Tonya Bolden Turns an Icon into a Living Person

Author Charles Johnson, National Book Award-winner and MacArthur Fellow, praises M.L.K.: Journey of a King as "an elegant, heartfelt, thoughtprovoking homage to one of the greatest Americans of all time."

M.L.K.: Journey of a King is highly recommended and is suitable for both young and adult readers, as are Bolden's three other Abrams Books for Young Readers books.

Tell All the Children Our Story: Memories and Mementos of Being Young and Black in America, Bolden's first project with Abrams, was published in 2001.

"What might my life have been like had I been a child in 18th- or 19th-century America?" Bolden asks. "Where are the tributes to the children who survived outrageous misfortunes, who made something of themselves against the odds, who grew up to be women and men of mark, from entering politics to starting a business to becoming a physician, teacher, or nurse? Frederick Douglass didn't become courageous as a man. I wanted to honor the child who became the man."

Tell All the Children Our Story was a 2002 School Library Journal Best Book of the Year.

Bolden's second Abrams book, Wake Up Our Souls: A Celebration of Black American Artists, is a lush pictorial overview of Black artists in America. It was published in association with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Wake Up Our Souls traces and showcases the works of Black artists ranging from 19th century-painters to contemporary artists. Wake Up Our Souls was named a Young American Library Service Association Best Book for Young Adults.

Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl, Bolden's third project with Abrams Books for Young Readers, also received critical acclaim and several awards.

"I thought Maritcha's story worth telling," Bolden says, "because we do not have that many books about Blacks born during the days of slavery who were never enslaved."

The book came from a manuscript found at New York's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture entitled "Memories of Yesterdays: All of Which I Saw and Part of Which I Was," a 1928 autobiography by a retired assistant principal in Brooklyn.

Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl received the Coretta Scott King Honor Book prize, the Young Adult Library Services Association Best Book for Young Adults, Association for Library Service to Children's Notable Children's Book, and New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. In July 2006 at the Schomburg Center, Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, presented Bolden with the James Madison Book Award.

The James Madison Book Award's committee of scholars, teachers, authors, parents and grandparents bestows the award annually to the children's book that it believes "best represents excellence in bringing knowledge and understanding of American history to the next generation."?

Fern Gillespie is a communications consultant and an award-winning entertainment writer based in New Jersey.

Copyright The Crisis Publishing Company May/Jun 2007
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