Micro review: Soul School by Amber O'Neal Johnston

February 27, 2025

I interrupted my regularly scheduled programming — which is planned out for months upon months, into September already — to share this book, that’s how much I wanted to tell you about it right now.

To be clear: I am not an unbiased reviewer of this (or any other) title. It’s not just that we all approach reading with our own preconceptions, experiences, feelings, opinions, and desires — it’s that I have been a mega-fan of Amber O’Neal Johnston’s for awhile, and as such, have zero chance of being impartial about her work, whatever it may be.

O’Neal Johnston is better known online — and mostly in the homeschooling world, which is how I first came across her — as Heritage Mom. In her own words, she “writes and speaks about including diverse voices in traditional curricula and infusing culture and heritage into the home and beyond.” Her most enduring contributions are, to me, her outstanding and one-of-a-kind multicultural booklists and lesson guides — I think I own every single one of her Heritage Packs — “full of literary mirrors and windows.” For years she has supplied me — and my children, and our home library — with a glorious infusion of Black voices and taught me more than I already knew about diversity, kinship, equity, and inclusion.

So I will pre-order any book O’Neal Johnston writes. (Incidentally, her first book, A Place to Belong: Raising Kids to Celebrate Their Heritage, Community, and the World is amazing.) I will also pre-order any book about children’s books or children’s literature. There aren’t that many. They don’t come out that often. Having a new one on the market is, to me, nothing short of thrilling.

I rarely sit around in my pajamas on the weekends, but for this book, I did

Micro review: Soul School: Taking Kids on a Joy-Filled Journey Through the Heart of Black American Culture by Amber O’Neal Johnston (2025)

The fact that it’s wonderful — and absolutely packed with information, wisdom, and some of the most thoughtful and comprehensive booklists I’ve ever seen — delights me that much more. From the moment I received this book on its pub date, I couldn’t put it down.

Soul School is, first and foremost, a practical guide for parents, educators, and anyone else looking to, as it says on the back cover, “dive into the fullness of the African American cultural experience.” In the introduction, O’Neal addresses the possibility of criticism regarding her focus on Black books by Black people, writing:

“Race will stop being a factor in books when it stops being a factor in society. I agree that it ‘shouldn’t’ matter, but it does. We’re righting a wrong by adding books to our children’s world that should have always been there.”

I couldn’t possibly agree more. But what I appreciate the most about O’Neal’s guidance and actionable advice is her explanations, in Part One, about the attributes and ideals held dear by African Americans for generations and aspects of history that highlight the pride, pain, and wide variation of the Black American experience. I’m not uneducated in this realm, and I still learned a lot, and I’m grateful.

And then there’s Part Two, which features 360 books, 120 of which O’Neal Johnston writes about in a short synopsis, an explanation of why she chose this particular book, questions for discussion, and ideas or activities for digging deeper, along with 280 “second helpings” that offer read-alike titles. (It should be said, she’s a lovely writer.)

Reading these — and I read every one, mostly because I just couldn’t stop gobbling up suggestions I already know about and others that are completely new to me — I kept trying to do the math in my head as to just how O’Neal Johnston managed to finish her first book and then write this one in what feels like a very short period of time. She’s a homeschooling mother of four! It’s stunning what she has accomplished here.

If I haven’t yet convinced you that Soul School is an amazing journey through Black American culture — an informative and uplifting roadmap for cultivating cultural pride, joy, and meaningful learning for families of all backgrounds, I don’t know what more I can say, but maybe you should just take O’Neal Johnston’s word. In her conclusion, she writes:

Our collective children belong together, and we owe them every opportunity to intimately sense each other’s humanity. These Black stories are indeed human stories, and every child who touches them will be changed, regardless of color or culture. Books themselves are not magic; they won’t fix everything, but the priceless power they hold to delight hearts, heal hurts, and bond loves is piercingly magical.

It absolutely is.

And this book celebrates heritage and identity with incredible care, thought, love, and intention. It’s downright beautiful. I can’t possibly recommend it highly enough.

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Read good books and take good care 😘
Sarah