Have You Heard about Grace Abounding?

by Mike Ford, Editor

We are very happy to announce the publication of Grace Abounding: The Core Knowledge Anthology of African-American Literature, Art, and Music. Released in August, this groundbreaking textbook has already sparked enormous interest around the country, including major markets in New York, Illinois, and Texas.

This is a big, beautiful textbook (932 pages) and much of its content has been neglected or overlooked for too many years by too many American schools. It covers every topic related to African American literature and cultural heritage listed in the Core Knowledge Sequence and much more. It is an interdisciplinary textbook covering the work of hundreds of authors, poets, thinkers, activists, and leaders, and it includes extensive historical essays, timelines, and other special features that help place the literature and art in historical context. Grace Abounding is lavishly illustrated, contains complete study apparatus, and delivers an abundance of essential knowledge that every American —regardless of cultural or ethnic heritage —needs to know in order to be an informed reader and an active citizen.

There are too many wonderful features in Grace Abounding to list here —better to go straight to www.coreknowledge.org/bookstore and see the page samples and other information available in our bookstore. Also, be sure to visit graceabounding.coreknowledge.org to explore the comprehensive supplementary resources available to teachers. Complete Table of Contents and Indexes are also available at this site.

Overall, the book is specifically written for a 6.5 reading level. Therefore, middle schools should look seriously at the possibility of making Grace Abounding a fixture in language arts and social studies curricula. However, various selections in this book are suitable for students from grades K–12, so we hope that every school will obtain at least one or two class sets to share among their classes.

Feel free to email Mike Ford, at with questions.

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