“The Undefeated,” a 40-page picture book by Kwame Alexander (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: Versify), is “A love poem to America,” he says, “To Black America … To the strength and bravery of everyday people caught in the web of history.” With bold illustrations by Kadir Nelson and several pages of back matter that provide brief biographies of all the Black historical figures featured in the book, “The Undefeated” gives readers American history that “has been forgotten, left out of the textbooks.”

“Time I’d go out and come back again, her face lit up like I was a soldier home on leave,” a junior-high protagonist describes his mother in “Finding Langston” by Lesa Cline-Ransome (Holiday House, 108 pages). But Mama has died, and Daddy and Langston have moved from warm and sunny rural Alabama to cold and very urban Chicago. Some changes are positive and positively amazing: a flush toilet in the apartment building, a public library that lends books even to a young Black boy. Others not so much, like the kids who call Langston “Country Boy” and torment him on the playground.

In an interesting twist, one of those tormentors is the central character of “Leaving Lymon” (Holiday House, 208 pages). Lymon lives with his grandparents — his father is incarcerated and his mother is absent — until new troubles uproot him from the South and send him to his mother in Chicago, where his stepfather is the opposite of welcoming. When readers see life from the perspective of “Finding Langston’s” playground bully, his behavior makes a lot more sense. These middle grade novels that bring the Great Migration to life eventually will be joined by a third, so get reading!