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Showing 1–6 of 6 books

  • Genre: Nonfiction
  • Award year: 1998
  • All Over but the Shoutin'

    All Over but the Shoutin'

    By Rick Bragg

    Bragg, a Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent, didn't start out to be a writer. In fact, he sort of fell into it. He recalls this personal journey in a rags-to-riches memoir, which begins in 1959 in Alabama, where white people had it hard and black people had it harder than that, because what are the table scraps of nothing? In vivid prose, by turns comic and affecting, he recalls growing up white and poor in the South, his difficult relationship with his abusive, alcoholic father, and his love for his courageous mother, who raised him and taught him what really mattered.
  • Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster

    Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster

    By Jon Krakauer

    Only a handful of people have stood atop Everest. Krakauer is one of them, but the story he tells here is not of glorious triumph. Rather, it is a true account of survival and death that will grab YA readers from the very first page. Krakauer had a front-row seat to the headline-making 1996 climbing disaster that resulted in the deaths of five people, and his account of the unfolding tragedy, filled with keenly observed details, is not only a transfixing drama but also an inquiry into survivor guilt and the outer limits of human strength and responsibility.

  • Lest We Forget: The Passage from Africa to Slavery and Emancipation

    Lest We Forget: The Passage from Africa to Slavery and Emancipation

    By Velma Maia Thomas

    In a cleverly designed interactive book, the creator of the Black Holocaust Exhibit relates the pain of my people. Her simple yet descriptive words tell the story of slavery and the struggle for freedom—from the African villages to the boats, from the plantations to the end of the Civil War and Jubilee, the day of freedom. Letters and newspaper clippings personalize the story, and reproductions of documents, meant to be pulled from envelopes and pouches attached to the pages, bring the past directly into the present.
  • The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men against the Sea

    The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men against the Sea

    By Sebastian Junger

    In 1991, as Halloween nears, a cold front moves south from Canada, a hurricane swirls over Bermuda, and an intense storm builds over the Great Lakes. These forces converge to create the cruelest holiday trick of all, a 100-year tempest that catches the North Atlantic fishing fleet off guard and unprotected. Readers weigh anchor with sailors struggling against the elements; they follow meteorologists, who watch helplessly as the storm builds; and, by helicopter and boat, they navigate 100-foot seas and 120-mph winds to attempt rescue against harrowing odds.
  • The Secret Family: Twenty-four Hours inside the Mysterious Worlds of Our Minds and Bodies

    The Secret Family: Twenty-four Hours inside the Mysterious Worlds of Our Minds and Bodies

    By David Bodanis

    With surprises and information on every page, Bodanis' book peels back the layers of our minds and bodies to reveal a churning world of tiny, invisible components, living and inanimate, in ourselves and in our surroundings, that silently and secretly affect us. By following the activities of a family—mom, dad, baby, young son, and teenage daughter—through a typical day, from breakfast to bedtime, Bodanis makes readers active partners in a mysterious and fascinating science adventure. If teens are shocked to discover that there's embalming fluid on postage stamps, just wait till they find out what's floating around the local mall.
  • Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America

    Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America

    By Rebecca Carroll

    Carroll captures the voices of the next generation of African American women in this collection of interviews. Teenagers will hear themselves plainly and powerfully echoed in the honest, unfiltered words of fifteen young black women, who range in age from eleven to twenty. From a variety of backgrounds and in very different ways, they speak candidly about their personal lives, their race, their gender, and their future as black women. A paperback format and a winning cover adds to the YA appeal.