Entering Grade 6

Biography

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​African Icons: Ten People Who Shaped History by Tracey Baptiste
An illustrated guide to ten figures who shaped African history. Learn about rulers, storytellers, warriors, and the richest man of all time. (nonfiction)
Call Him Jack: The Story of Jackie Robinson, Black Freedom Fighter by Yohuru Williams
​There are things you may not know about this amazing baseball player. He always preferred to be called Jack, not Jackie. Martin Luther King, Jr., called him “a sit-inner before the sit-ins, a freedom rider before the Freedom Rides.” Find out about the deep rich life he lived in this biography illustrated with archival photographs and documents. (nonfiction)
Choosing Courage by Peter Collier
Gripping and true accounts of people who demonstrated guts and selflessness on the battlefield and in daily life to make a difference, like Jack Lucas who enlisted in WWII at age 13 and saved lives in the Iwo Jima invasion. (nonfiction)
Counting Coup: Becoming a Crow Chief on the Reservation and Beyond by Joseph Medicine Crow and Herman Viola  
Trained as a traditional warrior of the Crow people in the early years of the twentieth century, Joseph Medicine Crow did not foresee that he would become War Chief through his deeds on the battlefields of Germany in World War II. (nonfiction)
The Dumbest Idea Ever! by Jimmy Gownley
In this graphic novel, renowned comics creator Jimmy Gownley shares his adventures as he grows from an eager-to-please boy into a teenage comic book artist. (memoir in graphic novel format)
Infinite Hope: A Black Artist's Journey from World War II to Peace by Ashley Bryan
When Ashley Bryan was eighteen, he was drafted to fight in World War II. In the segregated Army, Black soldiers were asked to do the worst tasks and were the last to be shipped home at war's end. In words and pictures Ashley Bryan tells of his experience and how the kindness of others and his own love of art sustained him. (nonfiction)
Lost Boy, Lost Girl: Escaping Civil War in Sudan by John Bul Dau
Two of thousands of children who fled strife in southern Sudan, John and Martha survived hunger, exhaustion, and violence. Their story follows them from thier traditional homes, their trek through danger and civil war, time in refugee camps, adapting to American life and their eventual marriage. (nonfiction)
Lost on a Mountain in Maine by Donn Fendler and Joseph B. Egan
This memoir begins as Donn grows tired of waiting in the cold fog at the top of Maine’s Mt. Katahdin and decides to hike back alone.  A few missteps later and he is thoroughly lost in a dangerous wilderness with few supplies. (nonfiction)
Notable Native People: 50 Indigenous Leaders, Dreamers, and Changemakers from the Past and Present by Adrienne Keene
Celebrate the lives, stories, and contributions of 50 Indigenous artists, activists, scientists, athletes, and other changemakers. Includes nineteenth-century sculptor Edmonia Lewis—the first Black and Native American female artist to achieve international fame; linguist jessie little doe baird, who revived the Wampanoag language; NBA star Kyrie Irving of the Standing Rock Lakota; and Wilma Mankiller, the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. (nonfiction)
The Red Bandanna (Young Reader’s Adaptation) by Tom Rinaldi
Welles Crowther didn’t see himself as a hero.  But on September 11, 2001 when his ordinary work day at the World Trade Center in New York turned lethal, he showed those around him how a true hero acts. (nonfiction)