This post is part of Build Your Stack,® a new initiative focused on helping teachers build their book knowledge and their classroom libraries.
Each year during the month of February, hundreds of schools, churches, libraries, bookstores, community and professional organizations, and interested citizens come together to make literacy a significant part of Black History Month by hosting African American Read-Ins.
Whether your Read-In is a group of friends getting together for a book club or a public reading in your local town hall, one of the most difficult parts of planning is deciding what books to share during the event. This list of Orbis Pictus and Charlotte Huck Award–winning titles with African American authors or illustrators can be a great jumping off point.
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Between the Lines: How Ernie Barnes Went from the Football Field to the Art Gallery
Sandra Neil Wallace, illustrated by Bryan Collier (Simon & Schuster)
2019 Orbis Pictus Award Winner
Facing Frederick: The Life of Frederick Douglass, a Monumental Man
Tonya Bolden (Abrams Books for Young Readers)
2019 Orbis Pictus Award Recommended Book
Game Changers: The Story of Venus and Serena Williams
Lesa Cline-Ransome, illustrated by James E. Ransome (Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books)
2019 Orbis Pictus Award Recommended Book
Ghost Boys
Jewell Parker Rhodes (Little, Brown and Company)
2019 Charlotte Huck Award Honor Book
The Day You Begin
Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by Rafael López (Nancy Paulsen Books)
2019 Charlotte Huck Award Recommended Book
Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut
Derrick D Barnes, illustrated by Gordon C. James (Agate Bolden Publishing)
2018 Charlotte Huck Award Recommended Book
How to Build a Museum: Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture
Tonya Bolden (Viking Books for Young Readers)
2017 Orbis Pictus Award Recommended Book
My Story, My Dance: Robert Battle’s Journey to Alvin Ailey
Lesa Cline-Ransome, illustrated by James E. Ransome (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
2016 Orbis Pictus Award Recommended Book
Stella by Starlight
Sharon M. Draper (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
2016 Charlotte Huck Award Winner
The Madman of Piney Woods
Christopher Paul Curtis (Scholastic)
2015 Charlotte Huck Award Recommended Book
Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty
Tonya Bolden (Abrams Books for Young Readers)
2014 Orbis Pictus Recommended Book
Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans
Kadir Nelson (Balzer + Bray Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers)
2012 Orbis Pictus Award Recommended Book
We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball
Kadir Nelson (Hyperion Books for Children)
2009 Orbis Pictus Award Honor Book
George Washington Carver
Tonya Bolden (Abrams Books for Young Readers)
2009 Orbis Pictus Award Honor Book
Through My Eyes
Ruby Bridges, edited by Margo Lundell (Scholastic Press)
2000 Orbis Pictus Award Winner
Bound for America: The Forced Migration of Africans to the New World
James Haskins and Kathleen Benson, illustrated by Floyd Cooper (Lothrop Lee & Shepard)
2000 Orbis Pictus Award Recommended Book
Duke Ellington
Andrea Davis Pinkney, illustrated by Brian Pinkney (Hyperion)
1999 Orbis Pictus Award Recommended Book
Christmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters
Patricia C. McKissack and Frederick L. McKissack (Scholastic)
1995 Orbis Pictus Award Honor Book
Many Thousand Gone: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom
Virginia Hamilton, illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon (Knopf)
1994 Orbis Pictus Award Recommended Book
Seven Candles for Kwanzaa
Andrea Davis Pinkney, illustrated by Brian Pinkney (Dial Books)
1994 Orbis Pictus Award Recommended Book
Now Is Your Time! The African American Struggle for Freedom
Walter Dean Myers (HarperCollins)
1992 Orbis Pictus Award Honor Book
Thinking about hosting your own African American Read-In? Check out our toolkit here and don’t forget to add your event to the events calendar.