Colin Bootman

A mysterious man appears in Harlem and promises to rid the city of its rats by playing the steel pan drum.

In Trinidad, two brothers try fishing in a new place, hoping to bring home a big catch for their grandmother.

"What happened when a former slave took beat-up old instruments and gave them to a bunch of orphans? Thousands of futures got a little brighter and a great American art form was born. In 1891, Reverend Daniel Joseph Jenkins opened his orphanage in Charleston, South Carolina. He soon had hundreds of children and needed a way to support them. Jenkins asked townspeople to donate old band instruments - some of which had last played in the hands of Confederate...

When flood waters from broken levees submerge their New Orleans neighborhood in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a young cornet player and his parents evacuate their home and struggle to survive and stay together.

In Brooklyn, New York, in 1947, a boy learns about discrimination and tolerance as he and his deaf father share their enthusiasm over baseball and the Dodgers' first baseman, Jackie Robinson.

Ten-year-old Queen, a spoiled and conceited African American girl who is disliked by most of her classmates, learns a lesson about friendship from an unlikely "knight in shining armor."

A child describes the family events, like making apple butter and having relatives visit, that center around Momma's kitchen.

While on a trip in 1956 to visit her grandmother in the South, six-year-old Sarah Marie experiences segregation for the first time, but discovers that things have changed by the time she returns the following year.

Uncle Booker T., who makes magic by playing his harmonica music from his heart, spends the summer teaching Derrick how to play.

In 1820s Maryland, Frederick's mother, who is a slave on a different plantation, walks twelve miles each way for a nighttime visit with her son, during which she recounts what each mile of the journey represents. Based on the childhood of Frederick Douglass.