Books & Films

Diversity Book Drive: We recognized that our school libraries had an incomplete collection of books featuring characters of color, authors of color, and stories of diversity. In response, we coordinated a Diversity Book Drive for diversity-themed books. After researching 540 award-winning titles, we identified 160 books to enhance the CUSD library collections, and we facilitated the purchase and delivery of the books to each school with the approval of the CUSD trustees.

Elementary books

Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott by Russell Freedman
Frog Scientist, The by Pamela S. Turner
Grandma’s Gift by Eric Velasquez
Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine
Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow: A Story of the Young Jimi Hendrix by Gary Golio
Keeping the Night Watch by Hope Anita Smith
Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters by Andrea Davis Pinkney
Marvelous Cornelius: Hurricane Katrina and the Spirit of New Orleans by Phil Bildner
Mary McLeod Bethune by Eloise Greenfield
My People by Langston Hughes
Never Forgotten by Patricia C. McKissack
Palm of My Heart: Poetry by African American Children, The by Davida Adedjouma
Roots and Blues: A Celebration by Arnold Adoff
Underground by Shane W. Evans
Way a Door Closes, The by Hope Anita Smith
You Can Be a Friend by Lauren Dungy and Tony Dungy

Middle School books

Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson
Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America by Andrea Davis Pinkney
Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans by Kadir Nelson
Hurry Freedom: African Americans in Gold Rush California by Jerry Stanley
Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary by Elizabeth Partridge
Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl by Tonya Bolden
Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes
Twelve Rounds to Glory: The Story of Muhammad Ali by Charles R. Smith, Jr.
When Marian Sang: The True Recital of Marian Anderson by Pam Munoz Ryan
Zora and Me by Victoria Bond

High School Books

All American Boys by Brendan Kiely and Jason Reynolds
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip M. Hoose
Forged by Fire by Sharon Draper
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March by Lynda Blackmon Lowery
X: A Novel by Ilyasah Shabazz and Kekla Magoon