January 5, 2024

Breaking the Chains: African American Slave Resistance

Generations of American history students have grown up believing that enslaved people accepted their lot and became attached to their enslavers, that rebellion was rare and that liberation from slavery happened thanks to the enslavers. In this newly updated version of a celebrated history book first published in 1990, high school teacher and children’s book author William Loren Katz offers a closer look at the lives of enslaved people in the United States, from their African abductions through to their brave resistance to harsh plantation life and their roles in the Civil War. It documents how enslaved people themselves were […]
June 30, 2022

Lucas on the Line

Dive into this revealing portrait of Stranger Things fan favorite Lucas Sinclair and get to know Lucas like never before. The thrilling adventure of Stranger Things continues where season three left off, with fan favorite Lucas Sinclair finally telling his own story in his own words.

Lucas has been in the fight against the evil forces in his town since the beginning, but he is tired of feeling like an outsider. When the start of high school presents Lucas with options beyond D&D and being bullied, he wonders if he can be more than invisible. After connecting with one of the few other Black students at school, Lucas starts to learn more about himself apart from his friend group. And he begins to understand himself as a Black teen in Hawkins, which feels unlike anything—in this world or any other—he’s ever experienced.

Stuck in the closet and scared to pursue his own dreams, Gabi sees his parents’ shop as his future. Stuck under the weight of his parents’ expectations, Theo’s best shot at leaving Vermont means first ensuring his parents’ livelihood is secure.

From Suyi Davies Okungbowa, contributor to the New York Times bestselling Black Boy Joy, comes an exploration of love and identity within the beloved Stranger Things universe, through the eyes of Lucas Sinclair.

A good read – and that’s coming from a huge fan of the series itself. It is nice to dive into the mind of one of the main but inconspicuous characters of the story, Lucas. And also, to read about the others since I used to watch them on Netflix.

June 30, 2022

Dead Flip

Growing up, Cori, Maz and Sam were inseparable best friends, sharing their love for Halloween, arcade games and one another. Now it’s 1992, Sam has been missing for five years, and Cori and Maz aren’t speaking anymore. How could they be, when Cori is sure Sam is dead and Maz thinks he may have been kidnapped by a supernatural pinball machine?

These days, all Maz wants to do is party, buy CDs at Sam Goody and run away from his past. Meanwhile, Cori is a homecoming queen, hiding her abiding love of horror movies and her queer self under the bubble-gum veneer of a high school queen bee. But when Sam returns—still twelve years old while his best friends are now seventeen — Maz and Cori are thrown back together to solve the mystery of what really happened to Sam the night he went missing. Beneath the surface of that mystery lurk secrets the friends never told one another, then and now. And Sam’s is the darkest of all.

Award-winning author of If You Could Be Mine and Here to Stay, Sara Farizan delivers edge-of-your-seat terror as well as her trademark referential humor, witty narration and insightful characters.