Transitional Chapter Books Featuring African-American Girls

From the Marshall Memo #442

In this article in The Reading Teacher, Jonda McNair (Clemson University) and Wanda Brooks (Temple University) bemoan the fact that there aren’t many transitional chapter books whose main characters are African-American girls. They sought out nine high-quality books with these specific characteristics:

• Written for children 8-11 years old;
• Written for children who read fairly independently but need to sharpen and extend their reading comprehension and critical-thinking skills as they transition from picture books to chapter books;
• Come in a series with a continuing cast of characters;
• Are under 100 pages, with illustrations throughout;
• Have short chapters and short paragraphs and are set in large type with generous spacing and large margins;
• Are written by female African-American authors;
• The main characters are 8-10-year-old African-American girls who are dealing with solidifying friendships, developing morality, fitting in, and valuing learning.

Here are the books that McNair and Brooks recommend for all upper-elementary classrooms:

• Make Way for Dyamonde Daniel by Nikki Grimes
• Rich: A Dyamonde Daniel Book by Nikki Grimes
• Almost Zero: A Dyamonde Daniel Book by Nikki Grimes
• Nikki and Deja by Karen English
• Nikki and Deja: Birthday Blues by Karen English
• Nikki and Deja: The Newsy News Newsletter by Karen English
• Willimena Rules! How to Lose your Class Pet by Valerie Wilson Wesley
• Willimena Rules! How to Fish for Trouble by Valerie Wilson Wesley
• Willimena Rules! How to Lose Your Cookie Money by Valerie Wilson Wesley. 

“Transitional Chapter Books: Representations of African-American Girlhood” by Jonda McNair and Wanda Brooks in The Reading Teacher, May 2012 (Vol. 65, #8, p. 567-577), 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/TRTR.01084/abstract; the authors can be reached at jmcnair@clemson.edu and wbrooks@temple.edu.