle, play video games, and create comics forever — maybe even as a full-time job one day. But between his grandfather pushing him to focus on his studies and a school with zero interest in funding arts programs, Dale feels like his future has already been decided for him. That is until he comes up with the perfect idea. What if he starts an after-school art club, gathers a team of creative students like himself, and proves all the naysayers — his stubborn vice principal in particular — wrong? This might just work, but if the club isn’t financially successful by the end of the semester, the school with shut them down. This may be Dale’s only chance to show the adults in his life that a career as an artist is not just a dream but a possibility! 

Black Girl You Are Atlas by Renée Watson

This is a thoughtful celebration of Black girlhood by award-winning author and poet Reňe Watson. In this semi-autobiographical collection of poems, Renée Watson writes about her experience growing up as a young Black girl at the intersections of race, class, and gender. Using a variety of poetic forms, from haiku to free verse, Watson shares recollections of her childhood in Portland, tender odes to the Black women in her life, and urgent calls for Black girls to step into their power. Black Girl You Are Atlas encourages young readers to embrace their future with a strong sense of sisterhood and celebration. With full-color art by celebrated fine artist Ekua Holmes throughout, this collection offers guidance and is a gift for anyone who reads it.

Smoke Kings by Jahmal Mayfield

Nate Evers, a young Black political activist, struggles with rage as his people are still being killed in the streets 62 years after Emmett Till. When his little cousin is murdered, Nate shuns the graffiti murals, candlelight vigils, and Twitter hashtags that are commonplace after these senseless deaths. Instead, he leads three grief-stricken friends on a mission of retribution, kidnapping the descendants of long-ago perpetrators of hate crimes, confronting the targets with their racist lineages, and forcing them to pay reparations to a community fund. For three of the group members, the results mean justice; for Nate — pure revenge.

Smoke Kings is a powerful and propulsive novel with a diverse and unforgettable cast of characters. As Steph Cha's Your House Will Pay it explores decades of racial tensions through a fictional landscape where the line between justice and revenge is blurred.

Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture by Kyle Chayka

In Filterworld, Chayka traces this creeping, machine-guided curation as it infiltrates the furthest reaches of our digital, physical, and psychological spaces. With algorithms increasingly influencing not just what culture we consume, but what culture is produced, urgent questions arise: What happens when shareability supersedes messiness, innovation, and creativity-the qualities that make us human? What does it mean to make a choice when the options have been so carefully arranged for us? Is personal freedom possible on the Internet? To the last question, Filterworld argues yes — but to escape Filterworld, and even transcend it, we must first understand it.