5 Books Black Harvard Students Read as Children

Part 1: I’ve always been fascinated by how smart people got that way. It’s not only a passion of mine, but I’ve spent fourteen years investigating the question. One thing I discovered is that the smartest people did a whole bunch of reading when they were children. Then I started to wonder what kind of books did really smart people read when they were kids? I got even more curious. What kind of books did really smart Black people read when they were kids? Thankfully I have friends in smart places. I talked to Dr. Ron Ferguson, an Economist and the co-founder of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard. He’s also my co-author. Lucky for me, he had done some asking around some years ago. And I’m sharing what he told me.

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I decided to break the list down in two parts, so you can digest this information first. Tomorrow, come see additional books Harvard students read. And since Christmas is around the corner, why not gift these classics to a future scholar.

The Bible

If you’re Black and went to Sunday school, you will definitely recall all those great stories and characters in this Good Book.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Why does kids love this book? First, it’s about a young man who survives a shipwreck. All children love stories about shipwrecks. And wait! He has only one companion. A huge Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker. Need I say more.

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

This book has been called the best children’s book ever written. Wilbur the pig and the spider named Charlotte were not just buddies, they were tight. It’s a book about friendship and the passage of time. I read it over and over.

The Cat In The Hat By Dr. Seuss

The book was so fun to read with all the rhyming and that cat in hat and bow tie. Did you know the book was written and illustrated in 1957 by Theodor Geisal, who called himself Dr. Seuss?

Roots by Alex Haley

This 1976 book had errrrrbody wanting to go back to Africa and find their Roots. I remember being a kid and seeing the mini-series long before reading this thick novel Alex Haley wrote. I bow down to those future Harvard graduates who tackled this mental and spiritually heavy book long before they had to. Check out part 2, tomorrow.