Presenter of
the National Book Awards
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Presenter of
the National Book Awards
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Armed with his grandfather’s brown porkpie hat and his harmonica, he runs away from home in search of the Bluesmen, hoping he can join them on the road. But on the journey that takes him through the New York City subways and to Washington Square Park, Clayton learns some things that surprise him. More about this book >
Rita Williams-Garcia, a Queens, New York native, is the celebrated author of novels for young adult and middle-grade readers. Her middle-grade novel, Clayton Byrd Goes Underground won the 2018 NAACP Image Award for Literature for Young People and was a 2017 National Book Award Finalist. Williams-Garcia is most known for her Coretta Scott King Author Award-winning Gaither Sisters trilogy that begins with One Crazy Summer, recipient of the Newbery Honor and the Scott O’Dell Prize for Historical Fiction. She is a three-time Coretta Scott King Author Award recipient and a three-time National Book Award Finalist. Her YA+ historical novel, A Sitting in St. James, set in 1860 Louisiana, won the 2022 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature as well as the 2021 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Poetry and Fiction. Rita Williams-Garcia served as a faculty member at the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Writing for Children and Young Adults program from 2005-2015.
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