Derrick Barnes, Scholastic Press, $17.99 (176p) ISBN 978-0-545-13573-3
Barnes (The Making of Dr. Truelove) offers an earnest story of the nascent friendship between two middle-grade boys, who have had very dissimilar upbringings despite both growing up in Kansas City and attending the same school. Brought together...
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Derrick Barnes, illus. by Gordon C. James. Bolden/Millner (PGW, dist.), $17.95 (32p) ISBN 978-1-57284-224-3
How good can a haircut make a person feel? “Magnificent. Flawless. Like royalty.” In a powerfully moving tribute to barbershop culture, Barnes (We Could Be Brothers) addresses readers directly—and it’s safe to say his audience is primarily boys of...
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Derrick D. Barnes, illus. by John John Bajet. Workman, $12.95 paper (176p) ISBN 978-1-5235-0553-1
This substantial collection of baseball lore is both comprehensible and enlightening, useful for middle grade devotees of America’s national pastime. Four sections cover Pivotal Players (“Three-Fingered Ace Mordecai Brown”), Sensational Stories (“The
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Derrick Barnes, illus. by Vanessa Brantley-Newton. Penguin/Paulsen, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-5247-4074-0
When a mother gives her son the titular nickname, it inspires him throughout his first day of school—the child imagines that a chalk-drawn crown is sitting on his head as he walks through the “towering doors” of the “grand fortress” and into his “Kin
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Derrick Barnes, illus. by Vanessa Brantley-Newton. Penguin/Paulsen, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-5931-1142-0
In this companion to the collaborators’ The King of Kindergarten, a Black girl named MJ Malone is given a tiara by her Momma and instructed in the ways of kindergarten sovereignty: “First, us queens brighten up every room we enter. Second, us queens
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Derrick Barnes, illus. by Courtney Lovett. Penguin/Paulsen, $18.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-593-53043-6
In this lively holiday read, a Black family hoping to welcome Santa to their home get more than they bargained for after his sleigh breaks down. When Santa, portrayed with brown skin and sporting jeans and tattoos, agrees to a brief vacation while...
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Derrick Barnes, illus. by Shawn Martinbrough with Adriano Lucas. Penguin/Paulsen, $18.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-5255-1874-7
Graphic novel and picture book merge in this red-hot superhero story from Barnes and Martinbrough with Lucas. On the first day at the Academy of Kids with Awesome Abilities (AKWAA), Bobby Beacon, who reads as Black, indicates that “Beacons lead...
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Derrick Barnes, illus. by Gordon C. James. Penguin/Paulsen, $17.99 ISBN 978-0-5255-1877-8
With a refrain that reads “I am,” the creators of the award–winning Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut craft an empowering ode to Black boy joy. In metaphor-driven verse, Barnes moves from the interpersonally specific (“I am that smile forming on your...
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Tommie Smith and Derrick Barnes, illus. by Dawud Anyabwile. Norton Young Readers, $22.95 (208p) ISBN 978-1-324-05215-9
With collaborators Barnes (I Am Every Good Thing) and Anyabwile (Becoming Muhammad Ali), Smith details his childhood leading up to his historic Olympic protest—and its aftermath—in this compelling graphic memoir. Before Smith, who is Black, was an...
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