Sugar Hill:
Harlem’s Historic Neighborhood

• Age Range: 4-8 years

• Grade Level: 1-3

• 2015 CCBC Choices

  For classroom and reading resources, click here.

SUMMARY

Take a walk through Harlem's Sugar Hill and meet all the amazing people who made this neighborhood legendary. With upbeat rhyming, read-aloud text, Sugar Hill celebrates the Harlem neighborhood that successful African Americans first called home during the 1920s.

Children raised in Sugar Hill experienced art and culture at home, at church, and in the community. Books, music lessons, and art classes expanded their horizons beyond the limits of segregation.

This book includes brief biographies of legendary jazz musicians Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sonny Rollins, and Miles Davis; artists Aaron Douglas and Faith Ringgold; entertainers Lena Horne and the Nicholas Brothers; writer Zora Neale Hurston; civil rights leader W. E. B. DuBois; and lawyer Thurgood Marshall.

REVIEWS

“A fine tribute to the local color of Sugar Hill, who have made America a better and more interesting country for almost a century.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Christie’s handsome paintings of Harlem’s Sugar Hill neighborhood bring warmth to Weatherford’s catalogue of the African-American artists who lived there in the 1920s and ’30s.” —Publishers Weekly