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LOA LIVE
Virginia Hamilton and the Transformation of American Children’s Literature
A talk with Carla Hayden and Jacqueline Woodson
Winner of the National Book Award, the Newbery Medal, and a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant,
Virginia Hamilton (1934–2002)
wove Black folktales and narratives of African American life and history into a body of work that forever changed American children’s writing and made her its most honored writer.
Join Librarian of Congress
Carla Hayden and award-winning
children’s book author and memoirist Jacqueline Woodson
(Brown Girl Dreaming)
for a conversation about Hamilton’s life and wildly inventive novels, newly collected in a Library of America volume edited by Hamilton biographer Julie K. Rubini.
Wednesday, October 6
We thank our promotional partners: the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics & Writers; the Library of Congress; the Toledo Lucas County Public Library; and Wright State University.
Images, above, L–R: Virginia Hamilton (copyright
2016 The Arnold Adoff Revocable Living Trust); Carla Hayden (Shawn Miller/Library of Congress); Jacqueline Woodson (John D. and Catherine
T. MacArthur Foundation).
NOW AVAILABLE
Hardcover • 907 pages “We are all so fortunate to have these wonderful and courageous novels to guide us.”—Nikki
Giovanni
Zeely | The House of Dies Drear | The Planet of Junior Brown | M.C. Higgins, The Great | Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush
Edited by Julie K. Rubini This Library of America volume collects five of Virginia Hamilton’s most beloved works, along with beautifully restored
illustrations.
In Zeely (1967), Geeder Perry and her brother, Toeboy, go to their uncle’s farm for the summer and encounter a six-and-a-half-foot-tall
Watutsi queen and a mysterious night traveler. In The House of Dies Drear (1968), Thomas Small and his family move to a forbidding former way station on the Underground Railroad—a house whose
secrets Thomas must discover before it’s too late. Junior Brown, a 300-lb. musical prodigy, plays a silent piano in
The Planet of Junior Brown (1971), while homeless friend Buddy draws on all his New York City wits to protect Junior’s disintegrating mind.
In the National Book Award–winning
M. C. Higgins, The Great (1974), Mayo Cornelius Higgins sits atop a forty-foot pole on the side of Sarah’s Mountain and dreams of escape. Poised above his family’s home is a massive spoil heap
from strip-mining that could come crashing down at any moment. Can he rescue his family and save his own future? And in
Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush (1982), fifteen-year-old Tree’s life revolves around her ailing brother, Dab, until she sees cool, handsome Brother Rush, an enigmatic figure who may hold the key
to unlocking her family’s troubled past.
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