Corinne L. Gaile

Twelve-year-old Chris is a fish out of water when his family moves from Chicago to a remote part of Tanzania. His parents’ dream is to manage Kipepeo Tented Camps, a Safari Lodge, but despite the wild animals, or maybe because of them, Chris is not a happy camper. He prefers the comforts and conveniences of the city and is having a difficult time adjusting to life in eastern Africa on the Serengeti.

Things change when he meets Khalid, an honest-to-goodness Maasai warrior draped in a red blanket and carrying a spear. Khalid, the newest employee at the lodge, makes a big impression on Chris. Although only in his late teens, he seems a master of his world, mature, strong, capable, and possessing a calm wisdom that puts him well beyond his years.

Everything is more interesting with Khalid around. Chris learns Swahili. Khalid teaches him about his culture, African wildlife and the rhythms of the Serengeti. Soon Chris is hooked, but a serious threat surfaces when elephant poachers are found on the reserve. Chris joins the effort to protect elephants but learns that fighting poachers is a dangerous and never-ending battle.

Because of Khalid offers the reader an exciting tale filled with the wonders of the Serengeti. It tackles an important subject and offers additional information on Swahili and elephant poaching.

Learn more about the author at http://www.ckabooks.com

When twelve-year-old Candice Miller and her mom temporarily move into her grandmother’s house in Lambert, South Carolina, she begins an adventure that will not only change her life, but the welfare of an entire city.

Candice’s grandmother left Lambert in disgrace and moved in with Candice and her parents in Atlanta more than ten years earlier after she used her position as city manager to dig up a tennis court without approval. Candice grew very close to her grandmother and missed her deeply after she died.

While looking through some of her grandmother’s things in the attic, Candice comes across a mysterious letter that explains why her grandmother dug up the tennis court. She was looking for a buried treasure.

The letter, written anonymously, laid out a series of clues to uncover a fortune of 40 million dollars. The author of the letter wanted justice and recognition for the Washingtons, an African American family who was run out of town by a white mob led by the Allens, a prominent family in Lambert. Over the years, the author financially ruined the Allen family, and in doing so, damaged the economy of Lambert. Eventually, he regretted his actions. His solution was to hide a treasure in Lambert for someone to discover. The clues would teach about the history of race relations in segregated Lambert that led to the Washington’s troubles. After the seeker discovered the treasure and informed the town of that history, he or she would receive one tenth of the money. The rest would go to Lambert.

Candice and her new friend and neighbor, Brandon, set out to solve the puzzle and win the prize. The money is important, but Candice wants to clear her grandmother’s reputation. Their investigation takes them back four generations. Candice and Brandon get to know elders in the community who were young adults when the Washingtons got run out of town in the 1950s. Along the way, Candice becomes good friends with Brandon who is bullied by the local kids and belittled by his own grandfather. She also learns the reason why her parents separated.

This multi-generational fast-paced story is part mystery, part history, and explores contemporary issues of racism and homophobia. It’s a great read that won numerous awards and recognition including the 2019 Coretta Scott King Honor Book. To learn more about the author, visit his website at: http://varianjohnson.com/

On Sunday, January 20th, it was my pleasure to meet with members of the Cultured Books Book Club at Cultured Books in St. Petersburg, Florida. After our discussion, the girls made activist cards highlighting issues from the civil rights movement, to women’s rights, police brutality, and criminal justice. It was a wonderful day.

Isabel with her activist card

Angeleena with her civil rights poster

Me with Briana

Nadia, Isabel, me, Jaylen, Aliyah, Ava

Midnight Without a Moon is the first of two books about thirteen-year-old Rose Lee Carter, an African American girl who lives with her sharecropper grandparents, brother, and cousin on a cotton plantation in rural Mississippi, 1955. Civil disobedience is taking root in the civil rights movement, and although the NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is fighting for them through the courts, Rose, her family, and community are constantly terrorized by whites. Black people are murdered for trying to register to vote, and even Rose is run off the road by a group of white boys in a truck.

Their mother abandoned Rose and her brother, Fred Lee, when she married a wealthy man and later moved to Chicago with her new family. Their grandmother, Ma Pearl, is mean to them. She favors lighter-skinned blacks like Rose’s cousin, Queen, and thinks Rose is ugly because she is darker than midnight without a moon. Like many of their neighbors, Ma Pearl is too afraid to support the civil rights movement. The plantation owners, who also own the shack where they live, threatened to throw them out if they participated in any NAACP activities. Ma Pearl works as a maid for the owner’s wife, while Papa, Rose’s grandfather, farms cotton. Rose and her brother have to work in the fields when they’re not in school and during the harvest they have to drop out of school to help Papa.

When a fourteen-year-old African American boy named Emmett Till, who was visiting from up North, is lynched by white men for supposedly flirting with a white woman, Rose and her best friend Hallelujah, the preacher’s son, hope for justice in the court trial.

Rose’s aunt left Mississippi to escape the violence and seek a better future, as many blacks had done. When she comes to visit to attend the trial, Rose dreams of returning with them to Saint Louis. She wants to go to college and have a hopeful future, but part of her wants to stay and fight for her rights the way Hallelujah and his father do. Rose’s aunt invites her to move to Saint Louis. Now Rose must choose whether to leave for a better future up north or fight for her rights in her home, Mississippi.

A Sky Full of Stars, by Linda Williams Jackson, continues Rose’s compelling story.

Author Linda Williams Jackson, who is from Mississippi and grew up on cotton plantations, reminds us of the courage of black people who fought for their rights under such harsh and dangerous conditions. Children of the nineteen fifties, like Rose, became the college students of the early sixties who were the backbone of the civil rights movement.  

Mia Tang emigrated from China with her parents and lives in California. Her parents were professionals back in China, but they have to work long hours in low paying jobs when they move to America and they are very poor. Mia is excited when her parents get a job managing a motel. The salary is much higher, they get to live in the motel, and the motel has a swimming pool!

Unfortunately, their boss, Mr. Yao, is a liar and a cheapskate. Their wages are much lower than he promised, they have to work day and night, and they aren’t allowed to use the pool. Even though she is only ten, Mia must help her parents by working at the front desk.

The first thing Mia does is establish her authority. By being firm and professional, Mia gets the guests to take direction from a ten-year-old, and after a few fiascos, a confident Mia is running the front office efficiently and implements some clever new policies. From her vantage point of the front desk, Mia learns a lot about life. She figures out how to deal with crazies, criminals, and disgruntled guests and learns about injustice in America. She listens to the tales of mistreatment from other Chinese immigrants whom her parents secretly allow to stay in the motel and observes how racism hurts Hank, an African American who is one of the regulars living at the motel.

Mia makes friends with Lupe, an immigrant girl from Mexico. They both feel alienated in their middle-class school and both of their families are struggling to break out of poverty. To make matters worse, Jason, the horrible son of the terrible Mr. Yao, is in her class. Mia’s favorite subject is English, and even though she struggles with the language, she wants to be a writer. Her mother constantly tells her that she can never be a writer because English is not her first language and encourages her to excel in math. But Mia doesn’t give up.

Mia continues to practice writing and has such success writing letters that help solve problems for the Chinese immigrants and Hank, that she decides to enter her essay in a lottery contest to win a motel in Vermont.

Front Desk is based on the real-life experiences of author, Kelly Yang, the daughter of Chinese immigrants who grew up in a motel. Through Mia’s eyes, the reader gets an unflinching look at racism, abuse of power, and life in America for immigrants and the working poor. Mia is a quiet hero whose compassion and determination to improve her writing and help her family save the day.