Draper, Sharon M

Melody is not like most people. She cannot walk or talk, but she has a photographic memory. She can remember every detail of everything she has ever experienced. She is smarter than most of the adults who try to diagnose her and smarter than her classmates in her integrated classroom, the very same classmates who dismiss her as mentally challenged, because she cannot tell them otherwise. Melody refuses to be defined by cerebral palsy, and she's determined to let everyone know it, somehow.

"Considered by many to be mentally retarded, a brilliant, impatient fifth-grader with cerebral palsy discovers a technological device that will allow her to speak for the first time"--Provided by publisher.

As Kofi, Arielle, Dana, November, and Jericho face personal challenges during their last year of high school, a misunderstood student brings a gun to class and demands to be taken seriously.

"Piano-prodigy Isabella, eleven, whose black father and white mother struggle to share custody, never feels whole, especially as racial tensions affect her school, her parents both become engaged, and she and her stepbrother are stopped by police"--Provided by publisher.

The death of high school basketball star Rob Washington in an automobile accident affects the lives of his close friend Andy, who was driving the car, and many others in the school.

Two fifteen-year-old girls--one a slave and the other an indentured servant--escape their Carolina plantation and try to make their way to Fort Moses, Florida, a Spanish colony that gives sanctuary to slaves.

When a burning cross set by the Klan causes panic and fear in 1932 Bumblebee, North Carolina, fifth-grader Stella must face prejudice and find the strength to demand change in her segregated town.

Ziggy, Jerome, Rico, and Rashawn look forward to using the two hundred dollars they are sure they will win in the school talent show to fix up their clubhouse--until they meet their biggest competition: a very talented little girl who needs the money more than they do.

After rescuing an orphaned deer, Ziggy and the Black Dinosaurs club members decide to stage a neighborhood animal show to raise money for the local wildlife rescue center.

After the neighborhood basketball court is vandalized, Ziggy and his friends decide to form a club called the Black Dinosaurs and build their clubhouse in Ziggy's backyard where they find a mysterious cache of buried bones.