February always inspires the publication of picture books that teach much about African-American history. The best ones (like the recent titles included in this article) also spark thoughts and talk about troubles that still plague our country.

Rhymes lead to reason in Diane Shore and Jessica Alexander's This is the Dream (HarperCollins, $15.99, ages 6-10). During the first half of the book, verses explain segregation with couplets like: "These are the fountains that stand in the square and the black-and-white signs say who will drink where." The second half of the book uses the same rhyming schemes to depict change agents who "rallied and answered the call...dreaming of freedom and justice for all." While the book can be used to introduce the past to younger children, James Ransome's illustrations encourage discussion for older students. His strong, bold oils bring out the starkness of situations and strength of those who fought for equality. His interspersed collages make similarly powerful statements whether he's showing the faces of those who suffered, or blending faces of children to represent the change to equality.

Jacqueline Woodson won a 2006 Newbery-honor award for her picture book Show Way (Putnam, $16.99, ages 7 and up). It also deserved a Caldecott for the way Hudson Talbott's collages and watercolors express Woodson's poetic story of her family history. Tha story begins with Soonie's great-grandma who at seven was sold from her parents and left "with some muslin her ma had given her and two needles she got from the big house and thread dyed bright red with berries from the chokecherry tree." Stories and textiles unite in Soonie's mind and she sews quilts to guide her people to freedom. This story sets up a pattern of how fabric, tales, and familial love thread through Woodson's family tree becoming "show ways" that first guide slaves to freedom and later become symbols of how each generation found courage to live brave, artistic, full lives.

Marybeth Lorbiecki revisits the year Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color line in Jackie's Bat (Simon and Schuster, $15.95, ages 7 and up). Her protagonist, Joey, is a fictional young white bat boy for the 1947 Dodgers. He is subtly disrespectful to Robinson, rebuffs his friendly gestures, and is unwilling to be drawn into his circle of (largely "Negro") admirers. Robinson tells Joey in a voice as strong as "a line drive" that people who don't treat him fairly "don't know what a man is." Finally Robinson's performance on and off the field wins Joey's respect and he understands what Robinson means about being a man. Lorbiecki's text is a blend of history and fancy, baseball and feelings and truth and prejudice. Brian Pinkney's stylized illustrations capture the post-war era and his mix of shadowy background and distinctly drawn main characters underscore the points stressed in Lorbiecki's text.

Becky Brita makes a strong debut with her first children's book, Grandma's Pride (Whitman, $16.95, ages 6-10) Six-year-old Sarah Marie, on the verge of being able to read, is observant and curious when her sister and mother travel South to visit her grandmother in 1956. Her mother makes up cover stories to explain sitting in the back of the bus and not eating at the lunch counter, hardly keeping up with her daughter's astute perceptions. Grandmama pridefully continues the ruse offering her thirsty granddaughters "lemon-mint tea from fresh-squeezed lemons and spearmint" rather than drinks from the town water fountains. When Sarah Marie finally begins to read and understands the"hateful signs", she protects her young sister as she becomes fluent in understanding both words and her world. The text's richness of sensory details contrasts with the harsh limitations. Colin Bootman's realistic watercolors picture a setting that is just as abundant in love and natural beauty as it is in struggles.

Doreen Rappaport uses a rhythmic, image-filled style to portray a real family's fight for fairness in The School Is Not White! A True Story of the Civil Rights Movement (Hyperion, $16.99, ages 7 and up). Matthew and Mae Bertha Carter, 1965 Mississippi sharecroppers, know education is the way out of the cotton fields. Though threatening overseers and rifle shots pierce the walls and windows of their house, the Carters hold their children until their "trembling bodies quieted down", then send seven "off to war" at an all-white school "armed only with love". Prayer, love and unwillingness to back down show the courage and resolve of one family that epitomize the acts of many. Curtis James' chalk pastel illustrations record endless rows of cotton and angry faces, as well as the strong emotions of this family.

Nikki Giovanni and Bryan Collier won both the Coretta Scott King picture book award as well as a Caldecott honor for Rosa (Henry Holt, $16.95, ages 7 and up) won both the Coretta Scott King award for illustrations as well as a Caldecott-honor. Through Giovanni's lyrical words we learn much about segregation and how Rosa Parks drew on her immense inner resources to while working with others to fight for freedom. Collier's yellow hues stream brilliantly through collaged pictures to illuminate the feelings and images of the period.

Writer David Adler and illustrator Terry Widener collaborate for the third time in Joe Louis: America's Fighter (HBJ, $16.00, ages 7-10). Joe's early years of poverty teach him to fight. When he discovers boxing at seventeen, he feels "power pumping through him" and becomes the "punching machine" called the "Brown Bomber" who cheers African Americans during the depression until he retires in 1949, undefeated as a world champion.

Julius Lester is the biggest risk-taker in children's books and he urges others to do the same in Let's Talk About Race (HarperCollins, $15.99, ages 6-10). He tells big truths with few and simple words, relating how people use race, gender and economics to prove superiority and how "if we all shed clothes, skin and hair we all look alike." He ends with a question that will begin discussion, "I'll take off my skin. Will you take off yours?" Karen Barbour's strongly graphic style uses patterns and bold portraits to point out similarities and differences.

Following the tradition of working towards equality, Lester and the other artists' poignant picture books help children learn, grow, discuss and begin to create a future that resolves differences.