Books published by publisher NewSouth Books

Author Renee Simmons Raney believes that every child deserves his or her own personal landscape in which to seek adventure and unleash creativity. Through this charming storybook, Renee weaves fairy stories, enhancing the natural world with supernatural creatures, and connecting children to diverse habitats, creatures, seasons, and holidays while inspiring a sense of place, a land conservation ethic, and a comfortable fearlessness for outdoor exploration. Hairy, Scary, but Mostly Merry Fairies! also includes activities that encourage families and school classes to explore their natural surroundings and to engage in imaginative play. It offers a multi-generational remedy for curing nature deficiency.

The personal account of the triumph of a Southern black woman, Mrs. Johnnie Carr, who overcame poverty, limited education, and racism to become a wife, mother, and civic leader. Johnnie also reveals the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama. A childhood friend of Rosa Parks, as an adult she inspired Mrs. Parks to join the NAACP. Since 1968, Mrs. Carr has been president of the group which organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Her connection to Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and E.D. Nixon gives her a unique opportunity to offer insights and observations.

When kind-hearted Minnie spills the matzo ball soup she was making for Shabbat dinner, the frogs who live in a nearby pond spring into action. They decide to save Minnie's Shabbat by making a new pot of soup while she is out―a mitzvah from one neighbor to another. Together, the frogs work through the recipe, meeting every challenge with an amphibian solution: chopping carrots by playing leapfrog, using a long sticky tongue to pull a cookbook off a shelf, and giving each other a helping hop wherever they can. With creativity and froggy flair, the cold-water chefs make the soup and save Minnie's dinner. Warm and whimsical, Matzo Frogs conveys an enduring message about the importance of mitzvot, community, and teamwork.

More Native Americans lived in what is now the southern United States than in any other section of the country. The World of Southern Indians is a fascinating account of the South's first people. Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens’s collaborative effort synthesizes much of the wide-ranging historical information on Southern Indian tribes. The authors have performed a vital service by bringing together information on Southern Indians from many sources and weaving it into a clear, readable story.

"In the middle of the night on a Thursday, two crooks--onions should grow in their navels--drove their horse and wagon to the saloon of Reb Elias Olschwanger, at the corner of 14th and Carr streets in St. Louis. This didn't happen yesterday. It was 1919." So begins this modern folktale set in the Yiddish community of the author's great-grandparents in the early twentieth century. Shlemiel Crooks introduces young readers to the history of Passover, as Pharaoh and a town of Jewish immigrants play tug-of-war with wine made from grapes left over from the Exodus from Egypt. In Yiddish-inflected English, punctuated by colorful curses, the language of a Jewish community of another time comes alive for readers of all ages. Shlemiel Crooks is a Sydney Taylor Honor Book and PJ Library Book.

More than twenty years ago, Robert Croshon, an elderly friend of Frye Gaillard's, told him the story of Croshon's ancestor, Gilbert Fields, an African-born slave in Georgia who led his family on a daring flight to freedom. Fields and his family ran away intending to travel north, but clouds obscured the stars and when morning came Fields discovered they had been running south instead. They had no choice but to seek sanctuary with the Seminole Indians of Florida and later a community of free blacks in Mobile. With Croshon's blessing, Gaillard has expanded this oral history into a novel for young readers, weaving the story of Gilbert Fields through the nearly forgotten history of the Seminoles and their alliance with runaway slaves. As Gaillard's narrative makes clear, the Seminole Wars of the 1830s, in which Indians fought side by side with former slaves, represents the largest slave uprising in American history. Gaillard also puts a human face on the story of free blacks before the Civil War and the lives they painfully built for themselves in Mobile. Hauntingly illustrated by artist Anne Kent Rush, Go South to Freedom is a gripping story for readers of any age.

In Ted Dunagan's third young adult novel, boyhood friends Ted and Poudlum, a white boy and a black boy who live in the rural segregated South of the 1940s, find their fishing trip interrupted by a Ku Klux Klan meeting. The boys accidentally learn the identity of key Klansmen. Discovered, they escape down the river but only to swim into the arms of more trouble.Dunagan's storytelling gifts make this an engaging read. Ted and Poudlum's escapades test their resourcefulness and challenge their awakening moral selves, as they come to understand the injustice of the time in which they live.Being a kid was never better than when Ted Dunagan imagines it. And the imagining was never better than in Trouble on the Tombigbee, the author's latest work.

In Ted Dunagan's The Salvation of Miss Lucretia, young friends Ted and Poudlum continue their friendship despite the racial divide in the rural segregated South of the 1940s. On a trip to the forest where they plan to train their dogs, they stumble upon Miss Lucretia, the last of the voodoo queens. The boys fear, but later befriend Miss Lucretia, who teaches them secrets such as how to walk on fire. She also reveals that she was the granddaughter of the last slave born in Africa and brought to the United States illegally. Ted and Poudlum decide to bring Miss Lucretia out of the forest, until the arrival of Miss Lucretia's nephew, Cudjo Lewis III, who has his own selfish reasons for keeping his aunt hidden. Through a series of adventures, Ted and Poudlum resolve to follow their own unique moral compasses and do what's right despite the pressures of the time in which they live.

Ted Dunagan, named 2009 Georgia Author of the Year in the young adult category for his debut novel A Yellow Watermelon, continues the saga of two adventuresome boys in this sequel, Secret of the Satilfa. Both books are set squarely in the Southern literary tradition as they reveal the lives of young Ted and Poudlum, friends despite the racial divide in rural Alabama in the late 1940s. In the fall of 1948, Ted and Poudlum have their post-Thanksgiving fishing trip to the Cypress Hole on the Satilfa Creek interrupted by unwelcome visitors―fugitive bank robbers. They manage to escape and return to the Satilfa to search―along with seemingly half the locals―for money rumored to have been hidden by the criminals. However, Ted and Poudlum have a clue no one else possesses. Through their exposure to some memorable individuals, the boys grow in character and knowledge as they hunt for the missing treasure.

During the polio scare of the 1950s, a boy's parents send him for the summer from his small-town Florida home to the refuge of his grandparents' farm in rural Alabama. He settles into country life with Papa and Bigmother. The locals nickname him Cracker, after the term for Florida cowboys. One day he and Papa go to a livestock auction and Papa lets him buy a small mule. The mule turns out to be blind and Cracker must suffer ridicule while caring for the animal he comes to love. Over the summer Cracker teaches the mule to respond to his voice and together they learn to plow. The summer passes with lazy days of fishing in the local creek mixed with frightening episodes involving poisonous snakes. In this idyllic setting, Cracker makes the transition from boy to young man.

Welcome to the wonder-filled world of the Fairytale Trilogy, where magic is far more than smoke and mirrors . . . The three novels in this book -- Fairytale, The Emperor's Realm, and The Three Crowns -- chronicle the adventures of Marianne and her brother Robin as they come of age in an enchanted land where frogs talk, fantastical creatures prowl, and danger doesn't stop at the edge of a dark forest. Though steeped in the tradition of classic fairy tales, The Fairytale Trilogy presents an engagingly fresh story with a modern sensibility.

Discovering Alabama producer Roger Reid, author of acclaimed YA novels Longleaf and Space, continues the saga of teenage sleuth Jason Caldwell in his new mystery adventure, Time. Set at the Steven C. Minkin Paleozoic Footprint Site in north Alabama -- the richest source of vertebrate trackways of its age in the world -- Time is a fast-moving story that incorporates factual information about geology and paleontology into its intriguing tale of suspicion and pursuit. This witty and educational book will captivate middle-school readers of all ages. In Time, Jason is reunited with his friend Leah from Longleaf, with whom he again solves a mystery and survives danger. Leah is as smart and plucky a tomboy as ever, but Jason can’t help noticing this time that she’s also an attractive girl. Are they friends or boy-girl friends? They aren’t sure, but readers will recognize a teen romance even if the principals don’t. The engaging story combines intelligence, courage, and insight with scientific facts and exciting adventure.