Kids Book Index
l, Chanel Miller
Ten-year-old Magnolia Wu calls herself a sock detective at her parents’ New York City laundromat. She wants to reunite every lone sock left there with the customer it belongs to. Magnolia pins the misplaced socks to a bulletin board so customers can find them again. Her efforts turn the laundromat’s unclaimed socks into the objects of an ongoing search for their owners.
This book appears on 7 reading lists across 3 editions from 7 organizations.
BarracoonZora Neale HurstonZora Neale Hurston records Cudjo Lewis’s first-person memories of the raid that resulted in his capture and enslavement, after the Atlantic slave trade had been outlawed in the United States for fifty years. Lewis was described as the sole living person able to recount this passage of American history. Hurston later visited Plateau near Mobile, a community founded by Lewis and other people formerly enslaved from his ship.Nine to TwelveOn the same reading list for the same age or grade groupView book details
Breaking into SunlightJohn CochranReese, a seventh grader in rural North Carolina, enjoys drawing, basketball, and time with his hardworking mother and charismatic father. He comes home one day to find his father overdosing, his lips turning blue. The novel follows the family through parental addiction, including the strain it places on Reese and his mother’s decisions. Friends help them find new perspective and strength amid difficult days.Twelve to FourteenOn the same reading list for the same age or grade groupView book details
One Big Open SkyLesa Cline-Ransome, map by Allira TreeTold in verse through the voices of Lettie, her mother Sylvia, and Philomena, this novel follows Black pioneers heading west in 1879. Lettie’s father, Thomas, wants to leave Mississippi, where racism and the legacy of slavery limit the family’s possibilities, for Nebraska, which welcomes homesteaders regardless of race. Sylvia is reluctant to leave extended family, but the group sets out with other Black homesteaders. Philomena joins them in Missouri, paying to travel with the family because a teaching job awaits her in Nebraska. The journey brings uncertainty, tension, and changing family bonds.All readersOn the same reading list for the same age or grade groupView book details