Honoring Those Who Have Changed the World for Good

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (February 10, 2010) – Shmoop (http://www.shmoop.com), a publisher of digital resources that make learning fun and relevant for students, offers 47 topics for students to study for Black History Month. We remember and honor those — from the biggest names to the most ordinary people — who have shaped the African-American experience and who have changed the world for over 400 years.

From David Walker to Toni Morrison, from Malcolm X to Jay-Z – Shmoop offers 47 rich English and Social Studies Guides to help you expand your understanding of the Black experience. Enrich your digital classroom (at school, at home, at work, on the go) with videos, images, primary resources, and a Best of the Web section that connects you to the most relevant and trustworthy web resources out there.

Featured Resources:

• Shmoop guides you through Huckleberry Finn. Twain’s Huckleberry Finn champions American ideals of freedom, independence, and rugged individualism in Pre-Civil War America. The thirteen year-old narrator’s dedication to his own moral standards and his friendship with Jim, a runaway slave, makes this one of the Great American Novels, and one taught in classrooms all across the world.
• Shmoop guides you through To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel tells the story of an African-American man falsely accused of raping a white woman in 1930s Maycomb, Alabama. The novel’s message of standing up for what is right at all costs has provoked strong reactions and even controversy over the past fifty years, making it one of the most widely read novels dealing with race in America.
• Explore 45 more Black History Month topics from Blues Music History to Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass to the Civil Rights Movement.

About Shmoop

Shmoop publishes digital resources that make learning fun and relevant for students. Shmoop content is written by master teachers and Ph.D. students from Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and other top universities. Shmoop Learning Guides and Teacher Resources balance a fun, approachable style with academically rigorous materials to help students understand how subjects relate to their daily lives. Shmoop offers more than 1,900 titles across the Web, iPhone, Kindle, and Nook. The company was an Official Honoree in the 2009 Webby Awards and named “Best of the Internet” by PC Magazine. Launched in 2008, Shmoop is headquartered in a Labradoodle-patrolled office in Mountain View, Calif. For more information, visit www.shmoop.com.

Media Contacts

• Emily Embury, C. Blohm & Associates, 608-839-9800, emily@cblohm.com