After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson

Neeka and our narrator have been best friends since birth. A new girl shows up on their block calling herself “D” and blends into their friendship seamlessly. The girls call themselves “Three the Hard Way” and build a tight bond over a two year time frame. It’s 1994, the year Tupac Shakur is enduring legal issues and multiple physical attacks. D, and the rest of the neighborhood, relate wholeheartedly to Tupac’s music and their quotations frame their emotions throughout the story.
When D’s real mom shows up, D must leave the tight knit community that has taken her in hope of starting a positive new life with her mom. Her departure parallels Tupac’s final attack and eventual death.
Woodson weaves a beautifully simple story about friendship, family, community and how the power of can music can tie us all together.

Recommended grade levels: 6-12

Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Genre: Historical fiction
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
ISBN (library bind): 13-978-1-4169-1171-5
Price: $16.99 #pages: 346
Call number: FIC Had

Annotation:
Against the backdrop of the Triangle Waist Company Fire, one of the worst workplace disasters in history before 9/11, the threads of the lives of three young women are woven together telling a story of the struggle for women's suffrage, the plight of immigrants in America, and the fight for fair labor practices and decent working conditions. Bella is a new immigrant from Italy who has come to America for work to try to save the lives of her starving family back home. She must rely on others to help her with everything and she is cheated and victimized by most of them. Yetta, a Russian Jew, lives with her sister and is consumed with the new union movement. Jane, a bored socialite, begins to educate herself and is exposed to the young, immigrant working girls during their strike. Her encounter with Yetta during picketing eventually leads Jane to meet Bella and to translate a sad, devastating letter from Italy for her. Jane’s compassion for Bella’s situation stirs her to bring the young woman to her home to comfort and nurse her in her grief. When Jane eventually breaks from her father, she runs to the Triangle factory and her friends who shelter her. Finding a job as governess to the daughters of one of the Triangle owners, Jane learns first hand about the life of a working girl on the lower East Side. In the harrowing final pages, all three young women find themselves at the Triangle factory on the day of the fire. Sadly, many lives are lost. Margaret Haddix has always been able to write a good page-turner and this is no exception. Uprising reaches another level, however, because of her emotional involvement with the characters. As in her earlier book,Don't You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey, this one will haunt you long after the final chapter.
Recommended grade levels: 7 and up

Harlem Summer by Walter Dean Myers

Sixteen year old Mark Purvis is an aspiring sax player, who had rather be jamming with his band than finding a summer job, the request of his parents, which prevails. As an assistant at The Crisis, a magazine for the 'New Negro,' Mark rubs shoulders with Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, and he is invited to a party at Alfred Knopf's place. Mark's making money, but not enough, and when piano player fats Waller entices him and his buddies to make some fast cash, Mark finds himself crossing gangster Dutch Schultz.