Lesa Cline-Ransome

Throughout her lifetime Harriet Tubman was known by many names -- as General Tubman she was a Union spy, as Moses she led hundreds to freedom on the Underground Railroad and as Minty she was a spirited slave.

Three women narrate a perilous wagon journey westward that could set them freeor cost them everything they havein this intergenerational verse novel that explores the history of the Black homesteader movement. 1879, Mississippi. Young dreamer Lettie may have her head in the stars, but her body...

Clem can make anybody, even his grumpy older sisters, smile with his jokes. But when his family receives news that his father has died in the infamous Port Chicago disaster, everything begins to fall apart. Clem's mother is forced to work long, tough hours as a maid for a wealthy White family...

Behind every bad boy is a story worth hearing and at least one chance for redemption. It's 1946, and Lymon, uprooted from his life in the Deep South and moved up North, needs that chance. Lymon's father is, for the time being, at Parchman Farm - the Mississippi State Penitentiary - and his...

Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or astronauts walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used their knowledge, pencils, adding machines, and writing paper to calculate the orbital mechanics needed to launch spacecraft. Katherine Johnson was...

When 11-year-old Langston's mother dies in 1946, he and his father leave rural Alabama for Chicago's brown belt as a part of what came to be known as the Great Migration. It's lonely in the small apartment with just the two of them, and Langston is bullied at school. But his new home has one...

Louis Armstrong has been called the most important improviser in the history of jazz. Although his New Orleans neighborhood was poor in nearly everything else, it was rich in superb music. Young Louis took it all in, especially the cornet blowing of Joe King Oliver. But after a run in with the...

Inspired by the #1 New York Times bestseller She Persisted by Chelsea Clinton and Alexandra Boiger, a chapter book series about women who stood up, spoke up and rose up against the odds! In this chapter book biography by award-winning author Lesa Cline-Ransome, readers learn about the amazing...

You may think that the story of the saxophone begins with Dexter Gordon or Charlie Parker or on a street corner in New Orleans. It really began in 1840 in Belgium with a young daydreamer named Joseph-Antoine Adolphe Sax—a boy with bad luck but great ideas. Coretta Scott King Honoree Lesa...

Lamb's family strives to better their lives in Jackson, Mississippi, in the late 1930s. Lamb’s mother is a hard-working, creative seamstress who cannot reveal she's a lesbian. Lamb’s brother has a brilliant mind and has even earned a college scholarship for a black college up north—if only...