Books in Scraps of Time series

Scraps of Time, volume 2: Back in Thyme Sam and Nathan have returned safely from their journey back in time to Sherwood Forest, thanks to Sam’s gift for time traveling. But Sam wants to continue learning about herbal healing, which she had begun with Lady Marion. She finds a tutor and kindred spirit in Angie Foster. As Angie shows Sam through her workrooms, Sam discovers a mortar, or grinding bowl for herbs, with the initials MF scratched into the bottom. Sam had last seen this mortar in Marion’s pantry back in Sherwood Forest. Somehow Angie’s grandmother has inherited Lady Marion’s mortar. How? Sam and Angie travel back together to answer this question. The mortar has been handed down by generations of Angie’s ancestors. Following its path back in time takes Sam and Angie to Chicago during the Great Influenza Epidemic of 1918, then further back to a Russian peasant village during the Crimean War. When the search seems at a dead end, Sam gets help from an unexpected source. Sam learns more about her time traveling gift - how to focus and control it better. But questions still haunt her: Why was she given this power? What is she intended to do with it?

Unlike his older brothers, thirteen-year-old Everett was "born in freedom," never knowing life as a slave. His most prized possession is the medal his father earned in the Civil War. Now, more than 125 years later, that treasure is kept in the Websters’ attic with other "scraps of time," ready to be discovered by another generation eager to know its family history. The second novel in Patricia C. McKissack’s family saga recounts a young Southern boy’s dream of heading west to a new life and the way in which his journey teaches him the deeper meaning of the medal his father won.

Why has their grandmother bothered keeping a menu from a restaurant that closed years ago, a restaurant that never served very good food in the first place? Three cousins listen to Gee's own story, set in the early days of lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville, a time when a black child could sit up front in a city bus but still could not get a milkshake at a downtown restaurant. Through the eyes of ten-year-old Abby, young readers see what it was like to live through those days and they'll come to understand that, like a menu, freedom is about having choices. Each book in the series tells the story behind a different ‘scrap of time;' together they form a patchwork quilt of one black family's past that stretches back for generations.

FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. For Lilly Belle, the capital of Black America is about as far from her hometown of Smyrna, Tennessee, as a twelve-year-old can get maybe not in miles but certainly in mindset. Then a summer program for gifted young writers opens a whole new world for Lilly Belle. Jazz music in the street lulls her to sleep, her classroom is in a mansion, and the author Zora Neale Hurston is her teacher, helping her understand the power of words, especially her own.