(Table of Contents)

PHAT ACCEPTANCE

by Jess Mowry

Brandon’s got that cool white surfer-dude look–even if he isn’t a surfer. He’s worried about fitting in at his new school when his day is turned upside down by the arrival of the one, the only, the fattest black classmate he’s ever seen.

SKINS

by Joseph Bruchac

Mitch, a football player of Native American and Scandinavian heritage, finds his strategy of “hanging back” challenged by the two new kids in town: Randolph, clearly African American, and Jimmy T., purely American Indian. Or are they?

SNOW

by Sherri Winston

When Noelle, a budding journalist, decides to fight against the mistreatment of Haitian students by fellow African-American classmates, she faces a dangerous enemy: the school principal.

THE HEARTBEAT OF THE SOUL OF THE WORLD

by Rene Saldana Jr.

PD was a promising Latino trumpet player. Now, he’s dead. But oh, what he left behind!

HUM

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Sami and his family are haunted by what they left behind in the Middle East, but hopeful about their new life in Texas. Then comes the day that changes everything: September 11, 2001.

EPIPHANY

by Ellen Wittlinger

Pining for her best friend Epiphany, DeMaris dares to ask: Why can’t a white girl sit with the black kids in the cafeteria?

BLACK AND WHITE

by Kyoko Mori

Born in Japan and growing up in rural Wisconsin, Asako wonders if being the misunderstood “foreigner” excuses her act of Halloween vandalism.

HEARING FLOWER

by M.E. Kerr

Bianca, rich and white, falls for Esteban, a handsome, hardworking Latino. What happens to their romance when her father hires him to fix the roof?

GOLD

by Marina Budhos

Jemma’s father was Indian. Her mother is black. In Trinidad that wasn’t a problem. So why, in N.J., does Mama disapprove of African-American boys?

MR. RUBEN

by Rita Williams-Garcia

No one can tell what race Mr. Ruben is. But poor Myra, she just can’t have a crush on the man unless he’s black–and she’ll drive herself and her friend Dee crazy until she finds out if he is or not.

NEGRESS

by Marilyn Singer

Vonny’s insistance that Beth participate in a school assembly performance of the Hottentot Venus–a woman exhibited as a sexual freak throughout Europe in the early nineteenth century–threatens to destroy their longtime friendship.