Kwame Alexander presents the Golden Kite for Nonfiction for Younger Readers to Carole Boston Weatherford

Kwame Alexander starts us off with an exciting personal anecdote from his childhood about visiting the Schomberg every year the day after Thanksgiving to help his father sell books, not realizing then, fully, the amazingness of Schomberg until he read Carole Boston Weatherford's sparkling prose in SCHOMBURG: THE MAN WHO BUILT A LIBRARY.

Carole Boston Weatherford is a New York Times best-selling author and poet. Her numerous books for children include the Coretta Scott King Author Award Honor Book BECOMING BILLIE HOLIDAY, illustrated by Floyd Cooper, and the Caldecott Honor Books MOSES: WHEN HARRIET TUBMAN LEAD HER PEOPLE TO FREEDOM, illustrated by Kadir Nelson, and VOICE OF FREEDOM: FANNIE LOU HAMER, illustrated by Ekua Holmes. Carole Boston Weatherford lives in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

From her CBC Diversity interview Carole says:

My mission as an author is to mine the past for family stories, fading traditions and forgotten struggles. Add to that unsung heroes. When my friend and frequent collaborator Eric Velasquez pitched the idea of a Schomburg biography to me, I was intrigued. Like Schomburg, Eric has roots in Africa and Puerto Rico. I detected Eric’s passion for the project and I could not refuse. I believe this is the book that Eric was born to create. Even though the book had a ten year gestation, I am honored that Eric asked me to collaborate. 

Carole Boston Weatherford: The Power Of Premise

Carole Boston Weatherford giving her keynote

Carole Boston Weatherford is an award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of over forty books, mostly for young people. Her books have won two NAACP Image Awards, two Caldecott Honors, and a Coretta Scott King Award. Her best-known titles include Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom; Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement; Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-ins; and Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America. Her latest release is You Can Fly: The Tuskegee Airmen, a collaboration with her son, debut illustrator Jeffery Weatherford. She is an English professor at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina. Visit https://cbweatherford.com.

Lin's introduction includes calling Carole "a national treasure… She's an historian, she's a story-teller."

Carole jumped right in to share that:

"The premise may be the most important 25 words you write."

Whether you call it an elevator pitch, log line, or T.V. guide pitch, the aim is the same - to distill your storyline to one easily understood sentence that conveys what the protagonist has to overcome. The premise is a promise your manuscript will deliver on.

Brief. Provokative. Contains character, conflict, and a hook that you and your readers can be passionate about, and reveals something about the larger world.

She shared premises of different children's books (picture books through YA, fiction and nonfiction) to see if we, the audience, can guess the book - showing us what good premises accomplish.

Carole then told us about the organic way she came up with the premises for some of her books, how those premises shifted and developed and coalesced. Books she spoke about included:

Freedom on the Menu

A Negro League Scrapbook

And

Moses

We heard poems, and stories, and as Carole's whole talk proved,

"There is power in knowing your premise."