This is a special meeting of the Crossroads Book Group open for everyone but parents and educators are highly encouraged to attend. The Crossroads Book Group is a Square Books-sponsored book discussion activity taking place monthly. Each session will feature a title selected by guest hosts. They will talk about it for 15 minutes, then open the floor for questions and discussion. Any Square Books Constant Reader may participate. This activity is an outgrowth of the broad concerns that emerged as a result of, among other things, the murder of George Floyd, and books selected for discussion will be to  relevant to these concerns.  

This meeting will be via Zoom on Saturday, September 26th at 3:00 pm CST. You must RSVP to attend the event by emailing rsvp@squarebooks.com.

The hosts  are Afton Thomas, LaToya Faulk, and Hanna Lee, who will be discussing The Only Black Girls in Town by Brandy Colbert. This title will be 15% off with the coupon code CROSSROADS.

About the Hosts:

Afton Thomas and her family moved to Oxford, Mississippi from Columbia, Missouri in the summer of 2012. She is the associate director for programs at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. Afton is committed to the LOU community and currently serving on the boards of Move On Up Mississippi, Lafayette Oxford Foundation for Tomorrow, and Friends of the Museum, as well a steering committee member with Leadership Lafayette. She has an eight year-old daughter, a five year-old son, her husband, and Mavis the family’s new puppy to keep her busy.

LaToya Faulk has a B.A. in English Literature and a M.A. in Rhetoric and Writing from Michigan State University. She is currently a fiction M.F.A student at The University of Mississippi where she also teaches in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric. 

Hanna Lee is the Youth Services Coordinator at First Regional Library, which serves the local community via the Lafayette County Oxford Public Library. She is passionate about library services and diverse books for young people, and she is a member of the 2021 Caldecott Committee. Hanna, and all of the staff at the library, are thrilled to help to provide suggestions for further reading for children and teens—or their adults—who are looking to explore race, identity, and other topics, and she encourages readers to borrow, read, and buy more books written by diverse authors.

About the book:
Award-winning YA author Brandy Colbert's debut middle-grade novel about the only two black girls in town who discover a collection of hidden journals revealing shocking secrets of the past.

Beach-loving surfer Alberta has been the only black girl in town for years. Alberta's best friend, Laramie, is the closest thing she has to a sister, but there are some things even Laramie can't understand. When the bed and breakfast across the street finds new owners, Alberta is ecstatic to learn the family is black-and they have a 12-year-old daughter just like her.

Alberta is positive she and the new girl, Edie, will be fast friends. But while Alberta loves being a California girl, Edie misses her native Brooklyn and finds it hard to adapt to small-town living.

When the girls discover a box of old journals in Edie's attic, they team up to figure out exactly who's behind them and why they got left behind. Soon they discover shocking and painful secrets of the past and learn that nothing is quite what it seems.