During that special half-hour of twilight--the dark-thirty--pick one of these spine-tingling tales and savor it...-A white bus driver who refuses a ride to a penniless black woman later encounters her ghost.-Phantom pictures etched on the windowpanes of a man's house proclaim his guilt in a lynching. -A retired Pullman porter hears a ghostly whistle and knows it's the last train he'll ever ride. Mesmerizing and breathtakingly original, these tales are inspired by African American history and range from the time of slavery to the civil rights era of the twentieth century. With her extraordinary gift for suspense and her sure sense of storytelling, Patricia C. McKissack has created a heart-stopping collection of lasting value, a book not quickly forgotten.

    But at the revival meeting, Pete discovers that the Man is actually a savior of souls, and Pete has been waiting all his life to be saved.It's not something Pete's parents can understand. Certainly his best friend, Rufus, an avowed atheist, doesn't understand. But Pete knows he can't imagine life without the Man. So when the Man invites Pete to join him on his mission, how can Pete say no -- even if it means leaving behind everything he's ever loved?

    There the boys listen eagerly to all of Uncle David's tales of superheroes.Then one night Uncle David tells the story, The Woodcutter, and what happens next is terrible--then wonderful.

    When she shares her secrets, strange things start happening in their old house. They suspect Amanda until they learn the house was long ago haunted by a ghost that cut off the head of a wooden cupid on the stairway. A Newbery Honor Book.

    These are me. The moves make the man. The moves make me.Jerome foxworthy -- the Jayfox to his friends -- likes to think he can handle anything. He handled growing up without a father. He handled being the first black kid in school. And he sure can handle a basketball.Then Jerome meets bix Rivers -- mysterious and moody, but a great athlete. So Jerome decides to teach bix his game. He can tell that bix has the talent. All he's got to do is learn the right moves....

    Overnight, the flourshing city of Chicago was transformed into a smoldering wasteland. The damage was so profound that few people believed the city could ever rise again.By weaving personal accounts of actual survivors together with the carefully researched history of Chicago and the disaster, Jim Murphy constructs a riveting narrative that recreates the event with drama and immediacy. And finally, he reveals how, even in a time of deepest dispair, the human spirit triumphed, as the people of Chicago found the courage and strength to build their city once again.

    Clara Wintermute, the only child of a wealthy doctor, is spellbound by Grisini’s act and invites him to entertain at her birthday party. Seeing his chance to make a fortune, Grisini accepts and makes a splendidly gaudy entrance with caravan, puppets, and his two orphaned assistants.Lizzie Rose and Parsefall are dazzled by the Wintermute home. Clara seems to have everything they lack — adoring parents, warmth, and plenty to eat. In fact, Clara’s life is shadowed by grief, guilt, and secrets. When Clara vanishes that night, suspicion of kidnapping falls upon the puppeteer and, by association, Lizzie Rose and Parsefall. As they seek to puzzle out Clara’s whereabouts, Lizzie and Parse uncover Grisini’s criminal past and wake up to his evil intentions. Fleeing London, they find themselves caught in a trap set by Grisini’s ancient rival, a witch with a deadly inheritance to shed before it’s too late.

    This title describes the cycle of myths about the Argonauts and the quest for the Golden Fleece, as well as the tales of the creation of Heaven and Earth, the labours of Hercules, Theseus and the Minotaur, and others.

    Eleven-year-old Franny Davis and her best friend share school and family problems in this realistic, often humorous story set in New York's Greenwich Village.1966 Newbery Honor BookNotable Children's Books of 1965 (ALA)Children's Books of 1965 (Library of Congress)"City" Books of the Sixties (The Instructor)

    And so one night he leaped onto a shelf of rock and watched the flotilla of the Raft People disappear. And from there he found his way Outside, into a world so beautiful and strange he could only suppose he had died-a world of day, and sun, of trees and sky.

    (A) literary folk story at its best".--School Library Journal. Newbery Honor Book; ALA Notable Children's Book.

    But someone -- a face, fleetingly seen staring at him from an attic window -- was watching. And when a one-eyed cat turns up at an elderly neighbor's woodshed, Ned is caught in a web of guilt, fear, and shame that he cannot escape -- until another moonlit night, come spring, brings redemption and surprising revelations.

    She is cool and streetwise, too, and afraid of no one. It's easy for her to watch out for her little, first-grade brother, Andrew. But their mother, a legal professional and a widow, is concerned about crime and drugs in her children's Chicago school. She moves them all to a smaller and, she hopes, smaller town.Yolanda, at first, is scornful of her new town. And Andrew, who never talks much, is having trouble learning to read. What he loves to do is play on the old harmonica given to him as a baby by his father to teethe on and which he's kept blowing ever since. He can imitate any sound he hears, like bacon sizzling, or express any mood he feels, like the freshness of an early morning. Yolanda understands that that's the way he "talks." She is convinced Andrew is a true genius with a great musical gift. But no one else believes it--not her mother, nor Andrew's teachers, not even wonderful Aunt Tiny in Chicago. Yolanda sets out to open up adult eyes, a task whose strategies will call on far more than her physical toughness. Her plans crystallize on a visit back to Chicago to enjoy the great annual blues festival with Aunt Tiny.Carol Fenner, whose previous book "Randall's Wall" has reached a wide audience throughout the country, has created a daring heroine in Yolanda and a warm portrayal of an African-American family in a story that moves with mounting intensity to a dramatic, believable, and a wholly satisfying conclusion.

    He spins for the animals—as well as for Ben and Abby, the kids whose grandfather does the rescuing—a yarn about his ancestor, the nameless cat who brought Dick Whittington to the heights of wealth and power in 16th-century England. This is an unforgettable tale about the healing, transcendent power of storytelling, and how learning to read saves one little boy.

    When Belle Prater disappears, Belle’s boy, Woodrow, comes to live with his grandparents in Coal Station, Virginia. Woodrow’s cousin Gypsy is the town beauty, but she has hidden sorrows and secrets of her own. She wonders how Woodrow can accept his mother’s disappearance when she’s never gotten over her father’s death. That’s when Woodrow tells Gypsy the secret about his mother.