Book Signing: Carole Boston Weatherford

Description

Award-winning picture book author and poet Carole Boston Weatherford will be at the Jesup Memorial Library on Wednesday, Oct. 10 for a book signing beginning at 6:30 p.m. as part of a new program to inspire kids to create stories of their own.
 
The Jesup received a grant from the Maine State Library Fund to bring Weatherford to the Jesup to launch a new program, called “The Write Stuff: A Program to Nurture Tomorrow’s Story Makers.” Weatherford will work with students including those from Conners-Emerson School and MDI High School as well as homeschooled students during her time on MDI. Afterward, the Jesup will work with the schools to host regular workshops to help kids learn storytelling, both spoken and written. “The idea is to inspire kids by meeting a real author who’s telling great stories, then work with them to tell their own stories,” said Melinda Rice-Schoon, the Jesup’s program director.
 
Weatherford’s book signing is a chance for the public to meet and interact with her. She has written more than 40 books, including “Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom,” winner of an NAACP Image Award, a Coretta Scott King Award, and a Caldecott Honor; “Becoming Billie Holiday;” “Before John Was a Jazz Giant: A Song of John Coltrane; Birmingham, 1963” which won a Jefferson Cup and Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award; and “The Sound That Jazz Makes,” winner of a Carter G. Woodson Award from the National Council for Social Studies. She often writes about African American history, families and traditions and jazz. She is the winner of a Ragan-Rubin Award for Literary Achievement from the North Carolina English Teachers Association and the North Carolina Award for Literature.
 
Born in Baltimore, Weatherford earned a bachelor’s degree from American University, a master’s degree from the University of Baltimore, and an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She lives in North Carolina and teaches at Fayetteville State University.
 
For more information about Ms. Weatherford’s visit or the storytelling workshops, contact the Jesup at 207-288-4245 or mrice@jesuplibrary.org.