Mirror Girls

Gr 8 Up–“For colored girls, there’s no such thing as happily ever after,” the prologue warns as Jeannette Yates—somberly narrated by Robin Eller—sets up the story to come. Jeannette is only 45, but ravaged by Jim Crow, she’s “too tired to be raising a baby again.” Yet her granddaughter Charlie has no parents; they’ve been brutally murdered for loving outside their divided races. Jeannette flees Georgia for the anonymity of Harlem to start again. Seventeen years later, in 1953, Charlie—resolutely voiced by Deanna Anthony—brings Jeannette back home to die. What awaits is unresolved destiny: Charlie is a twin to Miss Magnolia—breathily accented by Carmen Jewel Jones—who’s been raised as the proper white heir to Heathwood Plantation. Twins, separated at almost-birth, must confront ghosts, haunts, curses, evil—never mind the vicious humans—to survive.