As a part of the Center's Lending Library, teachers may borrow a class book set for up to two months.  There is no charge for this service, however, teachers are asked to come to our office to pick up and return borrowed materials. 

Available Sets:

Blood Done Sign My Name, by Timothy B. Tyson
Non-Fiction, 322 Pages
28 copies available

“On May 11, 1970, Henry Marrow, a twenty-three-year-old black veteran, walked into a crossroads store owned by Robert Teel and came out running.  Teel and two of his sons chased and beat Marrow, then killed him in public as he pleaded for his life.  Like many small Southern towns, Oxford had barely been touched by the civil rights movement.  But in the wake of the killing, young African Americans took to the streets.  While lawyers battled in the courthouse, the Klan raged in the shadows and black Vietnam veterans torched the town’s tobacco warehouses.  Tyson’s father, the pastor of Oxford’s all-white Methodist church, urged the town to come to terms with its bloody racial history. In the end, however, the Tyson family was forced to move away.”

The Hate Crime, by Phyllis Karas
Reading Lexile Level:  720L
Fiction, 183 Pages
35 copies available

“Zack’s dad is the district attorney, so Zack hears a lot about all kinds of terrible crimes. The latest case is about graffiti defacing the local temple, and Zack wonders why his dad is making such a big deal about it.  After all, it’s not like it’s a murder.  But what makes this hate crime a real shocker for Zack is that he knows the guy who committed it – a fellow lacrosse player, and a good student who has never been in trouble.  And it’s only when Zack tries to get to the bottom of this senseless act that he fully understands the terror these vicious scrawls evoke.  When a sickness that once swept the world, killing millions, rears it ugly head in a quiet community and turns friend against friend, it’s a very big deal.”

The Devil’s Arithmetic, by Jane Yolan
Reading Lexile Level:  730L
Fiction, 168 Pages
25 copies available

“When Hannah opens the door during Passover Seder to symbolically welcome the prophet Elijah, she suddenly finds herself in the unfamiliar world of a Polish village in the 1940s.  Hannah had always complained about listening to her relatives tell the same stories of the Holocaust over and over, but now she finds herself in a terrifying situation.  The Nazi soldiers have some to take the villagers away, and only Hannah can guess where they are going.”

Celebrate America in Poetry and Art, The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, edited by Nora Panzer
Reading Lexile Level:  Not Rated
Fiction, 87 Pages
49 copies available

“Through the years, America’s writers and visual artists have sought to capture the pulse of the American experience through poetry and art.  Celebrate America unites these diverse artistic expressions in one volume, examining this country’s identity as a cornucopia of beliefs, cultures, and peoples.  The poetry, paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs in this collection create a vivid image of America’s past and present.”

Immigrant Kids, by Russell Freedman
Reading Lexile Level:  1050L
Non-Fiction, 72 Pages
23 copies available

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…
During the late 1800s and early 1900s millions of European immigrants took these words to heart as they arrived at Ellis Island, hoping of building a better life for their children and for future generations. This was, after all, the foundation of the American dream, and it was the children who helped to make it come true.”

This book has amazing historic photographs!

Maus I: My Father Bleeds History, by Art Spiegelman
Reading Lexile Level:  not listed
Fiction, Graphic Novel, 159 pages
21 copies available

“Maus is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father, his father’s terrifying story, and History itself.  Its form, the cartoon (The Nazis are cats, the Jews are mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of any lingering sense of familiarity with the events described, approaching, as it does, the unspeakable through the diminutive.”

Maus II:And Here My Trouble Began, by Art Spiegelman
Reading Lexile Level:  not listed
Fiction, Graphic Novel, 135 pages
19 copies available

“This second volume moves us from the barracks of Auschwitz to the bungalows of the Catskills.  Genuinely tragic and comic by turns, it attains a complexity of theme and a precision of thought new to comics and rare in any medium.”
Winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize

Skin Deep, by Lois Ruby
Reading Lexile Level:  830L
Fiction, 280 pages
23 copies available

“It happened so quickly that even Laurel didn’t see it coming.  One day Dan was her best friend, her boyfriend, a good guy.  He’s always been a little withdrawn, but he never seemed like the type to hate people for the color of their skin or for what they believed.  Laurel soon realizes that Dan’s in too deep- that her boyfriend has become a neo-Nazi skinhead.  And there’s no way she can save him from his new “friends.”  Laurel just hopes he’s strong enough to find his way out.”

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs
Reading Lexile Level:  not listed
Autobiography, 228 pages
11 copies available
 

“In one of the most significant slave narratives ever written, Harriet Jacobs, born a slave to mulatto parents in 1813 North Carolina, recounts her remarkable story. From her sale to an abusive master, to her bid for freedom as the lover of a white man, to her ultimate this work is an outstanding example of a woman's extra-ordinary courage -- and one of the most provocative first-person accounts of slavery in American history.”
 

Rena’s Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz, by Rena Kornreich Gelissen with Heather Dune Macadam
Reading Lexile Level: not listed
Autobiography, Biography, 266 pages
23 copies available
 

“Sent to Auschwitz on the first Jewish transport, Rena Kornreich and her younger sister survived the Nazi death camps for more than three years.  In this extraordinary memoir, Rena recounts each day’s struggle to fulfill the promise she made to her mother when the family was forced to spit apart – a promise to take care of her sister.”
 

Eva’s Story, by Eva Schloss
Reading Lexile Level:  not listed
Autobiography, Biography, 224 pages
5 copies available
 

“Eva was fifteen years old when she was sent to Auschwitz – the same age as her friend Anne Frank. Together with her mother she endured the daily degradation that robbed so many of their lives – including her father and brother. After the war her mother married Otto Frank, the only surviving member of the Frank family. Only after forty years was Eva able to tell her story…”

Upanisads, Translated by Patrick Olivelle
The central scriptures of Hinduism, 288 pages
20 copies available
 

“The first major English translation of the ancient Upanisads for over half a  century, Patrick Olivelle’s work incorporates the most recent historical and  philological scholarship. The Upanisads are the central scriptures of Hinduism.  They represent some of the most important literary products in history of Indian  culture and religion, both because they played a critical role in the development of  religious ideas in India and because they are our greatest source for the religious,  social, and intellectual history of ancient India.”

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