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6 books to help young readers learn about Black history
Brittni Robertson Powell, with the New Orleans-based bookstore Baldwin & Co. looks through her choice for Black History Month: I Am Ruby Bridges.
Aubri Juhasz /Aubri Juhasz
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Brittni Robertson Powell, with the New Orleans-based bookstore Baldwin & Co. looks through her choice for Black History Month: I Am Ruby Bridges.
Aubri Juhasz /Aubri Juhasz
Each February, the U.S. honors the contributions and sacrifices of African Americans who have shaped the nation. If you’re struggling with the best way to educate children about Black history, this month or year-round, experts often suggest turning to literature to assist.
Books can help children engage with all kinds of history, but can be particularly helpful for the nuanced aspects of Black history, said Meg Medina, an award-winning children’s author and the 2023-2024 National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature.
“I think when we give kids really rich texts, and trust them with the information, trust them to be curious, allow them to follow their curiosity, we do them an enormous service,” she said.
And 2024 is a wonderful time to find the best texts to do this, Medina said.
“I tell people we are in a golden age of children’s books. So many incredible people are producing really meaningful work that respects kids intelligence, respects their curiosity,” she said.
Here are six picks for Black History Month reading, recommended by authors, librarians and book shop employees, appropriate for a range of ages from toddlers to teens.
Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden recommends A Library and Bright April
Dr. Carla Hayden, the nation’s Librarian of Congress, holds her picks for Black History Month reading: A Library and Bright April.
Jaclyn Diaz/NPR
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As the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden oversees the national library of the United States, which contains a collection of approximately 164 million items. For Black History Month, she has two recommendations for children — firstly, A Library by Nikki Giovanni, with colorful illustrations by Erin K. Robinson.
“It’s a book that I would recommend for anyone, and particularly though, in Black History Month because it features a young African American girl and she takes so many adventures through books. And to have a young African American child having those adventures in a library at this time is very significant when so many things are being challenged,” Hayden said.
“Books can do so much. And during Black History Month, I think we owe it to the young people in our lives to introduce them to that free resource: The library,” Hayden said. “I’m a little prejudiced.”
Hayden shows a photo of herself as a young girl who loved the book Bright April.
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Hayden shows a photo of herself as a young girl who loved the book Bright April.
Jaclyn Diaz
She said A Library also reminded her of her second pick, a lifelong favorite book of hers, Bright April by Marguerite de Angeli.
The book, published in 1946, is about a young African American girl named April who experiences racial prejudice for the first time. The main character has pigtails and is a Brownie — a Girl Scout in the second or third grade of elementary school — which blew the mind of a young Hayden, who also was a Brownie with pigtails.
Bright April “even now makes me smile, because it was the first time I saw myself in a book,” she said. “I thought that I was April.”
She now owns a well-worn copy of the book, which serves as an important reminder: “It’s important during African American History Month, too, that we present materials, especially for children, where they can have windows on the world, of course, but also mirrors and they see themselves.”
Brittni Robertson Powell, a bookstore program director, recommends I Am Ruby Bridges
Brittni Robertson Powell, with the bookstore Baldwin & Co. in New Orleans, holds her pick, I Am Ruby Bridges.
Aubri Juhasz /Aubri Juhasz
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“I didn’t know what being the first really meant until the day I arrived,” Ruby Bridges writes in I Am Ruby Bridges, channeling the voice of her 6-year-old self.
Brittni Robertson Powell, program director for the New Orleans bookstore Baldwin & Co., said she picked the picture book to highlight her hometown’s not-so-distant history.
“Ruby is younger than my mom,” Robertson Powell said. “How is that possible?”
Robertson Powell said she and her 10-year-old son regularly drive past the New Orleans elementary school Bridges integrated in 1960 in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education.
“I told him, ‘This is where it happened.’ He cannot fathom that,” she said.
They recently read Bridge’s book together, and since then, he’s been applying the story to his own life, she said. When someone didn’t want to play with him recently, “He was like, ‘I wonder if that’s how Ruby felt?,” she said.
Robertson Powell likes the lessons the book teaches — among them, to be confident, be kind and accept people who are different from you.
“I’m glad she’s penned it because it’s being told by her, as opposed to other individuals who want to tell her story,” she said.
The importance of telling your own story, she said, is an important lesson for kids. too.
Meg Medina, children’s book author, recommends Schomburg: The Man Who Built A Library
Meg Medina, the 2023 – 2024 National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature and a children’s author, holds her book choice for Black History Month.
Meg Medina
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Meg Medina
Picture books aren’t just for little kids, said Meg Medina.
That’s partially why she chose Carole Boston Weatherford’s book Schomburg: The Man Who Built A Library.
“Even though it is a picture book, I think we should think about picture books as everybody books, especially a book like this,” she said.
The book tells the story of Arturo Schomburg, a historian, writer, book collector and activist who lived during the Harlem Renaissance.
As a child, he asked a teacher why the class wasn’t learning about the contributions of Black men and women to their country. The teacher told him that Black culture had nothing worthy to preserve.
“And that horrible statement stayed with him and fueled his lifelong passion for discovering, documenting and collecting proof and evidence of Black greatness across the globe,” Medina said.
Schomburg’s initial collection of around 5,000 items eventually led to the creation of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research library within the New York Public Library which now holds about 11 million items.
The book highlights some of the many people that Schomburg collected books and other items about, including Frederick Douglass and Phillis Wheatley, who is considered the first African-American author of a published book of poetry.
He was also from Puerto Rico, born of African and German descent, so the book highlights Afro-Latino history and identity as well.
“I love the idea of intersecting identities, which sometimes get cast aside when when we’re forcing people to sort of think of their identity as one thing or another,” Medina said.
Medina said the book is a springboard for learning about a man who wanted to discover the truth about his culture and its contributions. From there, the reader can learn about the many other people Schomburg highlights in his collection.
The depth of contributions of Black Americans to the country’s history and greatness are vast, Medina said. “I think kids deserve to know those things and deserve to learn about it and at least have the information so that they themselves can become little Arturo Schomburgs.”
Juno Kling, a Denver teen librarian, recommends The Black Kids
Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library teen librarian Juno Kling holds some of her favorite books. Jan. 16, 2024.
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The Black Kids by Christina Hammonds Reed follows a Black teenager named Ashley, who attends a predominantly white high school in Los Angeles and has lived a fairly cushioned life. Then, her world is upended by the Rodney King riots, which broke out in 1992 after four L.A. policemen, three of whom were white, were acquitted for the brutal beating of King, a Black man. Afterwards, Ashley is left questioning her life, identity and her position in society.
“I feel like it’s kind of an untold story because it talks about the intersection of race and class,” said Juno Kling, a teen librarian at the Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library in Denver.
Kling said she recommends the book for teens ages 14 through 18, because it’s easy for readers to relate to Ashley, since the book reads like a memoir or autobiography. While the King riots might be a heavy topic, Kling said reading about these issues through Ashley’s eyes gives people a “safe way to interface with those difficult topics.”
“These are lived experiences that teens have and they deserve to see themselves represented,” Kling said. “For teens who don’t share those identities, they deserve to know what their peers are going through and be able to have an understanding of that.”
The book also touches on how teens inadvertently find themselves in the middle of political issues, Kling said.
“You might not set out to be an activist and be a voice but sometimes events happen in real life and you have to step up and talk about those things,” Kling said. “That’s one of my favorite things about working with teens is the way that they’re starting to find those issues that are really key and important to them…That’s the age where your identities start to get politicized and you have to react to that.”
Jameka Lewis, a Denver library branch manager, recommends ABC Black History and Me
Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library senior librarian Jameka Lewis holds some of her favorite books. Jan. 16, 2024.
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ABC Black History and Me by Queenbe Monyei is a classic ABC picture book, featuring Black historical figures for to each letter of the alphabet.
Jameka Lewis, the branch supervisor at the Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library, recommends the book for children under the age of 5, because it’s geared toward learning the alphabet while also introducing young minds to key figures in history.
“I think it’s really important that kids are able to kind of put a face with a name,” she said.
It’s also one of the few board books — tough enough to withstand a toddler’s hands and mouth — that she’s come across that feature Black characters, she said.
Lewis also loves the illustrations of the historical figures, because they show a wide variety of Black skin tones.
“This book does a really good job of just highlighting how diverse and how eclectic and how unique Black people are, in different industries and in different ways that we’ve made history,” she said
Lewis said her favorite letter in the book is “P” for president, which features former President Barack Obama and current Vice President Kamala Harris.
Desiree Mathurin is a reporter with Denverite, part of Colorado Public Radio. Aubri Juhasz is an education reporter with WWNO in New Orleans. This story is part of NPR’s collaborative initiative with member stations.
Author Julia Elliott won for her short story collection Hellions.
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Writer Julia Elliott has won this year’s Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for her short story collection Hellions. The award honors work by women and nonbinary authors in the U.S. and Canada.
Elliott, who also authored the novel The New and Improved Romie Futch and the short story collection The Wilds, is known for blending elements of Southern gothic horror, surrealism and fairy tale. Hellions, published in 2025, includes stories set against backdrops like a plague-stricken medieval convent, a feminist art colony, and small Southern towns.
“This eerie, eclectic, genre-leaping collection takes no half-measures; every sentence of Hellions crackles or crawls,” wrote the prize jury in a statement. “Here, human folly moves against a backdrop of horror and magic … But for all its wildness, there is tremendous control.”
The prize, named after a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, awards $150,000 to one winner each year. Novels, short story collections, and graphic novels by women and nonbinary authors are eligible.
This year’s finalists included Quiara Alegría Hudes (The White Hot), Lee Lai (Cannon), Megha Majumdar (A Guardian and a Thief), and Sonya Walger (Lion). They will each receive $12,500.
The Carol Shields Prize went to writer Canisia Lubrin in 2025.
You can listen to actor Donna Lynne Champlin read Elliott’s story “Hellion” on the Death, Sex & Money podcast here.
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By Helen Shaw, Vanessa Friedman, Léo Hamelin, Laura Salaberry and Sutton Raphael
June 2, 2026
At around 1 in the morning at the Sassafras Saloon in Hollywood, four masc lesbians in cowboy hats and chaps were dancing on top of the bar while bartenders attempted to continue making espresso martinis beneath them.
One performer crawled into the crowd and between the spread legs of an audience member, licking the air between their thighs. Another wrapped a belt around their girlfriend’s neck while thrusting against her to Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name.” The ravenous audience, almost entirely women, fluttered dollar bills all around, while easily filling the saloon’s 300-person capacity.
Across Los Angeles, countless strip clubs and revue shows were unfolding at that same hour, though none quite like this and likely few provoking this level of frenzy. The night had all the riotous energy of a scene from “Coyote Ugly,” with the choreographed masculinity of “Magic Mike.” Playing on the latter’s name, this was the doing of Magic Mascs, an all-masc lesbian and translesbian revue, by sapphics for sapphics.
Skye Valentinez, from left, Alexa Legend, Daddii Syd and King Captain are members of Magic Mascs, an all-masc lesbian and translesbian collective, that started in February.
“Our idea was to give lesbians what men get all the time at a strip club, but instead of just sitting around and singing ‘Pink Pony Club,’ actually going wild,” said group founder Daddii Syd, a.k.a. Syd Latimore.
The performers, self-described “daddies” — Daddii Syd, Alexa Legend, Skye Valentinez and King Captain — formed Magic Mascs in February. The performance at the Saloon was their third overall, but the group has already become an institution within lesbian nightlife in Los Angeles. They will make their debut during a Pride Month performance on Friday at Womxn Pride’s rooftop party in downtown L.A.
The members come from professional dance backgrounds. King Captain entered dance school at age 12 and taught dance for nearly a decade. Daddii Syd has danced since childhood. Alexa Legend spent years go-go dancing across clubs in the city before joining the troupe. Skye Valentinez, the baby of the group — cherub-faced, smiling through braces — is the newest to performing, though she steps into it naturally, exhibiting the same living, breathing caricature of masculinity as the rest of them.
“No one’s trying to be cisgender,” King Captain makes clear. “We’re not trying to be the kind of men who are born into and fed by patriarchy,” Daddii Syd added. “We’re redefining masculinity.”
King Captain gets their underwear stuffed with dollar bills from the crowd.
Magic Mascs’ success follows a broader trend of lesbians confidently stepping into masculinity before hungry eyes. In the past year, performative masc competitions have appeared across the country, with lesbians — hair slicked back and carabiners dangling from their Carhartt jeans — showing off in front of leering crowds. Magic Mascs feels like a more professionalized version of that phenomenon, less tongue-in-cheek — just tongue.
“We always knew there was a huge hunger for this,” Daddii Syd said.
Their first performance, in San Diego, sold out fast.
“I knew right away we were onto something special,” Daddii Syd said.
Videos of the troupe traveled far across sapphics’ algorithms, especially clips of King Captain, whose devoted fan base — known collectively as “The Castle” — make arduous trips just to see them in the flesh. One fan drove more than 20 hours from Dallas to San Diego to see Magic Mascs. Another sent an edible fruit bouquet from Australia.
Backstage, every gesture from the troupe was ultra-confident. Captain, wearing briefs stuffed with a sock full of rice, talked to me with a leg cocked on the footrest of my stool. Daddii Syd, Alexa Legend and Skye Valentinez stood pelvis-forward, hands behind their heads, flexing ropey muscles. They loved the camera, eyeing it like prey while tipping the brims of their cowboy hats. (“You guys are like the modern-day Beatles,” our photographer said.)
King Captain gets the Hollywood crowd into a frenzy during a recent show.
Everything in the show revolved around their hips. The performers rolled and glided before delivering sudden, mechanical thrusts powerful enough to rattle nearby glasses. Their bodies were taut with effort and exaggerated lust. Daddii Syd performed with her girlfriend Jamie in matching plaid, not leaving much to the imagination as they licked whipped cream off each other.
Alexa Legend, who described herself as shy offstage, eventually stripped down to nipple pasties and a cowboy hat, firing confetti from her crotch into the crowd. King Captain swerved their hips like a powerful mechanical bull. “Oh, Captain, my captain,” someone in the crowd said, hand pressed dramatically to her forehead.
They paid particular attention to a woman in a wheelchair in the crowd — typical of their performances — asking if they could sit on the wheelchair. They received keen consent. “That was, um, very nice,” she told me after, still a little lost for words.
“We’re huge on consent,” Daddii Syd said. At the start of the show, they told the crowd to cross their arms in a Wakanda Forever pose if they didn’t wish to be touched. They checked in constantly while moving through the crowd, leaning close to ask questions like, “Is this OK?” and “Anywhere you don’t like to be touched?”
Captain learned these habits through work in intimacy coordination and under the mentorship of Tonia Sina, among the first professional intimacy coordinators in Hollywood. That ethos of care extended beyond their interactions with the audience and into the way they interacted with one another offstage.
“We want everyone in the crowd to feel gorgeous,” King Captain said before the recent show at Sassafras Saloon in Hollywood.
King Captain, left, and Lauren Henson, a stage kitten for the Magic Mascs, perform together on the bar.
Forming a sanctuary for themselves was just as important to the troupe as emboldening others’ desire. “It’s hard to find other masc friends,” Daddii Syd said. “Everybody’s weirdly competitive and trying to sabotage each other.” King Captain agreed, asking: “Why can’t we all be daddies at the same time?”
Daddii Syd and King Captain, who are both in their 30s, had little butch representation or friendship growing up and they have now become something like father figures to Alexa Legend and Skye Valentinez, who are in their 20s.
“We have to protect each other,” King Captain said. “We have to look out for each other.”
Daddii Syd put her arm around Skye Valentinez and said: “Look at this beautiful baby we have.”
That tenderness carried straight into the night. There was a striking seriousness to the whole performance, which spanned from just past 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Unlike a bachelorette party or the typical male revue, there was no giggling in the room, and no wink of camp from the performers. Here was a rare claim to unabashed public sapphic desire; it was given the scale and seriousness routinely afforded to heterosexual display, like the gleeful bravado of a man striding into Hooters.
By the end of the night at Sassafras Saloon, the performers had stripped down nearly to nothing, pouring water over themselves while the audience roared. The atmosphere felt like one of collective release, a recognition that masculinity and desire don’t belong only to men — that a group of four masc lesbians can be horny, inspire horniness and ultimately stir a hysteria that once greeted Channing Tatum or even the Beatles.
It was the magnitude of the response that night at the Saloon, as on every other night they’ve performed, that’s inspiring their next moves: total domination in sum. The troupe is already planning a national tour through Florida, Dallas and Sacramento, though Daddii Syd’s ambitions extend much further.
“The idea,” she told me, “is to go global. Like a boy band.”
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