Teen Books for Black History Month 2025

This year Black History Month focuses on the various and profound ways that work of all kinds intersect with the collective experiences of Black people. Work is very much at the center of Black history and culture. These book selections celebrate Black past, present and futures.  


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Angel of Greenwood

In 1921 in the “Black Wall Street” of Tulsa, Oklahoma, seventeen-year-old Isaiah Wilson, a troublemaker with a secret passion for reading, and sixteen-year-old Angel Hill, a loner whose peers disregard her as a “goody-goody,” find themselves suddenly spending a lot of time together when their English teacher offers them a job on her mobile library. But as the two grow closer, their lives change drastically after a white mob destroys their community and leaves the residents displaced. 

This title is also available for checkout as an eBook on Libby, in eAudio on Libby, and in eAudio on Hoopla. 

 

 


Better Than We Found It: Conversations to Help Save the World

Covering sixteen topics and featuring more than two dozen interviews with prominent activists, authors, actors, and politicians, this is the essential resource for those who want to make the world better than we found it.

This title is also available for checkout as an eBook on Libby 

 


Black Girl You Are Atlas

Poet Renée Watson looks back at her childhood and urges readers to look forward at their futures with love, understanding, and celebration in this fully illustrated poetry collection.

This title is also available for checkout as an eBook on Libby and in eAudio on Libby. 


Black Star

Twelve-year old Black girl Charley, who dreams of becoming the first professional female pitcher, must navigate adolescence during the turbulent segregation era and the beginning of the Great Migration.


Black Was the Ink

Despondent sixteen-year-old Malcolm finds new strength and courage as he is transported between his family’s modern-day Mississippi farm and the life of his ancestor Cedric Johnson, a congressional aide in post-Civil War America.

This title is also available for checkout in eAudio on Hoopla.


The Davenports

The Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth and status in 1910 Chicago, and the two daughters, Olivia and Helen, are finding their way and finding love–even where they are not supposed to. 

This title is also available for checkout as an eBook on Libby and in eAudio on Libby. 

 



Ida, in Love and in Trouble

A historical novel about Ida B. Wells, from her teen years up through becoming an investigative journalist and civil rights crusader without peer. 

This title is also available for checkout as an eBook on Libby. 


Love Radio

Prince Jones, a self-professed teen love doctor known for his radio segment on the local hip-hop station, believes he can get the bookish, anti-romance Dani Ford to fall in love with him in three dates.


Maybe an Artist

A heartfelt and funny graphic novel memoir from one of the first Black female cartoonists to be published in the New Yorker , when she was just 22 years old.


Tangleroot

When eighteen-year-old Noni moves to Tangleroot plantation in rural Virginia for her mom’s new position as a college president, she uncovers long-buried secrets of the town’s racist past and present. 

This title is also available for checkout as an eBook on Libby.