Black History Month

The Latest in Books by Black Authors

Age/Grade Level or Audience

All ages

Description

Advertise current works by black authors.

Procedure

Create a bulletin board of book jackets of works by Caribbean, African, or African-American authors. Organize the display according to age and interest level. Feature a variety of books from reference and nonfiction to poetry, drama, novels, and short stories, for example:

• Poems by Sapphire or by Nobel laureate Derek Wolcott
• Walter Mosley's mysteries
• The Norton Anthology of Literature
• Mildred D. Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
• Jackie Joyner-Kersee's autobiography, A Kind of Hope
• Terry McMillan's tales of modern black women and their relationships
• Cornel West's Restoring Hope: Conversations on the Future of Black America
• Judith Hoffman Corwin's African Crafts
• Michael Eric Dyson's Race Rules: Navigating the Color Line
• Molefi K. Asante and Mark T. Mattson's Historical and Cultural Atlas of African Americans
• Toni Morrison's Paradise

Sources

Collect book jackets from the technical services division of a city, county, or school library. For more information about books, consult the Perma-Bound Multicultural Catalog, Vandalia Road, Jacksonville, IL 62650; telephone: (800)637-6581. Miller-Lachmann, Lyn, Our Family, Our Friends, Our World: An Annotated Guide to Significant Multicultural Books for Children and Teenagers, Bowker, 1992.

Alternative Applications

Encourage more readers to sample black authors. Use these methods:

• Distribute book lists by mail or at the checkout desk of the library.
• Share the information with the book editor of a local newspaper.
• Have the Friends of the Library include new book information in their newsletters.
• Include suggested titles that the library would like to purchase and which donors or support groups may supply as gifts or memorials.
• Hold a pre-holiday Afrocentric book fair.
• Make Afrocentric bookmarks to distribute free. List a book title on each one.