I recently received a comment asking for chapter book recommendations for a book club of girls in 2nd-5th grade. The mom said that what she wants most is a book “that has black children in a fun situation, just living life.” I responded to her comment but decided to turn it into a post because I’m betting that a lot of parents are looking for the same thing.
If you’ve been following me for a while you know that this has been a real struggle of mine – finding books with Black children and families who are just doing their thing. So many well-written, wonderful books featuring Black people focus on “the struggle.” I appreciate and use those books in my homeschool because they’re important and necessary, so please don’t misinterpret my issue. It’s not that I don’t want those books; it’s that I don’t want ONLY those books.
Sometimes we just want to read about Black kids doing the things that all kids do – like hanging out with siblings, navigating friendships, playing outside, going to ballet class, baking cakes, solving mysteries, coding, going on field trips, exploring the garden, competing in contests, doing science experiments, and even living in the White House. You know…having FUN!
Thankfully, over time, I’ve collected a good stash of these books, and they have been well-loved by my family. In fact, I had to travel around to every corner of our home to gather all of these for the photo, and many are missing – lost to outdoor spaces and hidden places, I’m sure.
I’m so thankful for the authors who take the time to write these stories and the illustrators who draw people that look like us (my family). They may not know it, but they’ve played an integral role in helping me raise my children. I’ll continue to support them with book purchases and shoutouts forever. If they keep writing, we’ll keep buying.
But…Yes, there’s a but…before you Charlotte Mason mamas start adding everything to your cart, I want to make a confession:
Most of these are not what we consider living books.
There is no magic list of awesome living chapter books featuring Black children frolicking about through life having fun or amazing adventures. So if you’re looking for a bunch of books like Heidi, The Secret Garden, Pollyanna, The Railway Children, The Boxcar Children, Little House on the Prairie, and all of that but with Black characters…it ain’t happening.
There are certainly some living chapter books with Black characters, but they usually aren’t just about the ups and downs of childhood; they very much feature the realities of historical and current issues of enslavement, Jim Crow, racism, severe poverty, broken families, colorism, and more. And then there are fun light-hearted books that are often not living books. And there are a few that meet the standards of both, in my opinion.
So where does that leave us?
Well, if ensuring that your fiction book list features 100% living books is a requirement, then it leaves you with a lot of very white books. If you’re open to expanding your parameters to include Life-Giving Books, as necessary, in order to round out your child’s literary experience then I’d say it leaves you standing next to me, with a chai tea latte in hand, watching our kids’ healthy imaginations soar.
Ultimately, the book club mom who asked the original question will have to consider whether she’s willing to step away from the classic literature model. Many of the chapter books featuring Black children just being children aren’t written the same way as the titles that are on typical lists of living books. There is a difference, and it can be a hard pill for some to swallow, but there is also a pay-off.
Several years ago, I started a book club for homeschooled girls 7-10 years old, and we’re still going strong. We meet monthly and choose Life-Giving titles that will excite our girls and provide plenty of topics for discussion. We often choose series books so the girls can “get hooked” and continue reading the rest of the books on their own. These are not school books. They’re just FUN books for the girls to dig into in their leisure time or at night in bed.
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- The Great Cake Mystery by Alexander McCall Smith
- Sophie Washington by Tonya Duncan Ellis
- Zoey and Sassafras by Asia Citro
- Liberty Porter, First Daughter by Julia DeVillers
- Hello Stars by Alena Pitts
- The Magnificent Mya Tibbs by Crystal Allen
- Starring Grace by Mary Hoffman
- Anna Hibiscus by Atinuke
- Sugar Plum Ballerinas by Whoopi Goldberg
- Nikki & Deja by Karen English
- Keena Ford by Melissa Thomson
- Willimena Rules! by Valerie Wilson Wesley
- Ruby and the Booker Boys by Derrick Barnes
Please note: We have nearly every book for each series, and I just grabbed the ones I saw first, so some of the ones in the pic aren’t the first books. It’s easy to find the series order on Amazon though.
Where should you start? I’m recommending all of these books, to be sure. But if you’re just starting on the path to include more diverse options, here are my quick start choices:
- For young readers or as a read-aloud: Anna Hibiscus
- For older readers or fans of the Christian movie War Room (the author played the daughter in that movie): Hello Stars
- For living book enthusiasts: The Great Cake Mystery
- For everyday general interest: Starring Grace (the sequel to picture book Amazing Grace)
Additional Notes:
- All of these books feature girls. If you have sons, I’m so sorry about that! I’m not a professional book reviewer. I just share what we use in our home (school), and my chapter book readers are 3rd & 4th grade girls. But guess what? My next 2 kids are boys, and I’m slowly in the process of updating our home library to reflect their needs and interests. I promise that a post like this for boys will come, but my boys will read some of these books too! I definitely don’t feel that a boy has to be the star of every book my boys read. [Update: HERE IS THE LIST! Chapter Books: Black Boys Having Fun]
- These are ideal for 2nd-4th grade. My rising 5th grader has moved on to middle grade fiction, for the most part, but these were some of her favorites. Maybe she’d still be reading some of them if she hadn’t already read them so many times. I asked her which ones she recommends for 10 year old girls, and she said, “Liberty Porter, First Daughter is my very favorite!” So, there you go. Hello Stars has the most text density on this list, and the main character is 12 years old, so that’s another one that could work for older girls.
- Every scene of every book is not filled with literary genius. When I started introducing these books to my kids, I occasionally stumbled across things that weren’t necessarily bad, but they were…different. It felt like there was quite a jump from the sweet picture books we’d been reading to some of these books that had things we hadn’t really encountered in our typical literature at that time. No curse words or inappropriate relationships – nothing like that AT ALL. Perhaps some of the scenes just have common school yard “nothingness.” That’s the only word I can come up with. Some scenes of nothingness. My girls are a little older now, and frankly, the stuff doesn’t bother me anymore, but I remember feeling slightly annoyed at times with just a few of these books – not most of them, by any means.
Exposing children to the finest literature available while leaving them with an impression that “white is fun and black is not” doesn’t feel like a win to me. And the fact that you’ve made it this far in my post without clicking away tells me that it doesn’t feel like a win to you either. I hope you’ll give yourself permission to expand the pool of possibilities in order to expose your kiddos to the sweet girls in these books. Happy reading!
You can find me on Instgram at @HeritageMomBlog.
My daughter read the “All Stars” series and she loved it!!
I love the idea of the kids book club!
I don’t know Amber, but if there aren’t as many living books in this area, maybe you and I need to change that somehow…in the near future. I can’t believe I just wrote that😳 but I want to speak it into existence. 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
Speak, girl, speak!!! I think about it often, but then I come back out of the clouds to reality. And in reality, this mama is TIRED. You never know though. It would be such an incredible gift to so many.
Erika Alicea, follow your spark, please. Such a need!
Blessings on your journey.
Will you please let me know if there is a need for financial and possibly editing support? Those are two areas in which I feel I could help make this a reality!
Absolutely, Becky! Erika and I talk about this need so often. We’ll definitely let you know when we get our thoughts together. Please pray for our direction and confidence.
Thank you for this list!! We love good quality literature for school books but that is only a very, very small portion of our reading day. We love to fill the rest of the day with diverse, fun, imaginative light reading. I’m so grateful for people who review books. It makes it so much easier to know where to start. So thank you for posting it.
You’re welcome! It’s nice to hear that you’re so open to including other books into your family’s reading time. I think there’s so much space between traditional living books and…just letting the kids read any ol’ kind of garbage. I’m happy to explore some of that territory!
Thank you!! I’m so glad I found this post (and now you on IG!) We have a ton of beautiful diverse picture books but I’ve started looking for diverse chapter books for my son (almost 7) and this is so helpful! So glad I found you!
I’m glad you found me too, Lindsey. My son will be 7 in July, so I’m working on purchasing more boy-interest chapter books, so stay tuned…
My two oldest children are boys, 8.5 and just turned 7 last week, and we read aloud the first half of the Anna Hibiscus series last year (didn’t discover there are actually 8 books until just a few months ago since our library only had the first 4. Delighted that I just bought the whole series for our home library last week!) and they were begging me to read more than a chapter or two a day. Just illustrating Amber’s point that the lead character doesn’t have to match the gender of the child reading/listening to the material. However, also looking forward to Amber’s list for male character leads as well! Thanks for all the hard work in research and sharing with the rest of us, Amber!
You’re welcome! I’ve been ordering boy books and going through them as they arrive. My son’s birthday is next month, and we’ll be giving him a bunch of new books…and then I’m going to write about them, lol.
Oh I’m so excited to discover these books!! We love Anna Hibiscus, and my girls have gotten the Sugar Plum Ballerina books from the library. Have you read The Vanderbeekers? We’ve only read the first so far, but they’re very much a throwback to Elizabeth Enright/Eleanor Estes fiction, a sweet large family living in a brownstone in New York.
Rosie, you’re not going to believe this, but The Vanderbeekers was literally delivered to my doorstep via Amazon TODAY. No joke. I’ve heard great things about it, so I’m excited to share. We’re planning to read one each month (June, July, August) and then the brand new 4th one comes out in September.
Thanks for this list! We have found many great picture books featuring black characters having fun and I didn’t have much direction for where to go with chapter books. This gives us a great start, thank you!!
OK, I’m glad that helped! I’m going to be writing another post with chapter books for slightly older children soon so please check back.
Love this! And I’ll be awaiting your fun finds for boys. We LOVE Anna Hibiscus on audio. We read three books in the Akimbo series, written also by Alexander McCall Smith, and yes, it was fun, not brilliant, but fun. (I loved his adult series and those were brilliant!) I was looking for books with boy leads of diverse ethnic backgrounds/context that would be relatable to my kids in their middle-class life, so they would see color of skin doesn’t automatically equal some standard of living. We’ll look at those, too, but just trying to present what “should” be to the imaginations of my young kids.
So glad you’ve found some books you can use, and I’ll definitely be working on the boy list soon. I can’t leave my boys out! 🙂
Thank you for your list and gathering up of books. I was just beginning my search of books with, as you quoted, “black children in a fun situation, just living life.” We had just found Anna Hibiscus, but now I am looking forward to adding some of these titles to our readers/read alouds.
I hope you find some other ones that your kids will love from this list! We had fun with these.
We got Ruby and the Booker Boys for our daughter several years ago because her name is Ruby Lee (and she has 2 brothers) and she really enjoyed it. These books are also great if you have a reluctant older reader because the stories and characters are engaging and the writing is not TOO “baby-ish” but also not overwhelming.
That’s a really good point, Jamie. I didn’t even think of mentioning that, but some of these are definitely great options for reluctant older readers. Thank you for pointing that out! And I really love your daughter’s name.
I’ve heard so many good things about Anna Hibiscus! We also enjoy the Ada Twist, Scientist picture book and chapter book, but it might qualify more as light reading.
The Anna Hibiscus books are just the sweetest. They really are. We love Ada Twist, and I have her on my recommended elementary reading list. Light reading totally has a place in our home!
Thanks! This was really helpful in looking for birthday present books for my second grader!
I’m glad! I’m doing the same thing for my 2nd grade son now. His birthday is next month, and I’m ordering him a bunch of thesec kinds of books with boy main characters.
Thank you! I just learned of your site from a FB group. So glad I did! I’ve been looking for “mirror” chapter books for my rising 2nd grade daughter. This is great! Thanks for the resources and information.
Yay! I’m so glad that you found something useful on your very first visit to my blog. Please come back again!
Thanks so much, Amber!!! I’ve added three of these to Aisley’s reading list for this year!
Yay! I hope that she truly enjoys them.
Thank you for these book I will look into them and get my daughter a few. I was looking for books but it’s sad how we cannot find books like you said of kids being kids. It’s always some type of book of the family going back south and a reminder of struggling families.
Yes, it’s really hard to find chapter books with Black characters that don’t deal with struggle and strife. I hope your daughter enjoys the ones you found here!
We just got a “new” book from the library called “The Rainstorm Brainstorm” that looked cute and might fall in this category. It shows girls of many different races, but the main character is black.
That looks so cute! This series is based on a collection of dolls from American Girl, and my daughter absolutely loved her doll that correlates with the main character of the book. The doll/book combo would make a really sweet gift. Here’s the link for anyone reading these comments later: https://amzn.to/3wtl2va