Title: Leon's Story (Sunburst Books)
First published: September 1, 2000
Description: "Leon's Story is a powerful, wonderful thing!" -- Nikki Giovanni

I remember that as a young boy I used to look in the mirror and I would curse my color, my blackness. But in those days they didn't call you "black." They didnt say "minority." They called us "colored" or "nigger."

Leon Tillage grew up the son of a sharecropper in a small town in North Carolina. Told in vignettes, this is his story about walking four miles to the school for black children, and watching a school bus full of white children go past. It's about his being forced to sit in the balcony at the movie theater, hiding all night when the Klansmen came riding, and worse. Much worse.

But it is also the story of a strong family and the love that bound them together. And, finally, it's about working to change an oppressive existence by joining the civil rights movement. Edited from recorded interviews conducted by Susan L. Roth, Leon's story will stay with readers long after they have finished his powerful account.

Leon's Story is the winner of the 1998 Boston Globe - Horn Book Award for Nonfiction.

Horn Book Magazine Fanfare List, Carter G. Woodson Book Award (NCSS), American Library Association Notable Children's Books, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, ALA Notable Children's Books, American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults, Booklist Editors' Choice, Boston Globe - Horn Book Award, IRA Teachers' Choices
Subjects: Race relations, Biographies, African Americans, Romans pour la jeunesse, Childhood and youth, Civil rights movements, Enfants noirs américains, Juvenile literature, Ségrégation, Biography, History, Reading Level-Grade 3, Reading Level-Grade 5, Reading Level-Grade 4, Reading Level-Grade 7, Reading Level-Grade 6, Reading Level-Grade 8, African americans, biography, juvenile literature, North carolina, juvenile literature, North carolina, history, African americans, civil rights, African americans, biography
Places: North Carolina
Time periods: Jim Crowe South