Celebrate Black History Month with Your Kids—and These Picture Books (2024)

Although they were stripped of everything, enslaved Africans still found ways to preserve their culture in a new land. Nowhere is that imprint more lasting than in contemporary African American foodways. Black-Eyed Peas and Hoghead Cheese tells the story of Black cuisine through the eyes of a modern-day, 9-year-old Creole girl in Louisiana as she prepares a New Year’s Day meal with her grandmother. Without being preachy, the story draws a straight line from Africa to enslavement to the typical African American dinner table. Bonus content: a recipe for pralines, and the real-life photo of a gumbo pot that has been in the author’s family for more than 65 years.

Much is made of Black girls learning to love their hair (shout-out to Hair Love!). But the truth is that, regardless of gender, Black hair is a separate member of the family, a whole other person we wear upon our shoulders. For boys and girls alike, the care and coiffing of Black hair invites intimacy, legacy, history, status, and creativity. As the winner of everything from a Newbery, a Caldecott, and Coretta Scott King Honors, Crown is a rare ode to Black men celebrating Black manhood through hair. Author Derrick Barnes’s story addresses the reader directly, explaining what to expect as one enters the sacred space of the Black barbershop. The language pops as vibrantly as Gordon C. James’s illustrations, all of which capture that measure of pride that emanates from a fresh cut. As Barnes writes, “Sometimes in life, that’s all you ever need. A crisp but subtle line.”

In 2023, rap music turned 50; the time to acknowledge its lasting legacy is long overdue. Whatever you feel about rap, you can’t deny that it has had a profound influence not only on American culture but also on childhood education. Bussin’ rhymes are used to teach everything from phonics to chemistry to history. In celebration of the rappers who started it all, The Story of Rap offers a perfect, joyous tribute to the genre and its history. It's a sturdy cardboard book with pint-size cartoon caricatures of the enormous personalities of hip-hop. The book is informative, and, of course, written in rhyme. Rap has been called many things, but in the hands of illustrator Lindsey Sagar, it’s downright adorable.

African American culture has had a huge impact on city life. About 80 percent of the nation’s Black population lives in cities or their surrounding suburbs. MacArthur Fellow Jacqueline Woodson’s offering is an ode to urban childhood, which, contrary to media depictions, is not all hardscrabble street life. The book follows a diverse group of kids who clamber out of the building on the last day of school, heading for a summer of fun on their close-knit city block. It’s a throwback to 1970s Brooklyn, the world of double Dutch, stickball, sidewalk art, and romping in the spray of fire hydrants. Adult readers of a certain age will remember knee-high tube socks, Sting-Ray bikes with banana seats, and bell-bottoms. But the energy of the book invites younger readers to become part of the story, telling their tales about urban outdoor play. As Woodson says on her website: “I’m hoping kids are still playing some of these games.”

Often, Black History Month invites us to explore the roots of Black music: jazz, blues, soul, gospel. But Ordinary Days reminds us that our contributions to American music haven’t remained in the past. This tender story takes young readers to the Minneapolis childhood of Prince Rogers Nelson, where he weathered the storms of poverty and family dysfunction and turned them into purple rain. The illustrations are moody shades of violet, lavender, and plum. The story is about Prince, but it also mirrors the life of a people who made transformative art that changed the world.

Author Patrice Gopo reminds us that there is more than one story about how people of African ancestry came to make their home in the United States. Born in Alaska, Gopo is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants. Her spouse is from Zimbabwe. For her African American children, “home” straddles the continental United States, the Caribbean, and Africa. Enslavement was a horrific hom*ogenizer of African culture, funneling diverse tribes and cultures through one traumatic experience. But today’s authors are reclaiming the diversity of Blackness. All the Places We Call Home is a gorgeous, poetic reminder that the many countries and customs add dimension and breadth to what it means to be Black in America.