This is the young adult adaptation of Tim Madigan’s "The Burning: Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921." This is an in-depth account of one of the least discussed events in U.S. history, something that I did not learn of until I was an adult. It's scary that something this horrible could have happened and that no one talks about it. For two days in 1921, a mob of white Tulsa residents attacked Black residents, their houses, and the businesses in an area of Tulsa known as "Black Wall Street," an all-black area that had prospered. White mobs burned down their houses, even attacking the city from the sky and dropping fire bombs onto them. They burnt the city to the ground. There are many stories from survivors here, meant to keep the story alive. While some of the book is repetitive, it does give readers the history of not only this event, but the history of how the town actually came to be and what the racial climate was like at the time.

I had heard of "Black Wall Street" without actually knowing what all it encompassed. Tim Madigan has written such a wonderfully detailed history of not just Black Wall Street in its prime but also what led to its creation, the sacrifices made to create it, and its impact. Madigan writes in a way that even reluctant nonfiction readers will struggle to put this book down. I highly recommend it for every libraray!

This doesn't read like a history book giving just a list of facts about events through time. This depiction gives you an understanding of events as seen and felt by many people.

I am 50, grew up one state over, and had never heard of the events this book dedicates itself to, nor the event in Houston that it briefly mentions. In school, they teach U.S. History in 3 different grades. I am an educator and while I do not teach this subject, in the course of this Covid-19 remote year, I've helped students through all of their teacher's subjects and not once has anything like this event been mentioned or approached at the 5th-grade level. I will be passing this book along.

This book will make you wonder how much we truly don't understand about our own history.

I haven't had a chance to finish this yet, but already I can tell that I will be using it next year in my class. It is written so that Middle Schoolers can relate and understand, while also explaining an important historical event, that is unfortunately absent from most curriculum in the US.

Great book, I can't wait to finish it. And I look forward to reading it (maybe not in its entirety, but at least several substantial excerpts) with my students next year!

Only in the last few years did I learn of the Tulsa Massacre on Black Wall street but since then I have watched documentaries and read several other books about he topic. I read this book because as a teacher I loved the idea of this book having been adapted for my high school students. However, no amount of adaptation can damper to horrors of this event, 300+ African American men and women killed, miles of black businesses and wealth destroyed and the gigantic coverup by a city, a state and a nation. As a reader you want to believe this is all blown out of proportion, it must be exaggerated because the sheer HORROR of this attack is so palpable and because it is hard to believe humans could do something so awful to someone else, but it is true and it did happen. We also want to believe that this horrible human behavior is all in the past but is it, just look at our news channels and we know it isn’t. Stories like this deserve and need to be told, about then men and women who lost everything and those who had the strength and tenacity to rebuild again in the face of such abject hatred. This book will certainly be joining my classroom in the fall.

I have not read the book upon which this edition is based, but Hillary Beard has adapted an accessible historical informational text about Tim Madigan's The Burning; I recommend it for all school libraries. I had not read much about the Tulsa Race Massacre and Black Wall Street until recent years, unfortunately, so I learned a lot more about it by reading this book. It is presented in such a way that younger readers will be engaged in the storytelling while they are learning the tragic and violent history in great detail. The book is probably better fit for older high school--not because of the topic, but because of the complexity of the event. The book goes back and provides context for the Massacre regarding some of the people and events that led to the creation of Greenwood. It also follows some of the events afterward and more recent times. Because of this, there is a lot of history and people to cover, and that can sometimes get confusing even for someone like myself who had read a book or two about the topic already. I definitely recommend this text. Many thanks to the publishers and Net Galley for the advanced copy.

I had never heard of this historic event until I read the historical fiction YA book "Dreamland Burning" by Jennifer Latham (which I highly recommend). "The Burning" is a well-researched and thorough non-fiction account of the burning and destruction of Greenwood during the Tulsa massacre, as well as providing follow up information about the determination of the Black citizens of the city as they rebuilt their homes, businesses and churches without any help from outsiders. While the prose in this book is a bit "dry", the information is captivating and would appeal to high school students interested in learning more about this era in history.

Hilary Beard’s adaptation of Tim Madigan’s The Burning: Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 provides an excellent, in-depth account of one of the darkest and least discussed events in U.S. history. Between May 31 and June 1, 1921, a mob of white Tulsa residents viciously attacked Black residents, houses, and businesses in Tulsa’s Greenwood District, a neighborhood that had become known as Black Wall Street because of its many successful Black-owned businesses. Over the two day period, the mob left over 10,000 people homeless and led to the death of hundreds of people and over 800 injured. Upon reading about this horrible event for the first time as an adult, Madigan realized the need for a comprehensive study of the massacre, leading to the first edition of The Burning in the early 2000s. This new edition has been expertly adapted for young readers, providing a discussion of the events of 1921 and the context of anti-Black racism in the Reconstruction and Jim Crow era that built up to the terrible display of violence in Tulsa. While much of the book deals with brutality and death, Madigan and Beard also tell the triumphant stories of the residents of Greenwood, bringing life and personality to the Black entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors, and musicians who built a thriving community only a few decades removed from slavery. The Burning: Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 (Young Readers Adaptation) is an essential read on the subject and would make an excellent addition to a high school curriculum or library.