Lesa Cline-Ransome has 7 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 6 narrators. The most-rated is Finding Langston.
Just a Lucky So and So
Summary
Louis Armstrong has been called the most important improviser in the history of jazz. Although his New Orleans neighborhood was poor in nearly everything else, it was rich in superb music. Young Louis took it all in, especially the cornet blowing of Joe King Oliver. But after a run in with the police, 11-year-old Louis was sent away to the Colored Waif's Home for Boys, where he became a disciplined musician in the school's revered marching band. By the time he returned to his neighborhood, the King himself became his mentor and invited Armstrong to play with him in Chicago. Here is a joyful tribute to the virtuoso musician and buoyant personality who introduced much of the world to jazz.
©2016 Lesa Cline-Ransome (P)2016 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson
Summary
It wasn't soft/It wasn't black/It wasn't sweet/It wasn't white/It was swing. Brought together by the love of playing jazz music, Teddy Wilson and Benny Goodman broke the color barrier in entertainment when they formed the Benny Goodman Trio with Gene Krupa. This lush and lyrical audiobook tells the story of how two musical prodigies from very different backgrounds - one a young black boy growing up in Tuskegee, Alabama, the other the son of struggling Russian-Jewish immigrants from the West Side of Chicago - were brought together by their love of music, and helped create the jazz style known as swing.
©2014 Lesa Cline-Ransome (P)2014 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Leaving Lymon
Summary
Behind every bad boy is a story worth hearing and at least one chance for redemption. It's 1946, and Lymon, uprooted from his life in the Deep South and moved up North, needs that chance. Lymon's father is, for the time being, at Parchman Farm - the Mississippi State Penitentiary - and his mother, whom he doesn't remember all that much, has moved North. Fortunately, Lymon is being raised by his loving grandparents. Together, Lymon and his grandpops share a love of music, spending late summer nights playing the guitar. But Lymon's world as he knows it is about to dissolve. He will be sent on a journey to two Northern cities far from the country life he loves - and the version of himself he knows. In this companion novel to the Coretta Scott King Honor-winning Finding Langston, listeners will see a new side of the bully Lymon in this story of an angry boy whose raw talent, resilience, and devotion to music help point him in a new direction.
©2020 Lesa Cline-Ransome (P)2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC
She Persisted: Claudette Colvin
Summary
Inspired by the number-one New York Times best seller She Persisted by Chelsea Clinton and Alexandra Boiger comes a chapter book series about women who stood up, spoke up and rose up against the odds! Before Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin made the same choice. She insisted on standing up - or in her case, sitting down - for what was right, and in doing so, fought for equality, fairness, and justice. In this chapter book biography by award-winning author Lesa Cline-Ransome, listeners learn about the amazing life of Claudette Colvin - and how she persisted. Complete with an introduction from Chelsea Clinton! Praise for She Persisted: Claudette Colvin: "Cline-Ransome brings the teen activist to life with great compassion and impressive brevity... A noteworthy start for chapter-book readers wishing to read more about young leaders of the movement." (Kirkus Reviews) "A well-balanced and very readable account of Colvin's family life, her values, and her reasons for resisting unjust laws....an engaging introduction to a young civil rights hero." (Booklist)
©2021 Lesa Cline-Ransome, Alexandra Boiger, Chelsea Clinton (P)2021 Listening Library
Overground Railroad
Summary
From the award-winning author and illustrator of Before She Was Harriet comes an original and moving perspective of the Great Migration, as seen through the eyes of the young girl Ruth Ellen, whose family journeys from North Carolina to New York City.
©2020 Lesa Cline-Ransome (P)2020 Live Oak Media
Counting the Stars
Summary
Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or astronauts walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used their knowledge, pencils, adding machines, and writing paper to calculate the orbital mechanics needed to launch spacecraft. Katherine Johnson was one of these mathematicians who used trajectories and complex equations to chart the space program. Even as Virginia’s Jim Crow laws were in place in the early 1950s, Katherine worked analyzing data at the NACA (later NASA) Langley laboratory. In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Katherine Johnson was called upon, and John Glenn said “get the girl” (Katherine Johnson) to run the numbers by hand to chart the complexity of the orbital flight. He knew that his flight couldn’t work without her unique skills. President Barack Obama awarded Katherine Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, and her incredible life inspired the Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures.
©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Finding Langston
Summary
When 11-year-old Langston's mother dies in 1946, he and his father leave rural Alabama for Chicago's brown belt as a part of what came to be known as the Great Migration. It's lonely in the small apartment with just the two of them, and Langston is bullied at school. But his new home has one fantastic thing. Unlike the whites-only library in Alabama, the local public library welcomes everyone. There, hiding out after school, Langston discovers another Langston, a poet whom he learns inspired his mother enough to name her only son after him.
©2018 Lesa Cline-Ransome (P)2018 Dreamscape Media, LLC