Lesa Cline-Ransome

Three women narrate a perilous wagon journey westward that could set them freeor cost them everything they havein this intergenerational verse novel that explores the history of the Black homesteader movement. 1879, Mississippi. Young dreamer Lettie may have her head in the stars, but her body...

You may think that the story of the saxophone begins with Dexter Gordon or Charlie Parker or on a street corner in New Orleans. It really began in 1840 in Belgium with a young daydreamer named Joseph-Antoine Adolphe Sax—a boy with bad luck but great ideas. Coretta Scott King Honoree Lesa...

When 11-year-old Langston's mother dies in 1946, he and his father leave rural Alabama for Chicago's brown belt as a part of what came to be known as the Great Migration. It's lonely in the small apartment with just the two of them, and Langston is bullied at school. But his new home has one...

Louis Armstrong has been called the most important improviser in the history of jazz. Although his New Orleans neighborhood was poor in nearly everything else, it was rich in superb music. Young Louis took it all in, especially the cornet blowing of Joe King Oliver. But after a run in with the...

Behind every bad boy is a story worth hearing and at least one chance for redemption. It's 1946, and Lymon, uprooted from his life in the Deep South and moved up North, needs that chance. Lymon's father is, for the time being, at Parchman Farm - the Mississippi State Penitentiary - and his...

Clem can make anybody, even his grumpy older sisters, smile with his jokes. But when his family receives news that his father has died in the infamous Port Chicago disaster, everything begins to fall apart. Clem's mother is forced to work long, tough hours as a maid for a wealthy White family...

Inspired by the #1 New York Times bestseller She Persisted by Chelsea Clinton and Alexandra Boiger, a chapter book series about women who stood up, spoke up and rose up against the odds! In this chapter book biography by award-winning author Lesa Cline-Ransome, readers learn about the amazing...

Throughout her lifetime Harriet Tubman was known by many names -- as General Tubman she was a Union spy, as Moses she led hundreds to freedom on the Underground Railroad and as Minty she was a spirited slave.