“Queen is smart. Queen is pretty. But nobody likes her except her kitty.” Queen’s house—the biggest one on 33rd Street--looks just like a castle, and in her bedroom, she has dozens of beautiful dresses and crowns. Queen thinks she’s a real queen, and she treats everyone, even her teacher, like her royal subject. When a new kid comes to Queen’s school, riding a broken bike and wearing smelly, worn-out clothes, Queen joins her classmates in making fun of him. Her parents insist she be nice to Leroy, but Queen doesn't see why she should. Leroy doesn’t just stink; Queen thinks he tells lies—whoppers in fact. And when he says he’s an African prince from Senegal, Queen makes it her mission to prove Leroy is an impostor. But as she gets closer to discovering Leroy’s real story, Queen learns the unexpected from her broken bike boy: what being a good friend and “happily ever after” really mean.

Ten-year-old Queen, a spoiled and conceited African American girl who is disliked by most of her classmates, learns a lesson about friendship from an unlikely "knight in shining armor."

Ten-year-old Queen, a spoiled and conceited African American girl who is disliked by most of her classmates, learns a lesson about friendship from an unlikely "knight in shining armor."

This volume focuses on a group of authors who began writing in the late 1980s. This group consists of eight authors who expanded the foundation and built a critical reputation that garnered a variety of nominations and awards. These authors are: Rita Williams-Garcia, Jacqueline Woodson, Angela Johnson, Nikki Grimes, Sharon Draper, Christopher Paul Curtis, and Sharon G. Flake, and Jewel Parker Rhodes. This volume has a chapter for each of these eight authors that focuses on their critical reception as authors, then discusses in some detail a single representative work, and, finally offers classroom activities for individual, small group, and whole class activities that will engage students in the work discussed.

This resource makes it easy for teachers and librarians working with middle-school children to infuse their curriculum with multicultural literature. Carefully vetted and annotated, it encompasses fiction and non-fiction published in the last decade, making it an ideal reference and collection development tool for schools and public libraries alike

More Mirrors in the Classroom: Using Urban Children’s Literature to Increase Literacy is the first book in the Kids Like Us series. It includes research summaries, guidelines for text selection, and a step-by-step guide to increasing the cultural relevance of literacy instruction with urban children’s literature.

Hip Hop literature, also known as urban fiction or street lit, is a type of writing evocative of the harsh realities of life in the inner city. Beginning with seminal works by such writers as Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim and culminating in contemporary fiction, autobiography, and poetry, Hip Hop literature is exerting the same kind of influence as Hip Hop music, fashion, and culture. Through more than 180 alphabetically arranged entries, this encyclopedia surveys the world of Hip Hop literature and places it in its social and cultural contexts. Entries cite works for further reading, and a bibliography concludes the volume. Coverage includes authors, genres, and works, as well as on the musical artists, fashion designers, directors, and other figures who make up the context of Hip Hop literature. Entries cite works for further reading, and the encyclopedia concludes with a selected, general bibliography. Students in literature classes will value this guide to an increasingly popular body of literature, while students in social studies classes will welcome its illumination of American cultural diversity.