From the critically acclaimed and award-winning creators of Crown and I Am Every Good Thing, Derrick Barnes and Gordon C. James, comes an illustrated nonfiction young adult homage to Black athlete activists throughout history.

This is not your typical book about sports. This one begins…
“AN ATHLETE PROTESTING THE MISTREATMENT OF AMERICAN CITIZENS DOES NOT MAKE THEM ANTI-AMERICAN.”
And through a series of powerful poems, freedom-oriented prose, and dynamic illustration, Derrick Barnes and Gordon C. James introduce young readers and change-makers to athletes such as Muhammad Ali, Curt Flood, and Elgin Baylor who used their voices and influence to shake up the landscape of American sports and justice.

* TIMELY AND TOPICAL: Teaches readers about a continued cultural discussion from a resonant and impactful perspective.
* MADE TO CAPTURE THE ATTENTION OF YOUNG READERS: With a mix of prose, poetry, quotes, and illustrations, readers can dive into important history that might otherwise go untold.
* FROM AN AWARD-WINNING TEAM: Caldecott Honoree Gordon C. James and Kirkus Prize, Coretta Scott King Honor, and Newbery Honor recipient Derrick Barnes have teamed up again to create a memorable, impactful, and important book---this time for young adults.

Originally published in 2005, former NBA star Etan Thomas’s first poetry collection defies the stereotype of the apolitical athlete; featuring brand-new poems by Thomas and his son―and University of Dayton basketball star―Malcolm Thomas

RETIRED NBA STAR, AUTHOR, AND OUTSPOKEN POLITICAL ACTIVIST, Etan Thomas is more than an athlete. In this, his first collection of poems―originally published in 2005 and reissued here with many new poems―the former center for the NBA’s Washington Wizards defies the stereotype of the apolitical athlete, and plants his roots in his budding literary career. With the conviction of a Bill Russell, and the poetic finesse of Muhammad Ali, Thomas takes on controversial topics such as the Death Penalty, the GOP, and racism. 

This fiery poet approaches his work fearlessly, writing in the strong, historical lineage of his literary elders Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez, and in the tradition of more contemporary poets Ras Baraka, Tony Medina, and asha bandele. More Than an Athlete is not just a book of poetry; it’s a statement about new generations not being confined to a box, a definition, or a label. Some people play ball, and some people write poems. Etan Thomas has mastered the art of both.

The reimagined 2027 edition features brand-new poems by Thomas as well as his son Malcolm, who is following in his father’s footsteps on the court as a collegiate athlete, and on―and off―the page as a poet and activist.

A New York Times Notable Book

The Pulitzer Prize-winning critic investigates the roles of race and sex in his own life and in literary history.

Daring and fiercely original, The Women is at once a memoir, a psychological study, a sociopolitical manifesto, and an incisive adventure in literary criticism. It is conceived as a series of portraits analyzing the role that sexual and racial identity played in the lives and work of the writer's subjects: his mother, a self-described "Negress," who would not be defined by the limitations of race and gender; the mother of Malcolm X, whose mixed-race background and eventual descent into madness contributed to her son's misogyny and racism; brilliant, Harvard-educated Dorothy Dean, who rarely identified with other Black people or women, but deeply empathized with white gay men; and the late Owen Dodson, a poet and dramatist who was female-identified and who played an important role in the author's own social and intellectual formation.

Hilton Als submits both racial and sexual stereotypes to his inimitable scrutiny with relentless humor and sympathy. The results are exhilarating. Written in 1996, long before the rise of the genre-defying memoir, The Women was a prescient work of criticism and self-investigation whose clear-eyed insight still feels fresh and urgent to this day. The Women is that rarest of books: a memorable work of self-investigation that created a form all its own.

An inventive haunted house story with an uncanny twist, in which a woman mourning the recent death of her abusive mother takes a housekeeping job with increasingly strange and dangerous tasks, for fans of Carissa Orlando and Monika Kim.

Loretta is numb with grief. Reeling after the death of her abusive—although she would never use that word—mother and estranged from her younger sister, Loretta finds herself unemployed and alone.

Resolutely out of options, she hears of an unusual job opportunity. The owner of a huge home on the outskirts of town is looking for a live-in housekeeper—and offering thousands of dollars every week, in cash. There are only two simple rules: complete the daily chores left in the mailbox and no overnight guests. It seems like the perfect escape.

The idyllic solitude quickly sours into a waking nightmare. The daily chores escalate from simple cleaning to grotesque demands for Loretta’s flesh and blood. Any resistance is met with painful and increasingly life-threatening punishments. Loretta is familiar with this situation—well trained by her mother and miserable childhood— and isolates herself inside the carnivorous mansion. As her sense of reality warps and she falls deeper into the house’s clutches, her friends and sister try to intervene before it’s too late. But to survive, Loretta must decide whether to accept the comfort of familiar cycles or find out how hard she’s willing to fight for herself.

Both a terrifying thriller and an emotional portrait of resilience in the face of abuse, This House Is Not a Home is an ambitious debut from an exciting new voice in adult horror.

A visionary new collection by former poet laureate of the United States and winner of the Pulitzer Prize Tracy K. Smith

The forest in Tracy K. Smith’s brilliant new work is and is not a metaphor. While these poems strive to hear and to heed the voices of the earth and its nations of trees, they also test a discomfiting view of humanity, not as divided and opposing factions but as a vast cacophonous family connected by a single deep root.

The Forest grapples with violence, cynicism, and injustice by tapping into the ecstatic for much-needed insight, humility, and conviction. Enlivened by slow time and spiritual desire, Smith’s poems are political and devotional conduits that bear witness to meditative visions and channeled conversations with ancestors and ascended guides. Several poems honor motherhood and the particular care bound up in mothering Black sons. Others come to terms with grief and a failed marriage now so distant as to be another life. Hovering always near, the divine feminine is a figure called forth to refute the God of War.

The Forest is a magnificent act of foresight beyond the granular realities of partisan depravity, polarization, and indifference. Smith reaches an exhilarating new height, in contact with the mythic and the rapturous.

Jabari Jumps meets The Magical Yet in this infectiously optimistic and rhythmic picture book that will inspire children to give it a whirl and try again (and again).
A little girl loves to watch the big kids play hula hoop. She wants nothing more than to sway and swirl like them one day.
So, she picks one up, gives it a whirl… and the hoop falls to the ground before she knows it.
Thwump! Clatter clatter!
And even though she picks it up repeatedly, she can’t seem to get the hoop to whirl. Then something magical happens on the last try that changes her forever.
This sweet picture book is perfect for anyone with a dream who is determined to never give up.

* Heartwarming Message: Detailing the importance of persistence and resilience, this story encourages children not to give up on a goal only because it’s difficult at first.
* Classic and Colorful Illustrations bring its readers in and capture the charm of childhood.
* Perfect for Read-Aloud: Complete with sounds of the hoola hoop, optimistic tone, and rhythmic text!

From Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony winner Viola Davis and New York Times-bestselling publisher, editor, and author Lavaille Lavette comes an action-packed series filled with humor, heart, and undercover hijinks!

Discovering your grandma is a spy is easy. The hard part is proving it…and staying alive in the process.

When Jazzlyn discovers that her estranged grandmother is moving in, she's beyond frustrated. Being 13-years old is hard enough with an annoying brother and an overbearing mother ― and now she must deal with a grandma who is taking over her bedroom?!

Jazz has better things to do like hanging out with her best friend, getting stellar grades, and of course, finding the perfect dress – and the perfect date – for the Sadie Hawkins dance. She has big goals and doesn’t need grandma cramping her style.

Before long, Jazz starts to notice peculiar things Grandma does like sneaking out at night and popping up as a substitute phys ed teacher at school. Her instincts tell her that Grandma Mae is up to something, and she decides to prove it. One night, Jazz follows her grandmother into the city and the adventure begins. Caught up in a world of high speed car chases, a ninja fight in an alley, a kidnapping at the school dance, and mysterious money transfers, can Jazz prove her grandma is a spy?

As for Mae, laying low isn’t exactly her strong suit, and, she discovers, neither is playing a grandma. Keeping her nosy granddaughter in the dark is child’s play. But an old nemesis has returned and is on the hunt for Mae’s whereabouts. Can she keep her family safe and separate from her secret life… before it’s too late?

Weaving back and forth between China in the 1990s and America in 2010s, three people’s lives are changed by a murder one of them may have committed in this magnificent novel from Yiyun Li, newly reissued.

When Moran, Ruyu, and Boyang were young, they were involved in a mysterious incident in which a friend of theirs was poisoned. Grown up, the three friends are separated by distance and personal estrangement. Moran and Ruyu live in the United States, Boyang in China; all of them are haunted by what happened in their youth and by doubt about themselves.

In Wisconsin, Moran visits her ex-husband, whose kindness once overcame her flight into solitude. In California, Ruyu helps a local woman care for her family and home, avoiding entanglements, as she has done all her life. In Beijing, Boyang struggles to deal with an inability to love―and with the outcome of what happened among the friends twenty years before.

Brilliantly written and a breathtaking page-turner, Kinder Than Solitude resonates with provocative observations about human nature and life. In mesmerizing prose, and with profound insight, Yiyun Li weaves a remarkable story that explores the impact of personality and the past on the shape of a person’s present and future.

A woman reexamines her past and reveals long-held secrets by annotating a former lover’s diary in this extraordinary novel by Yiyun Li, newly reissued.

Lilia Liska has shrewdly outlived three husbands, raised five children, and seen the arrival of seventeen grandchildren. Now she has turned her keen attention to the diary of a long-forgotten man named Roland Bouley, with whom she once had a fleeting affair.

Increasingly obsessed with Roland’s intimate history, Lilia begins to annotate the diary with her own rather different version of events, revealing the surprising, long-held secrets of her past. She returns inexorably to the memory of her daughter Lucy. Must I Go is a novel about life in all its messy glory, and of a life lived absolutely on its own terms. With her characteristic candor and insight, Yiyun Li navigates the twin poles of grief and resilience, loss and rebirth, that act as compass to our human hearts.

A truly groundbreaking exploration of the lessons learned from the basketball GOAT, Michael Jordan, from those who competed with and against him

REFLECTIONS ON MICHAEL JORDAN―the true GOAT of men’s basketball―often center around his six championships with the Chicago Bulls. There has been remarkably little in-depth coverage of his two years with the Washington Wizards at the tail end of his NBA career. Lessons from Michael Jordan is a fascinating exploration of this surprisingly fertile, influential, and largely ignored period in MJ’s life.

This volume is a conversation―a collection of personal reflections, raw insights, and lived moments shared by the people who actually played alongside Michael Jordan, learned from him, competed against him, and saw him up close during this time in his career. Lessons from Michael Jordan includes twenty-three interviews (an homage to the #23 on MJ’s jersey) conducted by Etan Thomas, with Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley, Jerry Stackhouse, Phil Chenier, Kwame Brown, Jahidi White, Chamique Holdsclaw, Popeye Jones, Christian Laettner, Tyronn Lue, Wes Unseld Jr., and more. 

Whether a reader is drawn to a specific voice or a theme (leadership, legacy, work ethic, media pressure, etc.), they will find a great deal to hold on to. This is a book you keep close, not just read once and shelve; it is designed so readers can pick it up, drop into any section, and walk away with something powerful.

Lessons from Michael Jordan reads like a locker room conversation turned life lesson. The tone stays raw but reflective. Each contributor brings their truth, and Etan Thomas steps in as a guide. It’s for the student who needs a shot of belief, the athlete grinding in silence, the young person wondering if they’re seen or understood―or anyone interested in learning life and basketball lessons from the greatest player to ever grace the hardwood.

COMPANION TO NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER, BLACK GOLD
In this companion picture book to Black Gold, the NAACP Image Award winner, Laura Obuobi and Society of Illustrators’ honoree London Ladd team up to tell a story that celebrates Black life, brims with black joy, and instills an important message about Black resilience.
Black is precious.
Black is holy.
Black is powerful.
Black is many things, and its magnificence can be found all throughout the world. It’s in obsidian, in the rolling fields of calla lilies, and the birth of the universe. Most importantly, Black is a people whose strength, grace, and resilience would foster change, creativity, and a culture from which would emerge a world that would never be the same and a community whose genius continues to inspire all. Despite everything that Black people have endured, they are still present—living and thriving.
Powerhouse duo Laura Obuobi and London Ladd return with another poignant, lyrical text that celebrates all that being Black is, positively reinforcing the magnitude of possibilities that being Black can—and will—be. With its important themes, Black Is will enchant young readers with events and achievements by people in Black history and the Black diaspora, like uprisings, innovations in culture, entertainment, literature, including civil rights work by West Africans, Caribbeans, and Black Americans.

· Brimming with Black Joy: This book is magical, heartwarming, and a bright reminder that diverse stories are hopeful too. Laura has created a world where all facets of Black life, especially joy, are brought to light.
· Champion for Self-Love: This uplifting, impactful, and lyrical book will empower Black children and will inspire them to love themselves exactly as they are. This book delivers the important message that Black is beautiful and powerful.
· Bedtime Story with Lyrical, Poignant Text: Laura spins a story with language that is so rich, it is as though she has captured a dream on the page. Readers will be enthralled by this sweeping, meditative tale.
· Timely and Timeless Picture Book: This is a book that will always resonate with readers as they move on through every stage of their lives, uplifting and empowering, and is the perfect baby shower gift and graduation gift.

Celebrate the beautiful brown and black girls in your life with this magical and empowering ABC board book.

Tell your little one that they are magic with ABCs of Black Girl Magic. Featuring enchanting illustrations showcasing the power, beauty, and magic of black and brown girls alongside positive affirmations, this board book is a wonderful way to show your child they are loved and important.

From read alouds to bonding moments, this beautiful board book is the perfect baby shower gift, birthday present, and gift for your daughter, sister, mother, or any strong woman in your life that needs to know they are magic.

You are…

Amazing

Beautiful

Courageous

…and so much more!