Black University Micah “Mike” Postell, a former basketball star with a troubled past and unclear future, returns to Carver A&M, a small university located in a rural town, after a two-year absence. He previously disappeared from the university and was forced to return to Philadelphia to take care of his ailing grandmother. Mike decides to make an attempt to get his life back on track and possibly play basketball again. Upon arriving on campus, he is looked upon by the whole community as being the key for A&M to reach its goal of making it to the Big Tourney, a post-season college basketball tournament, for the first time in the school’s 105-year history. On campus, he encounters a bitter rival, who is aimed at destroying his career and his life. During his journey, he is met with a roller coaster ride of events that include a love triangle consisting of the head cheerleader and his tutor, as well as academic troubles, jealousy, love, and tragedy.
The Black Panther Party represents Black Panther Party members' coordinated responses over the last four decades to the failure of city, state, and federal bureaucrats to address the basic needs of their respective communities. The Party pioneered free social service programs that are now in the mainstream of American life. The Party's Sickle Cell Anemia Research Foundation, operated with Oakland's Children's Hospital, was among the nation's first such testing programs. Its Free Breakfast Program served as a model for national programs. Other initiatives included free clinics, grocery giveaways, school and education programs, senior programs, and legal aid programs. Published here for the first time in book form, The Black Panther Party makes the case that the programs' methods are viable models for addressing the persistent, basic social injustices and economic problems of today's American cities and suburbs.
Kamal is used to being the top dog on his soccer team, until Justin joins. Justin is what you'd call a "natural". He is talented, athletic, and has all the making of a star. Although he doesn't play like one yet, Justin is improving like crazy and threatening to take Kamal's place on the team. Not only that, he's taking all the attention off Kamal, from the girls, Kamal's favorite teacher, and even Kamal's best friends. Kamal's got years of experience under his belt, but will that be enough to stand against a natural?
“Recommend this poignant novel to fans of Keeping Score by Linda Sue Park and The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin” (School Library Journal). It’s a heartwarming celebration of sisterhood and summertime, and of finding the courage to get back in the game. Last summer, Quinnen was the star pitcher of her baseball team, the Panthers. They were headed for the championship, and her loudest supporter at every game was her best friend and older sister, Haley. This summer, everything is different. Haley’s death, at the end of last summer, has left Quinnen and her parents reeling. Without Haley in the stands, Quinnen doesn’t want to play baseball. It seems like nothing can fill the Haley-sized hole in her world. The one glimmer of happiness comes from the Bandits, the local minor-league baseball team. For the first time, Quinnen and her family are hosting one of the players for the season. Without her sister, Quinnen’s not sure it will be any fun, but soon she befriends a few players. With their help, can she make peace with the past and return to the pitcher’s mound? A Bank Street College of Education and Children’s Book Committee Best Children’s Books of the Year “A piercing first novel. . . . Bishop insightfully examines the tested relationships among grieving family members and friends in a story of resilience, forgiveness, and hope.” —Publishers Weekly “With appeal to both sports- and drama-minded girls, this will make a good book club selection and pass-it-among-your-friends read.” —The Bulletin
In 2010, the Carolina Panthers hit rock bottom—they were a 2-14 team that had become an NFL joke. But an extraordinary turnaround over the next five years culminated in a 15-1 record in 2015 and a berth in Super Bowl 50. Fueled by charismatic quarterback Cam Newton and a host of other big personalities, the Panthers staked their place in NFL history. Panthers Rising is the inside story of this remarkable turnaround. Author Scott Fowler has covered the Panthers for The Charlotte Observer since the team's inception in 1995. He writes from an insider's perspective about what really led to Newton's rise to NFL Most Valuable Player and the controversies that surrounded the best season the quarterback has ever played. Head coach Ron Rivera, a linebacker on the legendary 1985 Chicago Bears, told his players all season to let their personalities shine through like that squad once did 30 years earlier. Carolina responded with a 14-game winning streak to open the season and an unprecedented run through the NFC playoffs. Based on exclusive interviews with many Panthers stars and Fowler's behind-the-scenes access to the team, Panthers Rising is the inside story of the Panthers' rise to the NFL's elite.
Welcome to Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School, in a working-class corner of the Bronx, where a driven coach inspires his teams to win games and championships--and learn Russian history and graduate and go on to college. In 2006, the Fannie Lou Hamer Panthers basketball team was 0-18. Since 2007, the year Marc Skelton, a New Hampshire native, took over as head coach, the Panthers' record has been 228-68, and they've won three Public School Athletic League championships and one statewide championship. This tiny 400-student school has become a powerhouse on the basketball court, as well as a public education success story and a symbol of the regeneration of its once blighted neighborhood. In Pounding the Rock, Marc Skelton tells the thrilling story of the 2016-2017 season, as the Panthers seek to redeem an early exit from the playoffs the year before. But this is far more than a basketball story. It's a profile of a school that, against the odds, educates kids from the poorest congressional district in the country and sends the majority of them to college; of an unusual coach who studies the game with Talmudic intensity, demands as much of himself as he does of his players (a lot), and finds inspiration as much from Melville, Gogol, and Jacob Riis as from John Wooden; and of a squad of young men who battle against difficulties in life every day, and who don't know how to quit. In a world of all too many downers, Pounding the Rock is one big up, on the court and off. All fans of basketball and of life will rise up and applaud.
The south side of Billsview, Texas, is a part of the city that has a bad reputation of being called labels such as ghetto and hood. A lot of the city’s poverty, government aid, and crime occur in the south part of the city. David Williams is a former high school football All-American local legend who experienced a setback but rebounded in the US Army, which led to him being an Army Ranger who was awarded the Medal of Honor. After getting wounded and medically discharged against his will, he came back to his mother’s house to keep his younger siblings—RJ, Ashely, and Mya—in line and on the right path. With a mother who does not seem to care about her children and a father who none of David’s siblings have seen before, David wants to please God while keeping his siblings away from the devil’s seductions of illegal activity, gangs, drugs, teenage pregnancy, and STDs. He wants them all to graduate high school, go to college, and make it out of the south side of town that he blames for ruining so many young lives as he blames it for almost ruining his own.
Meet Clara Green, Emerald, Chartreuse, Olive, Hunter, Juniper and Forest. They are The Green Panthers: a privately sponsored, multi-national underground army, on a mission to hold corporate polluters to account. During the attempted rescue of a snow leopard hunted by British tycoons in Siberia, the Green Panthers stumble onto Project SILEO, a millionaires’ plot to abandon an overpopulated, dying planet battered by climate change and pollution. But SILEO is a lot more than it seems and the Panthers soon learn of an even greater threat to humanity. From Britain to Thailand and the privately-owned space station Stella Blue, the Panthers race against time to save the human race from a man known only as the Slow King. As riots and unrest take hold all over the world, can they stop the Slow King's apocalyptic ambitions? An action-packed dystopian thriller, The Green Panthers explores systemic corruption, capitalism, space exploration and climate change, as well as the nature of friendship and courage in a future world where everything is for sale.