Lesa Cline-Ransome

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....

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....

When 11-year-old Langston's mother dies in 1946, he and his father leave rural Alabama for Chicago's brown belt. It's lonely, and Langston is bullied at school. But his new home has one fantastic thing: a public library that welcomes everyone....

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 music....

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....

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....

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...

Three women narrate a perilous wagon journey westward that could set them free—or cost them everything they have—in this intergenerational verse novel that explores the history of the Black homesteader movement.