Best Selling Books by Angela Shelf Medearis

This year Sharie''s mother wants their family to celebrate Kwanzaa. And she has to work on a project with Caitlin, who insists on studying her family''s Greek Christmas. Hannah, Sharie''s best friend, invites her over for Hanukkah.

A snowball fight leads to a new dance and starts a new town tradition.

Ransome''s paintings are glorious in this celebration of the market in the French Quarter of New Orleans at the turn of the century, and Medearis'' poetic rhyme captures the rhythm of the street cries and the ragtime beat of the marching band. A young girl is awakened by the shouts of the street vendors ("Nice little snap beans / pretty little corn"). She runs to the window, opens it wide. What she sees are "Creole women in red bandannas," shouting vendors with baskets on their heads, fruit sellers with juicy watermelons, shoppers searching for best buys. The beautifully composed, richly colored paintings are filled with light and movement, from market street scenes to close-ups of luscious vegetables. The child is part of it all, reaching for fruit, watching, listening, and then joining in, high-stepping, whirling, and twirling to the hot jazz notes of the marching band.

100 biscuits, 100 rubans, 100 ballons : Hourra! C''est le 100e jour d''école!

After some kitchen disasters, Angela Medearis went from a cooking novice to a culinary historian eager to share her knowledge with others. Becoming the sassy, boa-wearing Kitchen Diva helped make sharing her message fun and inspired her popular TV show of the same name. The Kitchen Diva Cooks! is a collection of recipes from her motivational show, which teaches viewers about the history of their favorite foods, how to prepare healthful meals, and how to make cooking enjoyable.

Introduces the influence of African-based foods, cooking techniques, and traditions to American culinary history.

George is unhappy to receive a homemade muffler and itchy long underwear for Christmas, but they come in handy when he has an accident while ice skating.

Provides recipes and suggestions for celebrations for African-American holidays and special occasions throughout the year.

Explores the dance traditions of African Americans, from their origins in the expressive dances that the slaves brought from Africa through the development of jazz and tap to modern dance and ballet.

Boldness and a gift for improvising verse enable eight-year-old African American Daisy Turner to triumph over an incident of discrimination in her nineteenth century rural Vermont school. Told in Daisy''s voice, the book''s themes of identity and self-affirmation offer a powerful lesson to today''s youngsters who face similar situations of prejudice and stereotyping in twenty-first century classrooms. Suggestions on the concluding page provide creative ways for young readers to develop their own storytelling style in verse. Ages 6-10

When a bespectacled stranger shows up at the Z-Bar Ranch asking to borrow a horse, the cowboys think they''ll have some fun. They offer him the Zebra Dun, the meanest, wildest, most ornery horse around. But this newcomer not only rides the Zebra Dun with ease, he also out-wrangles every other hand on the ranch-- proving that every educated fellow''s not a plumb greenhorn.