Michele Norris

Through powerful monologues, Anna Deavere Smith has tackled race riots, integration and health care. In Notes from the Field, she's using her characters to explore the school-to-prison pipeline.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks is finishing a run on her latest work, "Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1,2 & 3)" at The Public Theater in New York.

A huge hit upon its release, the 1949 musical South Pacific still resonates with contributors to The Race Card Project — particularly a song about how prejudice is learned, not innate.

For the last three years, NPR's Michele Norris has asked people to share their six-word stories about race and cultural identity. The confrontation in Sanford, Fla., has been a running thread in the inbox of the Race Card Project since Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in 2012.

On June 11, 1963, Gov. George Wallace stood at the University of Alabama to block two black students attempting to cross the color line and register for classes. The event forever associated him with segregation. His daughter, Peggy Wallace Kennedy, 63, is trying to shake that link.

Long before James Prosek became a world-famous artist and naturalist, he was a kid who used art as a way to work through the ups and downs of childhood. "When I went into the woods, it was the first time that I felt like something was mine," he says.

NPR's Backseat Book Club takes the yellow brick road back to its origins with L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900.

NPR's Backseat Book Club polled children's booksellers and librarians to find 2012's best books for middle-graders. The winners are a heartwarming city kid's tale, a Chinese folklore-inspired adventure, and an encounter with a 10-year-old you'll never forget.

In 1877, Anna Sewell wrote a novel about human kindness and cruelty — all from the point of view of a horse. In the decades since, Black Beauty has been embraced by generations of children, and has helped change the way we treat and think about horses.

Former schoolteacher Rick Riordan delivers a lesson in ancient Egyptian history cleverly disguised as a hair-raising kids adventure. Carter and Sadie Kane have no idea they are descended from age-old sorcerers until their archaeologist father accidentally unleashes ancient gods into modern society.