Greetings Leroy

Moving can be scary, but by the end of his first day at his new school, Roy is happy to find a piece of his old home, Jamaica, in his new home. The first day at a new school is nerve-wracking enough, never mind when it’s in a new country! In this lively picture book from award-winning storyteller Itah Sadu, Roy realizes he may come to love his new home as much as he loves his old home. Written as an email to a friend back home, this picture book tells the story of Roy, whose family has just moved to North America from Jamaica. His new home is different from his old home — even the sun feels cold! His nerves ease, though, as welcome reminders of home follow him through his day. His neighbor gives him a button as a gift for his first day of school. The principal tells him about the soccer team and his new class makes him feel welcome. Everything is looking up until Roy goes to show his classmates his new button and he can’t find it! He rushes back to the principal’s office where they look up and down and all around for the button. Thanks to his powers of observation, Roy finds it in an unexpected place and is able to show it to his new friends. The friendly people he meets, and their shared love of Bob Marley, make for a good start at his new school. Sadu captures the voice of a young boy in a new country in this story about finding a new home while still staying proud of where you’re from. Harlem-based artist Alix Delinois shows the joy of making new friends with his vibrant, layered paintings. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.3 Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.5 Describe the overall structure of a story, including describing how the beginning introduces the story and the ending concludes the action.

This enriched reference guide offers a unique overview of more than 200 picture books published by Canadian publishing houses between 2017–2019. The authors cover key themes in contemporary Canadian titles that match broad curriculum trends in education. Response activities are included in the text, for example frameworks for critical literacy discussions, along with annotated bibliographies that specifically recognize titles by Indigenous authors and illustrators. The book also contains original interviews with a dozen rising stars in Canadian writing and book illustration. While the book is specifically geared for educators, it also supports public libraries, Education researchers, and future picture book creators, as well as families who are interested in learning more about reading development and related literacy activities for the home setting.

After 40 years of impressive community service in the village of Morwa in Botswana, Leroy returns to his native United States and becomes a celebrity. His bitter rival for 40 years, Jealousman, looks forward to finally being the sole village hero once again. Suddenly, the paroled Pastor Limelight Mmonadilo of the defunct Ten Commandments Ministries attains popularity by mobilising the village leadership into preserving and celebrating Leroy's legacy for purposes of employment creation, amidst the grinding global economic recession. Jelousman, believing that his own legacy is more worthy of celebration and preservation, gets determined to bring Pastor Mmonadilo's project to its knees. For a while he tries to do this in an uncharacteristically subtle manner. Meanwhile, a group of city-based professionals motivate the formation of a company for tourism business in Morwa. This intensifies the rivalry between Jealousman and Pastor Mmonadilo. Father Sebastian Modiga of the Roman Catholic Church channels the negative energy between the two men into unleashing a "holy war" and "final solution" against the allegedly predatory charismatic or "Fire" church in Botswana.

Leroy, a white medical doctor from Mississippi, leaves America and stays in the village of Morwa, Botswana, at the height of the world-wide euphoria caused by Americas moon landing! He becomes a popular community crusader, and a reputable traditional doctor. Epic friction ensues as Jealousman, a territorial village luminary, feels upstaged by Leroy. Leroys relationships with Jealousman, other locals and visitors to Morwa provide endless opportunities for laughter and food for thought. Events transpire that will teach you a great deal about Botswana and her special people. The descriptions in this book will keep you reading right until the very end -and the end itself will leave you crying for a continuation of the saga.

This memoir of a man who was instrumental in shaping the vibrant Five Points neighborhood that is now Denver’s only Historic Cultural District begins with his roots. His parents fled the Jim Crow laws of Texas on an eight-month 1903 wagon train into Indian Territory where Leroy Smith was born in the oldest black town of what had by then become Oklahoma. His personal “Great Migration” began when he walked across the border into Arkansas. Working and vagabonding his way northeast to be rescued when he received a bus ticket from a friend who suggested he come west to Utah for a decent job on the railway. Working the trains, Leroy was drawn to Denver which he had learned was the “Harlem of the West.” There he met Lulu Ann Green, convinced her in a whirlwind courtship to marry and join him as a partner in a tiny shop they rented for ten dollars a month. Leroy bought black newspapers, hair products and vinyl music on his Chicago train runs that Lulu sold to Denver’s fast growing black population. By 1941 Leroy could quit the railroad to create the “Rhythm Record Shop” in a two-story building he purchased in the busy Wellton Street business district known as “The Points.” In 1944 he held his first dance concert which his ingenuity handily saved from disaster and began booking the great names of rock and roll, rhythm and blues, gospel, jazz, etc. to cities in Colorado and surrounding states. Often referred to as “the Mayor of Five Points,” he was known as a cool band leader who sold “race music,” black hair products and quality goods within the “red lines.” Smith was also a gifted sportsman who hunted, fished, and pitched on black baseball teams. He soon added the words “and Sporting Goods” to the already expanded merchandise found in his shop, offering fishing and hunting licenses with gear. He became Colorado’s first black outfitter licensed to sell firearms with his sports equipment. He was named an honorary game warden and—after lobbying for an officer-manned lockup only three doors away—an honorary police officer. An audacious masonic leader, Leroy fought city hall to bring black Shiners to his ingeniously desegregated Denver hotels for conventions. He paid to advertise his ventures on the radio by becoming, his own disc jockey on his midnight “Rockin’ with Leroy” show. His sharp instincts for enterprise and entertainment lifted him into business, cultural, mining, and other endeavors that inspired the diverse neighborhood to action. His political inclinations led him to success in opening the second floor of his building as the Voters Club, a swinging night club with live music and famed visitors which he used to rally African Americans to vote and fight for their American civil rights. All proceeds from sale of this scrapbook of photos, letters and memories are destined solely for the support of Denver’s Black American West Museum & Heritage Center.

Between 1940 and 1975, Mexican Americans and African Americans in Texas fought a number of battles in court, at the ballot box, in schools, and on the streets to eliminate segregation and state-imposed racism. Although both groups engaged in civil rights struggles as victims of similar forms of racism and discrimination, they were rarely unified. In Fighting Their Own Battles, Brian Behnken explores the cultural dissimilarities, geographical distance, class tensions, and organizational differences that all worked to separate Mexican Americans and blacks. Behnken further demonstrates that prejudices on both sides undermined the potential for a united civil rights campaign. Coalition building and cooperative civil rights efforts foundered on the rocks of perceived difference, competition, distrust, and, oftentimes, outright racism. Behnken's in-depth study reveals the major issues of contention for the two groups, their different strategies to win rights, and significant thematic developments within the two civil rights struggles. By comparing the histories of these movements in one of the few states in the nation to witness two civil rights movements, Behnken bridges the fields of Mexican American and African American history, revealing the myriad causes that ultimately led these groups to "fight their own battles."

On a grassy hilled college campus, Henry was born to two loving parents who taught him to believe in the Great Goose. Henry was always a special goose, who was brought into this world with a special purpose; but no one knew what it was to be. Henry suffered an accident that launched him into the world alone, only following what he believed to be the Great Goose’s wished. He had doubts, but he continued along unknown paths with an unknown destination or purpose. Along the way, he accumulates a strange array of colleagues, including an aging Cobbler who is a Veteran from the Korean War. He also adds a homing pigeon that is lost; hence, we have a Canada goose who does not know where he is going and a Homing Pigeon that cannot find home. Together, they proceed like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza with feathers. They add a Mallard Duck named Gilbert, two aging widowed Canada geese, Andy and Leroy, and finally, three testy Russian geese, Nicholas, Dmitri, and Natasha. The bounce around the world solving problems while learning to understand and appreciate each other.