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#1000BlackGirlBooks Donation Fund Drive Book List

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Written by: Kelly on February 1, 2016.

Black Girls

 

In Mid-January, a story about 11-year-old Marley Dias and her quest to collection 1000 books about black girls hit the internet. Or maybe the correct phrasing of that is that it hit the internet in a way where it picked up attention and got spread far and wide in the book community. Almost immediately, I knew I wanted to do what I could to help this fabulous girl collect the books she wanted to meet her goal.

Like last year, I thought putting it out there that I’d take up donations would work. But unlike the Some Girls Are drive, rather than collect books and send them to Marley, I opened up my Paypal account to accept donations, which I’d then funnel into sending her book after book after book.

Nearly $3000 came in from the drive, which is fabulous and powerful. I still have a couple hundred dollars left to spend, and it’s my idea to get in touch with the people behind this project and help fill in any additional holes.

One of the fun, frustrating, and challenging elements of this drive was selecting the books to send. I let anyone who donated choose a title or two (or ten, it didn’t matter!) to send, but I limited to one copy of each title. I did this knowing that some titles, like brown girl dreaming and Pointe would be requested again and again and be sent again and again. There’s nothing wrong with that in the least, especially for a library like the one Dias is working toward, but I wanted to offer a further range of titles, too. Thanks to the hard work of dedicated people like Zetta Elliott and Edi Campbell, I was able to really dig deep into the world of kid lit featuring black girls at the center of the story. In addition to utilizing their incredible resources, I tapped into the brains of Sarah Hannah Gomez, Justina Ireland, and Anne Ursu, who all provided a wealth of title ideas for sending.

Justina further pointed something out to me that I’ve been unable to stop thinking about. It only took $2500 to collect nearly every black girl book in children’s/middle grade/YA/crossover adult. These books have limited shelf lives, as numerous titles were tough to track down or required me going through third parties to collection. Do you know how sad it is to think that that amount of money is all it takes to buy nearly everything?

I’m thrilled we could do this, but it didn’t hit me how difficult finding black girl books truly was until I’d exhausted the obvious, exhausted the less obvious, and still have some money left over to find further titles.  I am eager to see how Marley completes this dream of hers, as well as what her library will look like, but I’m also saddened to see so clearly the very thing she was talking about (and that so many others have and continue talking about): these books are not out there, not obvious, and that needs to change. I also ran into seeing just how few graphic novels offer black girls at the center of the story.

As promised, here’s a round-up of nearly everything I purchased for #1000BlackGirlBooks. This list is so long and took a long time to compile, so forgive any errors or mistakes. I’m doing what I can to designate titles by category — picture books and early readers, middle grade, YA, adult, and graphic novel. I’ve starred titles within each of those categories that are non-fiction, and all links will take you to Amazon. I’m choosing to do it that way because I’m using Amazon as my way of gauging ages for some of the titles, and it’s where I made my purchases for Marley because of the ability to track purchases and ensure quick delivery.

I used my librarian brain when buying these, knowing these will be used in libraries. That means there are award winners here, as well as popular books, as well as pop culture leaning title. This is a mix of a little of everything, just as it should be.

Ready? Here we go.

 

Picture Books/Early Reader Titles

 

 

Middle Grade (some are higher level and some lower)

 

 

Young Adult

 

 

Adult (with crossover appeal)

 

 

Graphic Novels

 

 

Comments

  1. Barefoot books publishes a number of childreN’s/picture books featuring black girls. Ruby’s sleepover is one of my favorites! (Ruby appears in two otheR books as well.)

  3. Hi, Kelly. Look on Amazon for books by Ann Jonas. I remember back in the olden days (ask Kimberly), when I was a Youth Librarian, I used to use her books for storytime a lot. She regularly had black girls, especially, as her mail character.

  4. A few more recommendations:

    Flake, Sharron G. The Unstoppable Octobia May
    Vigilante, Danette. Saving baby Doe
    Woodson , Jacqueline. The Show way
    Zettel, Sarah: Bad luck girl
    _______________ : Dust GIRL
    _______________: Golden Girl

  5. No idea if it’s still in print but Every time a rainbow dies by rita williams-garcia was one of my favorites as a teen.

  6. PB: ME AND MOMMA AND BIG JOHN by Mara Rockliff is about a woman who was a stonemason for the Cathedral of St John the Divine – it’s beautiful.

    MG: STELLA BY STARLIGHT by Sharon M. Draper

    YA:
    LITTLE WHITE LIES by Brianna Baker and F. Bowman Hastie – Feb 9
    Having achieved fame and thousands of followers with her Tumblr expose of her brilliant-yet-clueless parents, a seventeen-year-old African American honors student tries to keep secret that her microblog is ghostwritten by a forty-one-year-old white man.

  7. check out Lola at the library, Lola loves stories, Lola reads to leo, Lola plants a garden, leo loves babytime, leo can swim.

  8. A few more Picture Book recommendations: grace at christmas by Mary Hoffman, beauty and the beast by H. chuku Lee / Pat Cummings, grace for president by kelly dipucchio, beatrice’s goat by page mcbrier, Come On Rain by Karen hesse, and keisha ann can! by daniel kirk.

  9. Angela Johnson has written dozens of picture books and juvenile chapter books starring black children and their families. While you have several of her chapter books on the list, there are some great picture books as well! ^_^

    Other picture books to try:
    “Queen of the Scene” by Queen Latifah
    “Please Puppy Please” by Spike Lee
    “Emi’s Curly Coily, Cotton Candy Hair” by Tina Olajide
    “The Bus Ride” By William Miller
    “singing With Mama Lou” by
    “Children of Long Ago” By Lessie Jones Little, Eloise Greenfield
    “Black All Around” By Patricia Hubbell
    “Saturday at The New You” by Barbara E. Barber

    Juvenile chapter books:
    “Allie’s Basketball Dream” By Barbara E. Barber
    “Sugarplum Ballerina” series by Whoopi Goldberg has about six books; you’ve got two listed.
    “Daja’s Book” by Tamora Pierce (part of a series with three other protagonists)

  10. + books to add:

    • Vision of Beauty, 2012
    • A VOICE OF HER OWN
    • NOBODY OWNS THE SKY, 1998

  12. Are you only doing new/recent releases? Because the list is missing a lot of what the amazing Virginia Hamilton wrote!!. She was a staple when I was growing up in the 90s.

  13. i LOve the Anna Hibicus series. Two thoughts on these books. 1. They are sold through Usborne Books & More and can be bought new at a better price through a consultant (the complete collection is $20 through a consultant). 2. These books are endanger of going out of print as not enough are sold. These books are beautiful stories of life an Africa told from the perspective of a strong African girl. These are books that I have bought for my 2 year old daughter because I don’t want her to miss out on these beautiful stories. The author has also written a series of books for obys that is alost copletely out of print. I am on a SAVE ANNA HIBISCUS mission :)!

  17. I didn’t see the addy books (the american girl series) which was one of my favorites growing up. I read them to my daughters and they love them. All of the american girl books were good, but addy was special. It’s on my list of black girl books for sure

  18. Flower Garden by Eve Bunting iS a really sweet picture book for very young children, loved reading it to my little sister!

  19. oTHER SUGGESTIONS:
    pLANET MIDDLE SCHOOl BY NIKKI GRIMES
    MARISOL AND MAGDALENA BY VERONICA CHAMBERS
    THE TROUBLE WITH HALF A MOON BY DANETTE VIGILANTE (SAVING BABY DOE HAS A MALE Mc)

  20. By “Black” are you limiting it to African-American? I have a decent-sized list of books by and about Indigenous Australian women I could suggest.

    (If this comes out in ALLCAPS, I apologise – I’m typing it in regular type, I swear.

  21. I remember reading “amazing grace” by mary hoffman when i was a child, which i adored. i think its available on amazon.

  22. Please add _Song of the Trees_ by Mildred D Taylor to your youngest children’s section. It’s a prequel, of sorts, to _roll of Thunder_ and Cassie Deborah Logan is telling us the story. (While it has pictures, it’s more of a not-quite-chapter-book. I read it when I was too old for a book like this, but it’s still among my favorites)

    My daughter is 5 going on 6 and she loves the _katie Fry: Private Eye_ books from Katherine Cox (published by Scholastic Press). There are two – _The Lost Kitten_ and _The Missing Fox_ -, but we really hope there will be more!!

    Also by Mildred D Taylor in the YA area are _Let the Circle Be Unbroken_ and _The Road to Memphis_ which further the story that _Roll of Thunder_ begins. I think there are more Logan family novels, but I haven’t read them. (More’s the pity! Taylor had a way of telling these wonderful stories about an absolutely amazing family. Reading her novels helped me reach outside my own experience, which was very important, seeing as how I’m a white kid from a very white suburb.)

  23. This is a great list. I will for sure be using it (and the comments section) as a reference when adding to my to-read pile.

    Some books that areN’t on your list yet:

    Tangi’s Teardrops by Liz Grace Davis
    Amber and the Hidden City by Davis John Milton
    The Blossoming Universe of Violet Diamond by Brenda Woods
    Hush by Jacqueline Woodson

  25. Hi Kelly:

    Thanks for this informative blogpost. $2500 is not a lot of money, but it’s more than libraries are willing to spend to give black girls some space on the shelves.

    this list of books will be especially useful to me for the annual book drive that I do to support granville reading & art programme, a community-based literacy program in jamaica. usually, I do a call for books for children, but this year I only want donations of books about people of color. after having collected a few thousand books over the past five years, the number of works that feature children of color from around the world is less than adequate. this is especially important, given who the intended readers are.

    Keep up the good work!

    • “$2500 is not a lot of money, but it’s more than libraries are willing to spend to give black girls some space on the shelves” <-- that is one of the most painful, truthful comments.

  28. Since stated you have some money left I have four titles you could add by independent authours:
    nappy & i am barack obama & i dream for You a World: A Covenant for Our Children by charisse carney-nunes and miles & maya’s countdown to big dreams by michelle muhammad

  29. This list is wonderful.
    I work in a public school, is there a list of books that includes some black boys and hispanic kids and asian kids, too?

  30. Thanks for the list and other people’s good suggestions.

    Its great to read about famous people, but its also good to read about ordinary people who are special because they are good not famous.

    Uncle Jed’s Barbershop by Margaree King Mitchell
    Jamela’s Dress by Niki Daly