Patricia C. McKissack, Author Scholastic $11.95 (108p) ISBN 978-0-590-43181-1
McKissack, winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, offers a look at Jackson that is everything a biography should be. Her presentation is up-to-date, lively, even-handed and accessible. This accomplishment is all the more impressive because the...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author Scholastic $14.95 (128p) ISBN 978-0-590-46751-3
In this intriguing historical novel, which was inspired by the author's research into her own ancestry, an African American family in Alabama takes in an Apache runaway teenager in the late 1800s. The story centers on 12-year-old Sarah Jane Crossman,
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author . Scholastic $16.99 (172p) ISBN 978-0-439-66098-3
McKissack (Porch Lies
) reaches into her own childhood to shape this immediate and affecting novel narrated by strong and smart Rosemary. She enters sixth grade in 1954, just after her Missouri town acts upon the Supreme Court school desegregation...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Frederick L. McKissack, Author, John McKissack, Author . Scholastic Press $16 (173p) ISBN 978-0-439-92983-7
Thirteen-year-old Leanna has run from slave catchers with Harriet Tubman thanks to a virtual reality history class. Yet like many people in the year 2170, she believes clones aren't human, and thus keeping them as slaves doesn't bother her.
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Fredrick McKissack, Jr., Joint Author Scholastic $4.99 (0p) ISBN 978-0-590-45736-1
Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, and many lesser-known leaders of slave rebellions are featured in this historical tribute; photographs, drawings, a timeline and a bibliography round out the volume. Ages 8-14. (Feb.)
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Fredrick McKissack, Jr., Joint Author Walker & Company $21.95 (136p) ISBN 978-0-8027-8292-2
The McKissacks (Christmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters) add to their distinguished explorations of African American history with a well-researched, informative look at the only all-black flying unit to serve in WWII. Established in...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Brian Pinkney, Illustrator Yearling Books $6.99 (166p) ISBN 978-0-679-89006-5
In these stories--""haunting in both senses of the word,"" said PW's starred review--ghosts exact vengeance for lynchings, and slaves use ancient magic to ensure their freedom; historical backdrops run from the Underground Railroad to 1960s activism.
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Floyd Cooper, Illustrator Aladdin Paperbacks $7.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-689-83262-8
In what PW called a ""tender tale of love and sacrifice,"" an African-American widow and her son trace the rhythms of their week during the early part of the 20th century. Ages 3-8. (Jan.)
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Onawumi Jean Moss, Author, Kyrsten Brooker, Illustrator , illus. by Kyrsten Brooker. Atheneum/Schwartz $16.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-689-85194-0
Newbery Honor author McKissack (The Dark-Thirty
) teams up with storyteller Moss to relay—with flair and humor—the tale of a girl with a stomachache who stays at home while her mother and brother go off to the fields to plant corn. Mama...
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Patricia C. McKissack, illus. by Leo and Diane Dillon. Random/Schwartz & Wade, $18.99 (48p) ISBN 978-0-375-84384-6
McKissack’s (The All-I’ll-Ever-Want Christmas Doll) story about a Malian boy abducted and sold into slavery has frightening moments, but carries dignity and even triumph away from them. Forceful and iconic, the Dillons’ (The Secret River) woodcut-sty
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Pat McKissack, Author, Brian Pinkney, Illustrator Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers $18.95 (128p) ISBN 978-0-679-81863-2
When I was growing up in the South, writes McKissack, we called the half hour just before nightfall the dark-thirty. Her nine stories and one poem, however, are far too good to be reserved for that special time when it is neither day nor night and...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Pat McKissack, Author, Floyd Cooper, Illustrator Atheneum Books $16.95 (32p) ISBN 978-0-689-81051-0
If Ma Dear puts on her blue apron, ""the one with the long pocket across the front,"" then young David Earl knows it must be Monday, wash day. Tuesday's yellow apron means it's ironing day; the green apron says it's Wednesday, when the laundry gets...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Pat McKissack, Author, Rachel Isadora, Illustrator Dial Books $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-8037-0250-9
Flossie carefully stores her straw doll in a hollow tree stump when Big Mama calls her away from play. She wants Flossie to deliver eggs to ""Miz Viola over at the McCutchin Place. Seem like they been troubled by a fox. Miz Viola's chickens be so...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Pat McKissack, Author, Dena Schutzer, Illustrator Dragonfly Books $6.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-679-88086-8
""Told with verve and sly wit,"" said PW in a starred review, ""this exuberant bayou tale admirably captures the captivating regional cadences and comedy of [an] intrepid fisher boy's adventures.... A splendid collaboration."" Ages 5-9. (June)
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Pat McKissack, Author, Gordon C. James, Illustrator , illus. by Gordon C. James. Viking $14.99 (112p) ISBN 978-0-670-06011-5
McKissack kicks off the engaging Scraps of Time series with this chapter book, which opens as cousins explore their grandmother Gee's attic, filled with "scraps of time." One such scrap, a menu from The Monkey Bar in Nashville, sparks...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Pat McKissack, Author, Giselle Potter, Illustrator Atheneum Books $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-689-82668-9
""Speak the truth and shame the devil,"" says Libby Louise Sullivan's mother after Libby Louise tells her a fib. Her own shame far outweighs the punishment dealt out by her mother, and Libby Louise vows, ""From now on, only the truth."" But the girl'
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Pat McKissack, Author, Jerry Pinkney, Illustrator Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers $17 (32p) ISBN 978-0-394-88765-4
As a prefatory note explains, this picture book was inspired by a photo of the author's grandparents winning a cakewalk``a dance rooted in Afro-American culture''and her grandfather's boast that, in her dancing, his wife had captured the wind. In...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Dena Schutzer, Illustrator Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers $16 (0p) ISBN 978-0-679-80692-9
Down in Louisiana, young Hugh Thomas has heard many a tale of the extraordinary goings-on in the Bayou Clapateaux--``a mighty peculiar place.'' Given the stories of 500-pound turkeys, lamps that never burn out and snakes that take to their legs and...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Bob Barner, Illustrator , illus. by Bob Barner. Holiday $16.95 (32p) ISBN 978-0-8234-1748-3
McKissack (Precious and the Boo Hag
) presents a fanciful bedtime rhyme: "There's a once-upon-a-place/ in time and space/ where surprises grow on trees/ And crocs have wings." Barner (Dem Bones
) depicts the imaginary animals cavorting...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Fredrick McKissack, Jr., Author Scholastic $13.95 (186p) ISBN 978-0-590-44690-7
This work by the authors of A Long Hard Journey--The Story of the Pullman Porter is a great deal more than a biography of a remarkable woman. The forceful narrative also offers a startling portrayal of a pivotal yet appalling era in American history.
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Fredrick McKissack, Jr., Author, James Ransome, Illustrator Atheneum Books $21.99 (144p) ISBN 978-0-689-80856-2
In this stunning achievement, the renowned husband-and-wife team sets 12 Old Testament stories in the context of early 19th-century South Carolina, illustrated with Ransome's glorious paintings. As the McKissacks state in their introduction, ""The...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Fredrick McKissack, Jr., Author, John Thompson, Illustrator . Scholastic $6.99 (80p) ISBN 978-0-590-43028-9
On a Virginia plantation in 1859, the enslaved families work hard to get both the Big House and their own Quarters ready for Christmas. "The McKissacks carefully and convincingly delineate the discrepancies between the two milieus, and the...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Fredrick McKissack, Jr., Author, John Thompson, Illustrator Scholastic $17.95 (68p) ISBN 978-0-590-43027-2
On a Virginia plantation in 1859, the slaves work hard to get the Big House ready for Christmas, and to prepare their own Quarters for the ``Big Times'' also. As they describe the goings-on during the weeks before Christmas as well as the actual...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Patricia C. Fredrick L., Author, Fredrick McKissack, Jr., Author . Scholastic $18.95 (144p) ISBN 978-0-590-10764-8
"There wasn't one day when all the slaves were freed at the same time," write the McKissacks (Rebels Against Slavery) in this compelling chronicle of slavery's demise in America. "Whenever slaves learned they were free, that day...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Andre Carrilho, Illustrator , illus. by André Carrilho. Random/Schwartz & Wade $18.95 (146p) ISBN 978-0-375-83619-0
As McKissack (The Dark-Thirty
) opens this treasure chest of tales, she recalls spending summer evenings on her grandparents' front porch in Nashville, where her grandfather and visitors would share spellbinding "porch lies," comically...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Scott Cook, Illustrator Dragonfly Books $7.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-679-86573-5
PW noted that, despite a convoluted plot, this story-in which a girl enlists animal aid to find a sewing needle-``shows the power of a little imagination in creating solutions.'' Ages 3-8. (Sept.)
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Scott Cook, Illustrator, Fredrick McKissack, Jr., With Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers $17 (0p) ISBN 978-0-394-89158-3
McKissack, known for Flossie and the Fox and the more recent Mirandy and Brother Wind , joins forces with Cook, who debuted last year with a painterly version of The Gingerbread Boy. Their combined talents in this book create a folktale that, if...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Fredrick McKissack, Jr., With Henry Holt & Company $15.95 (142p) ISBN 978-0-8050-1670-3
The McKissacks ( Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman? ) continue to illuminate aspects of African American heritage with this introduction to three major kingdoms of medieval Africa: Ghana, Mali and Songhay. Based on folklore, contemporaneous accounts...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Giselle Potter, Illustrator , illus. by Giselle Potter. S&S/Aladdin $6.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-689-85395-1
"McKissack thoroughly examines a common childhood problem—discerning when the truth helps and when it hurts—with homespun language and accessible situations," wrote PW. "The intimate settings so integral to Potter's...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Jerry Pinkney, Illustrator , illus. by Jerry Pinkney. Random/Schwartz & Wade $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-375-83759-3
In expertly wrought watercolors, Pinkney focuses on how light hits certain objects—voluptuous oranges, a new patchwork quilt, a baby doll's yellow frock—which are some literal bright spots for a family holding onto the positive...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Author, Jerry Pinkney, Illustrator , illus. by Jerry Pinkney. Atheneum/Schwartz $16 (40p) ISBN 978-0-689-81885-1
McKissack draws from her childhood in Nashville for this instructive picture book. "I don't know if I'm ready to turn you loose in the world," Mama Frances tells her granddaughter when she asks if she can go by herself to "Somepla
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Patricia C. McKissack, illus. by Eric Velasquez. Holiday House, $16.95 (32p) ISBN 978-0-8234-2265-4
In a ghostly story in the vein of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and A Christmas Carol, an 18th-century miser, John Leep, rides on horseback to evict a woman from her residence. But as darkness falls over the forest—exquisitely rendered in Velasquez’s...
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Patricia C. McKissack, Fredrick L. McKissack Jr. and Randy DuBurke. Chronicle, $19.99 (136p) ISBN 978-0-8118-5749-9
Although you wouldn’t know it from typical cowboy stories and movies, about a quarter of actual cowhands were African-American, and this is the story of the most famous of them, the champion horse breaker and rifle shot known as Deadwood Dick. Nat...
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