Nellie Lee Love is an 11-year-old African American girl living in the rural South at the end of World War I. In a year of tumultuous change, victory, and tragedy, she records her thoughts and feelings in a diary given her by her mother. After the white racism in their town becomes too brutally overt to ignore, Nellie and her family pack up and move to Chicago. Delighted with the seemingly endless opportunities in the big city, Nellie is blindsided by the more insidious forms of prejudice that northerners practice: hatred within their own race. But through family unity and integrity, and education by way of W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey's writings, Nellie and her family gradually discover a place for themselves in their new circumstances, and ultimately find hope and triumph.
Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award winner Patricia McKissack writes the kind of historical fiction that will have history students and even reluctant readers and clamoring for more. The dignity and courage of the Love family provides a model for all families, regardless of ethnic or cultural background. The award-winning Dear America series is one of the most popular book series in America and includes another by McKissack, A Picture of Freedom: The Diary of Clotee, a Slave Girl. (Ages 9 to 12) --Emilie Coulter