These five works of nonfiction, recommended for intermediate and/or middle-school readers, provide close-ups of human stories from various historical moments that may be discussed in the classroom.

Barracoon: Adapted for Young Readers
by Zora Neale Hurston; adapted by Ibram X. Kendi; illus. by Jazzmen Lee-Johnson
Intermediate, Middle School    Amistad/HarperCollins    208 pp.
1/24    9780063098336    $18.99
e-book ed.  9780063098350    $10.99

In 1860, more than fifty years after the United States outlawed the slave trade, the ship Clotilda journeyed back to Alabama from West Africa, carrying kidnapped people. Years later, Hurston, renowned anthropologist, writer, and folklorist, interviewed eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis (born Oluale Kossula), who was purportedly the last survivor of the ship, at his home in Plateau, Alabama. Kendi (adapter of Hurston’s Magnolia Flower, rev. 11/22, and The Making of Butterflies, rev. 5/23) has adapted the seminal work, first published in 2018, for young readers. He opens by providing thoroughly drawn context, characterizing the transatlantic human trade as the “most dramatic chapter in the story of human existence” and describing the horrific conditions under which enslaved people existed. In African American Vernacular English, or Ebonics (“I want tell-ee somebody who I is…I want you everywhere you go to tell everybody what Cudjo say”), the man shared memories of his family and community in his home village, the harrowing Middle Passage, his five-and-a-half years of enslavement, and his freedom following the Civil War during which he married, had children, and cofounded AfricaTown (later renamed Plateau). Throughout the story, his loneliness and longing to return to his native home are palpable, supplying readers with an intimate perspective on his strength to survive. Kendi illuminates these memories in a captivating narrative that exudes empathy and authenticity. Pencil and black ink drawings (unseen) accompany the text. Powerful, profound, and necessary. PAULETTA BROWN BRACY

The Circuit: Graphic Novel
by Francisco Jiménez; adapted by Andrew J. Rostan; illus. by Celia Jacobs
Intermediate, Middle School    Clarion/HarperCollins    240 pp.
3/24    9780358348214    $24.99
Paper ed.  9780358348221    $15.99
e-book ed.  9780358439349    $10.99

Jiménez’s iconic, award-winning memoir — an episodic collection of short stories published in 1997 — receives a handsome graphic novel adaptation. Francisco’s family leaves their small town on the outskirts of Guadalajara for the promise of a better life in California. Making their way to Mexicali, they dig under the wire fence to cross the border, finding employment in the southern part of the San Joaquin Valley as migrant farm workers. An early memory has a five-year-old Francisco watching his infant brother while his parents and older brother pick cotton. It’s a hard life: constantly moving and uprooting themselves to find work; substandard housing, education, and medical care; and the entire family making sacrifices, both physical and emotional. Here, as in the original source material, Jiménez’s plainspoken narration resonates with dignity, humility, and timelessness. The mixed-media illustrations convey both the time period and the mood of the piece with a limited color palette of olive green, lavender, and vermillion on a sepia background. (Francisco is drawn here with black hair and brown skin, rather than the fair skin and blond hair described in the original source and in the family picture that accompanies the author’s note.) A glossary is also appended. JONATHAN HUNT

The Girl Who Sang: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope and Survival
by Estelle Nadel with Sammy Savos and Bethany Strout; illus. by Sammy Savos
Intermediate, Middle School    Roaring Brook    272 pp.
1/24    9781250247766    $25.99
Paper ed.  9781250247773    $17.99
e-book ed.  9781250366672    $11.99

At the start of this compelling graphic memoir, four-year-old Enia Feld lives a seemingly carefree life with her loving extended family in 1939 Borek, Poland. Though they are “very, very poor” — and there are hints of antisemitism and violence to come — Enia feels safe, secure, and well cared for, her voice constantly lifted in song. “And I thought we would be this happy forever.” On September 1, though, Germany invades. The family’s rights are continually eroded (“Things changed over the next two years. Slowly”) until, inevitably, they are forced to flee for their lives. In five dramatic parts — Innocence, Hidden, Liberation, A New Beginning, The Girl Who Sang—this harrowing story is told and shown in clear sequential art that reflects the terror and grief of Enia’s experiences in contrast with her early, pastoral-set days. When liberation finally occurs, after years of whispers in hiding, the once-vivacious girl has gone nearly silent, but it’s in finding her voice that she is able to begin a new life in America. The history is deeply personal, as related by Nadel (who passed away in November 2023), and her intent is made clear in her concluding note: “I’m not going to be here forever. Someday there will no longer be Holocaust survivors still living…I want you, the young people, the next generation, to carry our stories on.” An afterword, family photos, additional resources, an illustrator’s note, and details about comics are appended. ELISSA GERSHOWITZ

Three Summers: A Memoir of Sisterhood, Summer Crushes, and Growing Up on the Eve of the Bosnian Genocide
by Amra Sabic-El-Rayess with Laura L. Sullivan
Intermediate, Middle School    Farrar    352 pp.
4/24    9780374390815    $18.99
e-book ed.  9780374390822    $11.99

After eleven-year-old Amra’s brother’s death from complications of Marfan syndrome, her mother’s remedy for Amra’s grief is to arrange for her cousin Žana to spend summers with Amra in Bihać, Bosnia. This vividly told and moving memoir takes place over three consecutive summers in the years leading up to the Bosnian Genocide (preceding the events of The Cat I Never Named, rev. 1/21). The first summer of romantic crushes and days spent lazing on the banks of the River Una helps Amra to heal. “I am ancient in the ways of trauma…but [Žana] shows me another way of being.” A sense of impending violence, however, undergirds the book’s carefree ­summer setting as simmering political and ­sectarian tensions slowly heat up. Tata (her father) is detained, interrogated, and loses his job, while anti-Muslim sentiments become more freely voiced. An author’s note provides a timeline for the Bosnian Genocide along with a “where they are now” update. The book smartly contrasts more lighthearted preteen drama with looming ethnic and religious tensions, resulting in an engaging reflection on disability and ethnic difference. JULIE HAKIM AZZAM

The Mine Wars: The Bloody Fight for Workers’ Rights in the West Virginia Coal Fields
by Steve Watkins
Middle School    Bloomsbury    272 pp.
5/24    9781547612185    $19.99
e-book ed.  9781547612192    $13.99

West Virginia, the Mountain State, is also historically known for both coal ­mining and Appalachian poverty. Watkins explores the nexus between them in this overlooked chapter in the history of the labor movement. By the early twentieth century, West Virginia had emerged as a cheap source of coal, in large part because capitalism allowed wealthy mine owners to exploit workers. Coal mining was dangerous, the hours were long, the conditions deplorable, and the pay minimal — often paid in scrip, currency accepted only at the company store. The tension between mine owners and labor unions came to a head in 1920 during the Matewan Massacre and in 1921 during the Battle of Blair Mountain. Watkins introduces the major players and aptly delineates the causes and effects of these bloody and violent events. He reflects on how this history has been erased from books on West Virginia, a history that could have served as a source of pride in resistance. He concludes with a discussion of the current state of coal mining, still a mainstay of the area’s economy despite mounting national pressure to move away from fossil fuels. Numerous black-and-white photographs ably support the text, while sources, notes, and an index are appended. JONATHAN HUNT

From the July 2024 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.