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An afternoon with Clint Smith, Sonja Cherry-Paul, and Jason Reynolds.
Join the Library and Loyalty Bookstores for a pre-publication event celebrating the release of How the Word is Passed for Young Readers with author Clint Smith and adapting author Dr. Cherry-Paul in a conversation with the one and only Jason Reynolds led by Hannah Oliver Depp, Loyalty founder and co-owner. We’ll discuss the attempts to erase this essential history, how we pass our stories onward, and the responsibility and joy of writing for young people.
Loyalty will be selling copies of Clint Smith’s previous works as well as the brand new Young Reader’s Edition in advance of its publication on Tuesday 9/30! Huzzah! Dr. Cherry-Paul and Jason Reynold’s books will be available as well. A limited number of copies will be available for free courtesy of the DC Public Library Foundation.
This event is free and open to the public! But please RSVP in order to secure a seat and help us support the library!
Adapted from Clint Smith's #1 New York Times bestselling and universally acclaimed How the Word Is Passed, this must-read narrative takes readers to historical sites across America, exploring the legacy of slavery to help readers make sense of our nation's past and present, and be better stewards of their own future.
Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads young readers through an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—offering an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation’s collective history, and ourselves.
How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country’s most essential stories are hidden in plain view—whether in places we might drive by on our way to school, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods (like downtown Manhattan) on which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved people has been deeply imprinted.
Informed by scholarship and brought alive by the story of people living today, this adaptation of Clint Smith’s #1 bestselling, award-winning work of nonfiction offers kids a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country, and shows how they can reckon with the past and present to become better stewards of their future.
Clint Smith is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and was named one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2021. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling poetry collection Above Ground and the award-winning poetry collection Counting Descent. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul is the founder of Red Clay Educators, co-director ofthe Institute for Racial Equity in Literacy, co-director of the Teach BlackHistory All Year Institute, and executive producer and host of The BlackCreators Series. She is an educator with more than 20-years of classroomexperience who has written several books that support reading andwriting instruction including Antiracist Reading Revolution: A Frameworkfor Teaching Beyond Representation Toward Liberation. Sonja hasadapted the #1NYT Best Seller, Stamped (For Kids): Racism, Antiracismand You. Sonja leads professional development for schools andorganizations in equity and antiracism. For a full bio and additionalinformation visit sonjacherrypaul.com.
Jason Reynolds is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books for children and young adults. A 2024 MacArthur Fellow, Jason is best known for his novels All American Boys (co-written with Brendan Kiely), the Track series, and Long Way Down, which received Newbery, Printz, and Coretta Scott King Honors. Among his many accolades, Jason was named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress for 2020-2022. He is on faculty at Lesley University, for the Writing for Young People MFA Program and lives in Washington, DC. You can find his ramblings at JasonWritesBooks.com.
Hannah Oliver Depp is the co-owner of Loyalty Bookstores in the Peworth neighborhood of DC. Loyalty serves all readers as a diverse, intersectional feminist bookstore. They hold a Masters in English from American University and have had the privilege to serve as a judge for the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Awards. Oliver Depp is a founding member of the American Bookselling Association Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and serves on the boards of Bookshop.org and as the president of the New Atlantic Independent Bookseller's Association (NAIBA).
AGE GROUP: | Adults | 5 - 12 Years Old |
EVENT TYPE: | Author Talk |
