A Long Time Coming: A Lyrical Biography of Race in America from Ona Judge to Barack Obama [Hardcover]

This YA biography-in-verse of six important Black Americans from different eras, including Ona Judge, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barack Obama, chronicles the diverse ways each fought racism and shows how much—and how little—has changed for Black Americans since our country’s founding.

Full of daring escapes, deep emotion, and subtle lessons on how racism operates, A LONG TIME COMING reveals the universal importance of its subjects’ struggles for justice. From freedom seeker Ona Judge, who fled her enslavement by America’s first president, to Barack Obama, the first Black president, all of Shepard’s protagonists fight valiantly for justice for themselves and all Black Americans in any way that they can. But it is also a highly personal book, as Shepard — whose maternal grandfather was enslaved — shows how the grand sweep of history has touched his life, reflecting on how much progress has been made against racism, while also exhorting readers to complete the vast work that remains to be done.A School Library Journal Best Book
A Booklist Editors' Choice
A Kirkus Best Book
2024 Kansas NEA Reading Circle List
Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List
Finalist, SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction Text for Older Readers
Named to the 2024 Capitol Choices list
A Bank Street Best Children's Book
Included on the 2025 ALSC Día Reading List

★ These narratives will also give young people a new understanding of how the subjects became exceptional forces for racial freedom...Meticulously researched and organized...Shepard creatively argues through captivating poetic history that racial justice is the long struggle in this country and that we are still working toward w