Octavia Spencer
1) The help
Author
Series
Appears on these lists
HPL: Historical Fiction: Beyond WWII
Reads-to-Go Titles
WML Book vs. Movie
WML Dust Off Your Old Favorites
Reads-to-Go Titles
WML Book vs. Movie
WML Dust Off Your Old Favorites
Description
In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and daughters--view one another.
Author
Series
Publisher
Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
Formats
Description
Explores the previously uncelebrated but pivotal contributions of NASA's African American women mathematicians to America's space program, describing how Jim Crow laws segregated them despite their groundbreaking successes. Includes biographies on Dorothy Jackson Vaughan (1910-2008), Mary Winston Jackson (1921-2005), Katherine Colman Goble Johnson (1918- ), Dr. Christine Mann Darden (1942- ).
Katherine, Dorothy, Mary, and Christine were all good...
Author
Series
Publisher
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Pub. Date
[2015]
Description
On a trip to New York City to visit Randi's aunt, the ninja detective trio explores Randi's old neighborhood in Brooklyn, where they uncover an art heist involving Fabergé eggs. Except no one will believe them. So they'll just have to catch the criminals in the act...
Publisher
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Pub. Date
[2015]
Description
The story of a grandfather who is suddenly left to care for his beloved granddaughter, but when her paternal grandmother seeks custody with the help of her brother, the little girl is torn between two families who love her deeply. With the best intentions at heart, both families fight for what they feel is right and are soon forced to confront their true feelings about race, forgiveness, and understanding.
Pub. Date
[2018]
Appears on these lists
Formats
Description
An other-worldly fairy tale, set against the backdrop of Cold War era America circa 1962. In the hidden high security government laboratory where she works, lonely Elisa is trapped in a life of isolation. Elisa's life is changed forever when she and co-worker Zelda discover a secret classified experiment.
7) Gifted
Pub. Date
[2017]
Formats
Description
Frank Adler is a single man raising a child prodigy, his spirited young niece Mary, in a coastal town in Florida. Frank's plans for a normal school life for Mary are foiled when the seven-year-old's mathematical abilities come to the attention of Frank's formidable mother Evelyn, whose plans for her granddaughter threaten to separate Frank and Mary.
8) The help
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Mississippi during the 1960s: Skeeter, a southern society girl, returns from college determined to become a writer, but turns her friends' lives, and a small Mississippi town, upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families. Aibileen, Skeeter's best friend's housekeeper, is the first to open up, to the dismay of her friends in the tight-knit black community.
Pub. Date
[2017]
Appears on these lists
Formats
Description
As the United States raced against Russia to put a man in space, NASA found untapped talent in a group of African-American female mathematicians that served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in U.S. history. Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson crossed all gender, race, and professional lines while their brilliance and desire to dream big, beyond anything ever accomplished before by the human race, firmly cemented...
10) The shack
Pub. Date
[2017]
Formats
Description
After suffering a family tragedy, Mack Phillips spirals into a deep depression causing him to question his innermost beliefs. Facing a crisis of faith, he receives a mysterious letter urging him to an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness.
11) Onward
Series
Description
When Ian Lightfoot comes of age, his mother gives him the magical staff of his late father, which will let him cast a spell to spend one more day with his dad. But the spell goes awry and he has only 24 hours to set it right, so he and his older brother embark on an epic quest, with their mother trailing after, trying to protect them from a dangerous curse.
Pub. Date
[2016]
Formats
Description
Tris must escape with Four and go beyond the wall enclosing Chicago. For the first time ever, they will leave the only city and family they have ever known. Once outside, old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless with the revelation of shocking new truths. Tris and Four must quickly decide who they can trust as a ruthless battle ignites beyond the walls of Chicago which threatens all of humanity. In order to survive, Tris will be forced to...
13) Zootopia
Series
Pub. Date
[2016]
Description
Zootopia is a city like no other that is comprised of habitat neighborhoods like ritzy Sahara Square and frigid Tundratown, it's a melting pot where animals from every environment live together. But when optimistic Officer Judy Hopps arrives, she discovers that being the first bunny on a police force of big, tough animals isn't so easy. Determined to prove herself, she jumps at the opportunity to crack a case, even if it means partnering with a fast-talking,...
14) A kid like Jake
Publisher
Shout! Factory LLC
Pub. Date
[2018]
Description
A Brooklyn couple has always known that their four-year-old son is more interested in fairy tale princesses than toy cars. But when his preschool director points out that his gender-nonconforming play may be more than a phase, the couple is forced to rethink their roles as parents and spouses as they apply for him to go to a private kindergarten in New York City.
15) Luce
Publisher
Universal Studios
Pub. Date
[2019]
Description
Garnering recognition for his stellar athletic abilities and intellectual accomplishments "Luce" follows the titular characters struggle of maintaining his integrity while dealing with the circumstances of his background. Adopted from a war-torn country just ten years prior, Luce becomes the very essence of what many consider to be the American Dream. However, all changes when his teacher encounters a shocking revelation upon examining the contents...
16) Instant family
Publisher
Paramount Pictures
Pub. Date
[2019]
Description
When Pete and Ellie choose to start a family, they stumble headfirst into the world of foster care adoption. After they learn their perfect foster child comes with two other siblings, Pete and Ellie find themselves speeding from zero to three kids overnight and must hilariously learn the ropes of instant parenthood if they hope to become a real family.
17) Snowpiercer
Pub. Date
[2014]
Formats
Description
The film is set in the future (AD 2031) where, after a failed experiment to stop global warming, an ice age kills off all life on the planet except for the inhabitants of the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe and is powered by a sacred perpetual-motion engine. Its inhabitants are divided by class; the lower-class passengers in one of the last cars stage an uprising, moving car by car up to the front of the train, where the oppressive...
18) Ma
Pub. Date
[2019]
Formats
Description
Sue Ann, a loner in her quiet Ohio town, is asked by Maggie, a new teenager in town, to buy some booze for her and her friends. Sue Ann sees the chance to make some unsuspecting younger friends. She offers the kids the chance to avoid drinking and driving by hanging out in the basement of her home as long as they abide by the house rules. Her hospitality starts to curdle into obsession, and what began as a teenage dream turns into a terrorizing nightmare....
19) Insurgent
Publisher
Lionsgate
Pub. Date
2015
Description
Tris and Four are now fugitives on the run, hunted by Jeanine, the leader of the power-hungry Erudite elite. Racing against time, they must find out what Tris's family sacrificed their lives to protect, and why the Erudite leaders will do anything to stop them. Haunted by her past choices but desperate to protect the ones she loves, Tris, with Four at her side, faces one impossible challenge after another as they unlock the truth about the past and...
Publisher
OG Project, LLC
Pub. Date
[2014]
Description
The true story of Oscar, a 22-year-old Bay Area resident who wakes up on the morning of December 31, 2008 and feels something in the air. Not sure what it is, he takes it as a sign to get a head start on his resolutions: Being a better son to his mother, being a better partner to his girlfriend, and being a better father to T, their beautiful four-year-old daughter. He starts out well, but as the day goes on, he realizes that change is not going to...