Times Book Prize and the PEN Award for Children’s Literature. Taylor is the author of nine novels including The Road to Memphis, Let the Circle Be Unbroken, The Land, and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Her books have won numerous awards, among them a Newbery Medal (for Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry), four Coretta Scott King Awards, and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award. What will you decide? Will you read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry? Please do! Buy the Book But, little one, ain’t nobody’s respect worth more than your own.” How you carry yourself, what you stand for–that’s how you gain respect. You have to demand respect in this world, ain’t nobody just gonna hand it to you. But it’s up to you to decide what them things are. “There are things you can’t back down on, things you gotta take a stand on. Thanks to her ability to speak her mind, readers experience the heavy truth of the often brutal and intense way African Americans have been treated. Ultimately, Cassie learns that she and her family have something nobody can take away from them. She learns about racism quickly the year the Night Riders come to town, as many dangerous, scary, and ill-natured things happen.

Until now, Cassie had been well protected by her family from racism, and she had no idea just how important it was that her family had their own piece of land. Readers learn through the eyes of nine-year-old Cassie Logan what it was like to grow up during this often brutally dangerous time. The African American Logan family struggles in all areas of life, including socially and culturally. It was a time of depression (money is hard to come by for most) and segregation (when black people were treated poorly because of the color of their skin). Taylor won the Coretta Scott King Award and a Newbery Medal for Roll of Thunder, Hear Me Cry-plus too many more awards to list here.

Roll of thunder hear my cry