2016 Audie Award Finalist for Middle Grade
Sharon M. Draper presents “storytelling at its finest” (School Library Journal, starred review) in this New York Times bestselling Depression-era novel about a young girl who must learn to be brave in the face of violent prejudice when the Ku Klux Klan reappears in her segregated southern town.
Stella lives in the segregated South—in Bumblebee, North Carolina, to be exact about it. Some stores she can go into. Some stores she can’t. Some folks are right pleasant. Others are a lot less so. To Stella, it sort of evens out, and heck, the Klan hasn’t bothered them for years. But one late night, later than she should ever be up, much less wandering around outside, Stella and her little brother see something they’re never supposed to see, something that is the first flicker of change to come, unwelcome change by any stretch of the imagination. As Stella’s community—her world—is upended, she decides to fight fire with fire. And she learns that ashes don’t necessarily signify an end.
Download and start listening now!
“Narrator Heather Alicia Simms creates convincing character voices for Bumblebee’s many residents who are struggling to overcome the segregated status quo—as well as for those who are working to preserve it. Stella struggles as a writer, trying to express her thoughts, a process that the listener hears as she writes and rewrites school assignments. Simms has a lovely voice for singing the hymns woven throughout the fabric of Stella’s community.”
—
AudioFile