Our Collection
The CCB houses a non-circulating research collection of children’s and young adult books. Our emphasis is on children’s books published within the last year and a small reference collection, and older books are being added to the Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library (SSHEL) collection in the Main Library.
Our Space
We moved! We are now located in Room 211/212, 501 E Daniel St., Champaign, IL 61820.
Map of the CCB


Featured Collection: Black History Month
Below are some of the featured books on display at the CCB.
Graphic Novels

Gr. 9 and up
Bunt!: Striking Out on Financial Aid by Ngozi Ukazu, illustrated by Mad Rupert
“Molly Bauer’s first year of college is not the picture-perfect piece of art she’d always envisioned. On day one at PICA, Molly discovers that―through some horrible twist of fate―her full-ride scholarship has vanished! But the ancient texts (PICA’s dusty financial aid documents) reveal a loophole. If Molly and 9 other art students win a single game of softball, they’ll receive a massive athletic scholarship. Can Molly’s crew of ragtag artists succeed in softball without dropping the ball?”
Young Adult

Gr. 7 and up
Cool. Awkward. Black. edited by Karen Strong
“A girl who believes in UFOs; a boy who might have finally found his Prince Charming; a hopeful performer who dreams of being cast in her school’s production of The Sound of Music; a misunderstood magician of sorts with a power she doesn’t quite understand.
These plotlines and many more compose the eclectic stories found within the pages of this dynamic, exciting, and expansive collection featuring exclusively Black characters. From contemporary to historical, fantasy to sci-fi, magical to realistic, and with contributions from a powerhouse list of self-proclaimed geeks and bestselling, award-winning authors, this life-affirming anthology celebrates and redefines the many facets of Blackness and geekiness—both in the real world and those imagined.”

Gr. 9 and up
The Black Girl Survives in This One: Horror Stories edited by Desiree S. Evans & Saraciea J. Fennell, introduced by Tananarive Due
“Be warned, dear reader: The Black girls survive in this one.
Celebrating a new generation of bestselling and acclaimed Black writers, The Black Girl Survives in This One makes space for Black girls in horror. Fifteen chilling and thought-provoking stories place Black girls front and center as heroes and survivors who slay monsters, battle spirits, and face down death. Prepare to be terrified and left breathless by the pieces in this anthology.
The bestselling and acclaimed authors include Erin E. Adams, Monica Brashears, Charlotte Nicole Davis, Desiree S. Evans, Saraciea J. Fennell, Zakiya Dalila Harris, Daka Hermon, Justina Ireland, L.L. McKinney, Brittney Morris, Maika & Maritza Moulite, Eden Royce, and Vincent Tirado. The foreword is by Tananarive Due.”

Gr. 9 and up
Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I’d Known by George M. Johnson, illustrated by Charly Palmer
“In Flamboyants, George M. Johnson celebrates writers, performers, and activists from 1920s Black America whose sexualities have been obscured throughout history. Through 14 essays, Johnson reveals how American culture has been shaped by icons who are both Black and Queer – and whose stories deserve to be celebrated in their entirety.
Interspersed with personal narrative, powerful poetry, and illustrations by award-winning illustrator Charly Palmer, Flamboyants looks to the past for understanding as to how Black and Queer culture has defined the present and will continue to impact the future. With candid prose and an unflinching lens towards truth and hope, George M. Johnson brings young adult readers an inspiring collection of biographies that will encourage teens today to be unabashed in their layered identities.”

Gr. 7 and up
Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People by Kekla Magoon
“In this comprehensive, inspiring, and all-too-relevant history of the Black Panther Party, Kekla Magoon introduces readers to the Panthers’ community activism, grounded in the concept of self-defense, which taught Black Americans how to protect and support themselves in a country that treated them like second-class citizens. For too long the Panthers’ story has been a footnote to the civil rights movement rather than what it was: a revolutionary socialist movement that drew thousands of members—mostly women—and became the target of one of the most sustained repression efforts ever made by the U.S. government against its own citizens.
Revolution in Our Time puts the Panthers in the proper context of Black American history, from the first arrival of enslaved people to the Black Lives Matter movement of today. Kekla Magoon’s eye-opening work invites a new generation of readers grappling with injustices in the United States to learn from the Panthers’ history and courage, inspiring them to take their own place in the ongoing fight for justice.”

Gr. 7 and up
Friday I’m in Love by Camryn Garrett
“Mahalia Harris wants.
She wants a big Sweet Sixteen like her best friend, Naomi.
She wants the super-cute new girl Siobhan to like her back.
She wants a break from worrying—about money, snide remarks from white classmates, pitying looks from church ladies . . . all of it.
Then inspiration strikes: It’s too late for a Sweet Sixteen, but what if she had a coming-out party? A singing, dancing, rainbow-cake-eating celebration of queerness on her own terms.
The idea lights a fire beneath her, and soon Mahalia is scrimping and saving, taking on extra hours at her afterschool job, trying on dresses, and awkwardly flirting with Siobhan, all in preparation for the coming out of her dreams. But it’s not long before she’s buried in a mountain of bills, unfinished schoolwork, and enough drama to make her English lit teacher blush. With all the responsibility on her shoulders, will Mahalia’s party be over before it’s even begun?
A novel about finding yourself, falling in love, and celebrating what makes you you.“
Middle Grade

Gr. 3-8
The Kaya Girl by Mamle Wolo
“When Faiza, a migrant girl from northern Ghana, and Abena, a wealthy doctor’s daughter from the south meet by chance in Accra’s largest market where Faiza works as a porter, or kaya girl, they strike up an unlikely and powerful friendship that transcends their social inequities and opens up new worlds to them both.
Set against a backdrop of class disparity in Ghana, The Kaya Girl explores how two teenage lives are indelibly impacted by a barrier-defying friendship. This gorgeously transporting work offers vivid insight into two strikingly diverse young lives in Ghana.”

Gr. 3-7
Stuntboy, In the Meantime by Jason Reynolds, illustrated by Raúl the Third
“Portico Reeves’s superpower is making sure all the other superheroes—like his parents and two best friends—stay super. And safe. Super safe. And he does this all in secret. No one in his civilian life knows he’s actually…Stuntboy!
But his regular Portico identity is pretty cool, too. He lives in the biggest house on the block, maybe in the whole city, which basically makes it a castle. His mom calls where they live an apartment building. But a building with fifty doors just in the hallways is definitely a castle. And behind those fifty doors live a bunch of different people who Stuntboy saves all the time. In fact, he’s the only reason the cat, New Name Every Day, has nine lives.
All this is swell except for Portico’s other secret, his not-so-super secret. His parents are fighting all the time. They’re trying to hide it by repeatedly telling Portico to go check on a neighbor “in the meantime.” But Portico knows “meantime” means his parents are heading into the Mean Time which means they’re about to get into it, and well, Portico’s superhero responsibility is to save them, too—as soon as he figures out how.
Only, all these secrets give Portico the worry wiggles, the frets, which his mom calls anxiety. Plus, like all superheroes, Portico has an arch-nemesis who is determined to prove that there is nothing super about Portico at all.”

Gr. 3-8
It’s the End of the World and I’m in My Bathing Suit by justin a. reynolds
“Twelve-year-old Eddie Gordon Holloway has concocted his most genius plan ever to avoid chores . . . especially the dreaded L-A-U-N-D-R-Y. If he can wears every item of clothing in his wardrobe, summer will be halfway over before he has to do laundry!
On the day of the highly anticipated Beach Bash, Eddie ends up grounded until he can get his clothes clean. While left home alone to do his laundry, the power goes out mid-cycle. With his first load of laundry soaking wet and the rest still filthy, Eddie sets out to explore the seemingly empty neighborhood in just his swim trunks and flip-flops.
As he meets up with other neighborhood kids to find out what happened, they realize that their families aren’t coming back anytime soon. And as night falls, the crew realizes they aren’t just the only people left in the neighborhood — they might be the only people left . . . anywhere.”

Gr. 4-8
Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia
“Seventh grader Tristan Strong feels anything but strong ever since he failed to save his best friend when they were in a bus accident together. All he has left of Eddie is the journal his friend wrote stories in. Tristan is dreading the month he’s going to spend on his grandparents’ farm in Alabama, where he’s being sent to heal from the tragedy.
But on his first night there, a sticky creature shows up in his bedroom and steals Eddie’s notebook. Tristan chases after it–is that a doll?–and a tug-of-war ensues between them underneath a Bottle Tree. In a last attempt to wrestle the journal out of the creature’s hands, Tristan punches the tree, accidentally ripping open a chasm into the MidPass, a volatile place with a burning sea, haunted bone ships, and iron monsters that are hunting the inhabitants of this world.
Tristan finds himself in the middle of a battle that has left Black American folk heroes John Henry and Brer Rabbit exhausted. In order to get back home, Tristan and these new allies will need to entice the god Anansi, the Weaver, to come out of hiding and seal the hole in the sky. But bartering with the trickster Anansi always comes at a price. Can Tristan save this world before he loses more of the things he loves?”
Picture Books

Gr. Preschool-2
Coretta: The Autobiography of Mrs. Coretta Scott King by Coretta Scott King, illustrated by Ekua Holmes
“This is the autobiography of Coretta Scott King––wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.; founder of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (the King Center); architect of the MLK, Jr. legacy; and global leader in movements for civil and human rights as well as peace. Learn about how a girl born in the segregated deep south became a global leader at the forefront of the peace movement and an unforgettable champion of social change.
Resilience, bravery, and joy lie at the center of this timeless story about fighting for justice against all odds.”

Gr. Preschool-3
Justice Rising: 12 Amazing Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement by Katheryn Russell-Brown, illustrated by Kim Holt
“You’ve heard the names Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King, but what about the many other women who were crucial to the civil rights movement?
Told through twelve short biographies, this book celebrates just some of the many Black women–each of whom has been largely underrepresented until now–who were instrumental to the nation’s fight for civil rights and the contributions they made in driving the Movement forward.
An empowering, eye-opening look at how one person can impact greater change, this book is both a conversation starter and much-needed history lesson for our modern world.”

Gr. Preschool-2
Yvonne Clark and her Engineering Spark by Allen R. Wells, illustrated by DeAndra Hodge
“Yvonne Clark had an engineering spark―an instinct for figuring out how things worked.
Broken lamp? She screwed, rewired, and wrenched until…light!
Wrecked radio? She twisted, snipped, and hammered until…music!
Clogged furnace? She picked, plucked, and cleared until…heat!
When she grew up, Yvonne’s problem-solving power took her to NASA, where fellow engineers had a serious problem with the Saturn V rocket’s F-1 engine: It had hot spots―high temperatures in the engine.
Can Yvonne Clark and her engineering spark solve the problem?
In an electric tribute, Allen R. Wells artfully tells the life story of his favorite engineering professor who also happened to be one of our nation’s most influential African American engineers. DeAndra Hodge’s bright illustrations explode with energy, matching the vibrance of Yvonne as a creative child and following her rise to NASA and beyond.”
Campus Resources
Here is a list of other collections on the UIUC campus that may be of interest to scholars of children’s literature.
The School (S)-Collection in the Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library (SSHEL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign consists of over 178,000 cataloged volumes of children’s and young adult literature.
Founded in 2008, HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items. HathiTrust offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law, computational access to the entire corpus for scholarly research, and other emerging services based on the combined collection. HathiTrust members steward the collection — the largest set of digitized books managed by academic and research libraries — under the aims of scholarly, not corporate, interests.
Illinois is co-host (with Indiana University) of the HathiTrust Research Center, which offers data sets, consultations, training, longer-term collaborations, and a variety of text-mining and analytic tools for working with the enormous collections of the HathiTrust Digital Library.
The American Library Association Archives is the repository for the American Library Association, the world’s oldest and largest national library association.
The ALA Archives consists of official records, correspondence, publications, photographs, sound recordings, films, and videotapes. Research material is arranged in five general areas: administrative and staff offices, associations and divisions, round tables, committees and members’ papers, and affiliated and associated organizations.
The National Council of Teachers of English Archives documents the history of the National Council of Teachers of English and the teaching profession. The University Archives has over 130 cubic feet of NCTE materials. These records, dating from the organization’s founding in 1911 to the present, document NCTE’s history of advocacy for literacy, as well as its affiliates’ history, including the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) and the Conference on English Education (CEE). Further information can be found on NCTE’s homepage.