Title:  One Day My Soul Just Opened Up: 40 Days and 40 Nights Towards Spiritual Strength and Personal Growth
(The all-time best selling book on the AALBC web site!)
Author:  Iyanla Vanzant
Publisher:  Simon & Schuster Trade
Date Published:  December 1997
Format:  Trade Paper

Both an inspiring guide and a hands-on measurement tool that enables readers to chart their spiritual growth as it unfolds, One Day My Soul Just Opened Up encourages readers to use journal-writing as a self-awareness process. Vanzant introduces 40 principles to follow and embrace in daily living as guideposts on the path toward spiritual strength and understanding.

[back to top]

#2

[back to top]

#3

[back to top]

#4

[back to top]

#5

The Shimmershine Queens
by Camille Yarbrough
"A remarkable story about self-esteem and achievement"
-- Publishers Weekly

"A brave Book" -- Booklist

Angie, a 10-year-old inner-city kid, discovers "Shimmershine" -- the feeling you get when you believe in yourself and do your very best. 

[back to top]

#6

The Car Washing Street - by Denise Lewis Patrick, illustrated by John Ward
Format: Hardcover
Publication Date: August 1993

From School Library Journal: 
Gr 1-3-Every Saturday, Matthew, a young African-American boy, loves to sit with his daddy and watch his neighbors, the Rodriguezes, Mr. Henry Hamilton, and Junior Boy Taylor, wash their cars. On this particularly hot day, one splash leads to another, and the car washing ends in a friendly communal water fight. Ward conveys a sense of community and sharing. The double-page spreads punctuated with outlined text blocks draw readers into the scene and give a sense of participation. However, the acrylic paintings lack realistic detail and appear flat and static. The implied routine and regularity of life on this immaculate urban block makes this a refreshing, if not totally believable, story about neighborliness with no conflict and lots of smiling faces.-Lauren Mayer, New York Public Library

[back to top]

#7

Lyrics of Lowly Life
Paul Laurence Dunbar

From The Reader's Catalog:  
Dunbar, who died in 1906, preferred the poetry he wrote in standard English, and only at the insistence of his editors continued to turn out volumes of the dialect poetry that brought him fame. Nevertheless, among the black poets working in dialect around the turn of the century, Dunbar best evoked the voices and attitudes of real people

[back to top]

#8

[back to top]

#9

[back to top]

#10

The Meanest Thing to Say
by Bill Cosby
Varnette P. Honeywood (Illustrator)
Publisher: Scholastic  Publication Date: July 1997

With typical humor and insight, Bill Cosby teaches beginning readers the value of friendship and kindness in THE MEANEST THING TO SAY, a Little Bill Book. There's a new boy in Little Bill's class, and he's got a different game for the gang to play. Michael Reilly doesn't want to play basketball like the kids usually do; he prefers "Playing the Dozens." "You get twelve chances to say something mean to a person," Michael explains. "The meanest thing wins."

[back to top]