New Releases by Alice McGill

In this retelling of a folktale, five Africans escape the horrors of slavery by simply disappearing into thin air.

Set in the backwoods of North Carolina, a collection of charming tales features the clever Bruh Rabbit and his colorful kin as they go about their daily lives in their simple and rustic world.

The year is 1946. Seven-year-old Roberta lives in Washington, D.C., with her parents-but this summer they send her to live with her grandparents in rural North Carolina for one month while her mother is on bed rest for a difficult pregnancy. Roberta doesn"t want to leave home. She"s even more worried that the new baby might take her place in the family. So, while her momma and daddy are making quite a fuss over the unborn baby, she creates a secret wish. But soon she finds herself involved in the rhythms of the country and the extended family she comes to know. Like a circle, a family unit holds together: a small ring inside a greater circle of loved ones. Alice McGill"s captivating story transports readers to a vivid time and place-and shares the joys and pangs of a child"s growing heart.

It is 1851. Miles is a house slave on the Tilery Plantation, but when he is caught looking at an open book, he is sent to the breaking ground where he learns what it really means to be a slave. 12-year-old Miles is allowed to work in the great house on the Tillery Plantation, where he is training to be a house servant, rather than labor in the fields. But after he is caught looking at an open book while dusting the library, Miles is banished from the mansion and sent to the breaking ground. There, he learns what it truly means to feel like a slave. But it is also at the breaking ground that he meets Elijah, an older slave who teaches Miles to read and tells him of the land of freedom up north. Armed with his new knowledge, Miles tells himself that he does not feel like a slave and he no longer believes working in the great house is a privlege.

Relates how Benjamin Banneker''s grandmother journeyed from England to Maryland in the late seventeenth century, worked as an indentured servant, began a farm of her own, and married a freed slave.

A collection of lullabies orally transmitted by African-American slaves revealing their hardships and sorrows as well as soothing notes of well-being and belief in a better time to come.