by Carole Boston Weatherford, Eric Velásquez (Illustrator)
Amid the scholars, poets, authors, and artists of the Harlem Renaissance stood an Afro-Puerto Rican man named Arturo Schomburg. His life's passion was to collect books, letters, music, and art from Africa and the African diaspora in order to bring to light the achievements of people of African descent. When his collection became so large that it threatened to overflow his house, he turned to the New York Public Library.
At the time, the collection, with Schomburg as curator, was the cornerstone of a new Division of Negro History, Literature and Prints. A century later, it is the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture—and a beacon for scholars all over the world.
In luminous paintings and arresting poems, two of children's literature's foremost African-American scholars track the journey of Arturo Schomburg and his quest to correct and expand the historical record for generations to come.
Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library
Carole Boston Weatherford is a children's book author and poet who "mines the past for family stories, fading traditions, and forgotten struggles." A number of Weatherford's books tell the stories of African-American historical figures such as Harriet Tubman, Jesse Owens, and Billie Holiday. Other books recount historical events such as the Greensboro Sit-ins and the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Weatherford's books have received a wide variety of awards, including a Caldecott Honor for Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom.
ISBN: 9780763680466
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Binding: Hardcover
Pub Date: September 12, 2017Target Age Group: 09 to 12
Pages: 48
-Schomburg, Arthur Alfonso -African American historians
-Historians -United States
-African American book collectors -Puerto Ricans
-Book collectors -African Americans
-Intellectual life -20th century