8 Feb: Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
Website: https://www.olugbemisolabooks.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/olugbemisolarhudayperkovich/
Watch for: Two upcoming books in 2025: The Kids in Mrs. Z’s Class (Summer, 2025) and Makeda Makes a Mountain (March, 2025)

The Kids in Mrs. Z’s Class (Summer, 2025)
Synclaire Fields is the Math Kid in Mrs. Z’s class, getting perfect marks on every quiz and helping her classmates master tricky concepts. She especially loves demonstrating her skills at her parents’ store after school. Then she gets TWO ANSWERS WRONG on a math test, and … How can she be the Math Kid if she isn’t good at math anymore?

So Synclaire embarks on a quest to figure out what’s next. Maybe she’ll be a piano prodigy? A board-games whiz? A skating star? She likes some of these hobbies, but there’s one constant with every role: She seems to come back to math. Maybe, with the help of her friends in Mrs. Z’s class, she can still be the Math Kid after all?

Makeda Makes a Mountain. March, 2025
Makeda and her family are cleaning the house for a party! They make a huge pile of items they don’t use anymore, and soon it’s time to take them away. But Makeda is not ready to throw anything out. Can she find new ways to use her old things? 

This Level 2 I Can Read! book features an engaging story, longer sentences, and language play perfect for developing readers.

Operation Sisterhood: Stealing the Show. (2025)
Sisters Sunday, Bo, Lee, and Lil are four sisters from a patchwork family. Bonded by their love of music, these sisters formed a musical babysitting band business Operation Sisterhood that just planned the best garden wedding party their Harlem community has seen. 

Imaginative Sunday impulsively announces her next big community project—staging an original musical—everybody’s counting on her, especially her sisters, Bo and the Twins, Lil and Lee. Then, disaster: Sunday has lost her creative mojo just when she most want to impress her new neighbor, TV star Talitha Thomas. Soon there will be more drama offstage than on!

Can Bo and the Twins use what they learn about New York City communities past and present and their band babysitting business to help Sunday find her shine and her love of storytelling again? It’s Operation Sisterhood to the rescue!

The Sun Does Shine (Young Reader’s Edition): An Innocent Man, A Wrongful Conviction, and the Long Path to Justice. Co-authored with Anthony Ray Hinton and Lara Love Hardin. (2024) In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only 29 years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free.

But with a criminal justice system with the cards stacked against Black men, Hinton was sentenced to death. He spent his first three years on Death Row in despairing silence―angry and full of hatred for all those who had sent an innocent man to his death. But as Hinton realized and accepted his fate, he resolved not only to survive, but find a way to live on Death Row. For the next twenty-seven years he was a beacon―transforming not only his own spirit, but those of his fellow inmates. With the help of civil rights attorney and bestselling author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, Hinton won his release in 2015.

You’re Breaking My Heart (2024)
Harriet Adu knows that her brother’s death is her fault. I mean, it’s not actually her fault, but it still kinda is, isn’t it. She would do anything to live in a world where she could take back what she said that morning.

Then a strange girl shows up at Harriet’s high school – a girl who loves the same weird books Harriet does, who doesn’t vibe with anyone at school the same way Harriet does – and that different world suddenly seems possible. The girl speaks of a place underneath the subways of New York, where people like them can go and find a home. A place away from the world of high school, grief, cool people, and depression. A place where one may be able to bend the lines of reality and get a second chance at being a better person. Will Harriet open the door? 

Saving Earth: Climate Change and the Fight For Our Future (2024) illustrated by TIm Foley.  Inspired by Nathaniel Rich’s Losing Earth: A Recent History, the acclaimed book that grew out of an August 2018 issue of the New York Times Magazine solely dedicated to it, Saving Earth tells the human story of the climate change conversation from the recent past into the present day. It wrestles with the long shadow of our failures, what might be ahead for today’s generation, and crucial questions of how we understand the world we live in—and how we can work together to change the outlook for the better.

Makeda Makes a Home For Subway. 2024 Makeda is excited to bring Subway, the class guinea pig, home for the weekend. But Subway seems S-A-D—so Makeda and her friend Glory decide to make him an F-U-N new cage to cheer him up. But what if what is fun for Makeda is not fun for Subway? 

This Level 2 I Can Read! book features an engaging story, longer sentences, and language play perfect for developing readers.

Makeda Makes a Birthday Treat. (2023)
It’s Makeda’s birthday! To celebrate, she is excited to make her marvelous coconut drops to share with the class. But everyone else brings cupcakes for their birthdays. Will her classmates like her special treat?

Makeda Makes a Birthday Treat is a Level Two I Can Read book, geared for kids who read on their own but still need a little help. Whether shared at home or in a classroom, the engaging stories, longer sentences, and language play of Level Two books are proven to help kids take their next steps toward reading success.

Operation Sisterhood (2023)
Bo and her mom always had their own rhythm. But ever since they moved to Harlem, Bo’s world has fallen out of sync. She and Mum are now living with Mum’s boyfriend Bill, his daughter Sunday, the twins, Lili and Lee, the twins’ parents…along with a dog, two cats, a bearded dragon, a turtle, and chickens. All in one brownstone! With so many people squished together, Bo isn’t so sure there is room for her. 

Set against the bursting energy of a New York City summer, award-winning author Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich delivers a joyful novel about a new family that hits all the right notes!

Mae Makes A Way (2022)
Mae had a dream to make one-of-a-kind hats. But the path for a Black female designer was unclear, so Mae made a way, leaving her home in the segregated South to study at the Chicago School of Millinery.

Mae had the skills, but craved the independence to create her own styles. So Mae found a way. In Philadelphia, she became the first Black woman to own a business on South Street. Whether you were Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Marian Anderson or a lady from the neighborhood, Mae wanted you to look good and feel special in one of her original hats. A mother, a successful entrepreneur, and a community advocate, Mae led the way.

Published in collaboration with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

It Doesn’t Take A Genius (2021)
Emmett and his older brother Luke have always been “Batman and Robin,” though they’re quick to bicker about who’s who. Spending the summer at a historic Black summer camp seems like a wonderful adventure for the two to share, but since Luke is there as a junior counselor, he seems to spend all of his time being everyone else’s big brother, and ignoring Emmett.

As Luke seems to be moving on to new adventures, Emmett struggles in unexpected ways, especially in swim class and the “It Takes A Village” entrepreneurship class. Without his brother to turn to for support, Emmett works to build a new crew of “superfriends,” who’ll help him plan something spectacular for the end-of-camp awards night and celebration. Along the way, Emmett learns that no matter what, there can be many ways to define family.

It Doesn’t Take a Genius is inspired by the feature film Boy Genius, starring Miles Brown, Rita Wilson, and Nora Dunn.

Someday is Now: Clara Luper and the 1958 Oklahoma City Sit-Ins. Illustrated by Jade Johnson. (2018)
As a child, Clara Luper saw how segregation affected her life. When she grew up, Clara led the movement to desegregate Oklahoma stores and restaurants that were closed to African Americans. With courage and conviction, she led young people to “do what had to be done.” Perfect for early elementary-age kids to encourage them to do what is right and stand up for what is right, even at great cost, this is a moving story about the power of nonviolent activism.

Someday Is Now challenges young people to ask how they will stand up against something they know is wrong. Kids are inspired to follow the lessons of bravery taught by civil rights pioneers like Clara Luper.

The Civil Rights Movement (A Step Into History) (2018)
A Step Into History series takes a step into some of the most important moments in history, and discovers how these moments helped shape the world we live in today.

African Americans have resisted oppression from the moment they were first enslaved and transported to the “New World” of America in the 1600s. During the 1950s and 1960s, this resistance led to a widespread movement for civil rights in the United States. Readers will find out how the movement began, what obstacles activists faced, what impact the movement had on the country, and much more.

Above and Beyond: NASA’s Journey to Tomorrow (2018) Written with Discovery.
Through stunning images provided by NASA and fascinating profiles and sidebars of lesser known contributors to the NASA program, young space fans will learn how NASA started, how it faced challenges along the way, how much it has achieved, and how it will continue to move forward in the future.

Naomis Too. (2018)
Written with Audrey Vernick In this sequel to Two Naomis, now that Naomi Marie’s mom and Naomi E.’s dad are married, the girls have learned to do a lot of things together, like All-Family Sunday dinners, sixth-grade homework, navigating the subway system by themselves, and visiting their favorite bakeries. Until sixth grade in a new school presents a whole new set of surprises and challenges.

Trusting her gut has worked for Naomi E. all her life, and she figures that it will be an asset to her role as a Peer Mediator—until she realizes how much of the job requires the Art of Compromise, which she’s only just starting to get used to at home.

Naomi Marie is excited about making new friends—but she wants to keep old ones too. And when she sees that some in the school community have a hard time with the realities of “diversity in action,” she wonders if the new members of her family can see those realities as well.

As the girls deal with the ups and downs of middle school and the mysteries of family dynamics, they learn that even when life and school try to drive you apart, it’s ultimately easier to face everything together.

Two Naomis. (2016) Written with Audrey Vernick.
Other than their first names, Naomi Marie and Naomi Edith are sure they have nothing in common, and they wouldn’t mind keeping it that way. Naomi Marie starts clubs at the library and adores being a big sister. Naomi Edith loves quiet Saturdays and hanging with her best friend in her backyard. And while Naomi Marie’s father lives a few blocks away, Naomi Edith wonders how she’s supposed to get through each day a whole country apart from her mother.

When Naomi Marie’s mom and Naomi Edith’s dad get serious about dating, each girl tries to cling to the life she knows and loves. Then their parents push them into attending a class together, where they might just have to find a way to work with each other—and maybe even join forces to find new ways to define family.

8^th Grade Superzero (2010)
Ever since a deeply unfortunate incident earlier this year, Reggie’s been known as “Pukey” McKnight at his high-intensity Brooklyn middle school. He wants to turn his image around, but he has other things on his mind as well: his father, who’s out of a job; his best friends, Ruthie and Joe C.; his former best friend Donovan, who’s now become a jerk; and of course, the beautiful Mialonie. The elections for school president are coming up, but with his notorious nickname and “nothing” social status, Reggie wouldn’t stand a chance, if he even had the courage to run.

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