Showing results by narrator "Sisi Aisha Johnson" in All Categories

Best-selling author Benilde Little is acclaimed for her funny and compassionate novels. Her Good Hair was selected as one of the 10 best books of 1996 by the Los Angeles Times. In Who Does She Think She Is? she weaves a rich tale of three generations of women. Twenty-six-year-old Aisha is about to wed a wealthy white man. But when she has second thoughts, she, her mother, and her grandmother confront the universal truths that tie lovers and families together.

When Kaelyn and her friends reached Toronto with a vaccine for the virus that has ravaged the population, they thought their journey was over - but hope has eluded them once again. Now there is a dangerous group of survivors intent on tracking them down and stealing the cure no matter the costs. Forced onto the road again, Kaelyn redoubles her efforts to find a safe haven. But when the rest of her group starts to fall apart, the chances for her success grow slim. Kaelyn's resolve is strong, but is she willing to surrender everything in order to stay alive?

Patricia C. McKissack’s books have received numerous awards, including the Coretta Scott King, Newbery Honor, and the Caldecott Medal. She teams up with storyteller Onawumi Jean Moss for this suspenseful, but not too scary, story taken from Gullah folklore. Left home alone because of a stomachache, Precious cleverly outwits the Boo Hag by singing her own wonderful little song.

When a 14-year-old girl is the alleged victim of a terrible act of racial violence, the incident shocks and galvanizes her community, exacerbating the racial tension that has been simmering in this New Jersey town for decades. In this magisterial work of fiction, Joyce Carol Oates explores the uneasy fault lines in a racially troubled society. In such a tense, charged atmosphere, Oates reveals that there must always be a sacrifice - of innocence, truth, trust, and, ultimately, of lives.

When Marisol sets out to create a sky for the class mural she discovers the blue missing from her paints. This story celebrates the creative process and what it means to be an artist.

A lush, glittering short story collection exploring female obsession and desire by an award-winning author Roxane Gay calls "a consummate storyteller." From Kentucky to the California desert, these 42 short stories - ranging from the '80s and '90s to present day - expose the hearts of girls and women in moments of obsessive desire and fantasy, wildness and bad behavior, brokenness and fearlessness, and more.

What's a Brooklyn girl to do when her best friend is away for the whole summer? Aimless and unhappy with her new foster mother, Kate falls into the hands of a stylish It Chick who whips her into fashionable shape. Armed with new confidence and a game plan to get her man, Kate quickly falls under her new bestie's bad influence. Told through Kate's witty, fearless point of view, this two-in-one edition of Hot Girl and Bad Boy present powerful stories from an important voice in young-adult fiction.

"HEY! What are you guys doing?" "We're going to metamorphosize." "Meta-WHAT-now?" "Transform into butterflies." "Right. Right. I knew that... WAIT?! You're telling me I can become a BUTTERFLY?" "Yes." "With wings?" "Yes." "Wait for ME!!"​​​​​​​ Ross Burach's hilarious, tongue-in-cheek exploration of metamorphosis will make you flutter with glee, while also providing real facts about how caterpillars transform into butterflies.

Change and transitions are hard, but Goodbye, Friend! Hello, Friend! demonstrates how, when one experience ends, it opens the door for another to begin. It follows two best friends as they say goodbye to snowmen and hello to stomping in puddles. They say goodbye to long walks, butterflies, and the sun...and hello to long evening talks, fireflies, and the stars. But the hardest goodbye of all comes when one of the friends has to move away. Feeling alone isn't easy, and sometimes new beginnings take time.

Award-winning author Janice N. Harrington presents a book about a spunky girl with a bad habit. Meet the Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County. Almost the first thing she thinks about every morning is chasing the farm’s chickens. She sneaks up on them real slow, then...SQUAWK! But the Chicken-Chasing Queen is about to learn why the prettiest hen on the farm doesn’t want to get caught.

Frankie Sparks can't wait to enter the town-wide sled design contest. With the help of a team, she must design and build a sled using only cardboard and duct tape. And there are PRIZES!

Angelica Marie Hutcherson only agreed to write 250 words on the Academic Battle for the Homecoming Edition of the school's newspaper because the editor won't accept any of her other stories. But as Angelica starts to do her research, she comes to a startling realization: The Academic Battle, the Homecoming game, and the class election have all accidentally been scheduled on the same day, and it's too late to do anything about it!

Jack Lee is a white lawyer from Freeman County, Virginia, who has never done anything to push back against racism, until he decides to represent Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with killing an elderly and wealthy white couple. Doubting his decision, Lee fears that his legal skills may not be enough to prevail in a case where the odds are already stacked against both him and his client. And he quickly finds himself out of his depth when he realizes that what is at stake is far greater than the outcome of a murder trial.

Lucy is over-the-moon excited when her aunt gives her a card—the plastic kind!—for her birthday. She knows just what to spend it on. But using the card isn’t as easy as Lucy thought, and she leaves the store empty-handed. Can Lucy and her best friend, Julian, figure out how to fix her financial crisis?

It’s springtime in Ms. Cupid’s class, and the entire class is excited to build their very own leprechaun traps. Maybe, if they catch one, they will all get the gift of good luck! And after a few magical clues, it looks like there might be a leprechaun on the loose in Frankie Sparks’s house! Her best friend, Maya, is convinced the leprechaun exists, but Frankie has her doubts - especially when it feels like every trap she designs fails! Will Frankie and Maya find their lucky charm, or figure out how to create some luck all on their own?

Culture shock knocks city girl Agnes "Nes" Murphy-Pujols off-kilter when she's transplanted mid-senior year from Brooklyn to a small Southern town after her mother's relationship with a coworker self-destructs. On top of the move, Nes is nursing a broken heart and severe homesickness, so her plan is simple: keep her head down, graduate, and get out. Too bad that flies out the window on day one, when she opens her smart mouth and pits herself against the school's reigning belle and the principal. Her rebellious streak attracts the attention of local golden boy Doyle Rahn.

Assalamu Alaikum, Sister. Welcome. Ameena feels invisible. Ever since she arrived at her school a few months ago, kids look at her like she’s something strange. Is it because of the twists in her hair? Or her brown skin? Then, one day, there’s a new new kid in class. Ameena sees her. Sees her brownness. Sees her hijab. Sees her in ways that the other kids do not. Ameena wants to be her friend … but she doesn’t know how. She can’t seem to find the right words … until one day, when they find those words together.

A fierce teen game developer battles a real-life troll intent on ruining the Black Panther-inspired video game she created and the safe community it represents for black gamers. By day, 17-year-old Kiera Johnson is a college student and one of the only black kids at Jefferson Academy. By night, she joins hundreds of thousands of black gamers who duel worldwide in the secret online role-playing card game Slay.

During a visit to her grandma's house, a young girl discovers a box of poems in the attic - poems written by her mother when she was growing up. Her mother's family often moved around the United States and the world because her father was in the air force. Over the years her mother used poetry to record her experiences in the many places the family lived. Reading the poems and sharing those experiences through her mother's eyes, the young girl feels closer to her mother than ever before.

Kaia is the brave type. Like hottest-hot-pepper brave. But there is one thing that scares her: bees! And right now, thousands of bees live on her roof because Kaia's dad is a beekeeper. Her dad says that the world needs bees and that’s why they are beekeepers. But only he goes on the roof, not Kaia - unless she can find a way to be the brave girl she always says she is. Kaia’s small courageous steps - and her tiny insect neighbors - are depicted with great empathy and charm.