"The past moves me and with me, although I remove myself from it. It's light often shines on this night traveler: and when it does, I scribble it down. Whatever pleasure is in it I need pass on. That's happiness. That is who I am." Virginia Hamilton Click for a list of Titles by Virginia Hamilton The Bio Below was obtained from the Virginia Hamilton Homepage http://www.virginiahamilton.com/ Growing up on a small farm near Yellow Springs, Ohio, in the 1940s, Virginia Hamilton was lovingly embraced by the sights, sounds and smells of rural America, and by a big extended family of cousins, uncles, aunts. All these things would come into play in the children's stories Hamilton would spin as an adult. But probably the biggest influence on Virginia Hamilton -- whom Entertainment Weekly has called "a majestic presence in children's literature" -- was the fact that her own parents were storytellers. And what stories they told! Hamilton's maternal grandfather, Levi Perry, had escaped as a child, from slavery in Virginia, by crossing the Ohio River to freedom. He had also had plenty of company in this resolve: Fully 50,000 slaves passed through Ohio or settled there during antebellum times, aided on the Underground Railroad by Shawnee Indians and white abolitionists.  The aging homes where the escaped slaves hid became catacombed with secret passages and hiding spaces. And all these years later, the description of what happened in those hiding places and "stations" on the Underground Railroad still makes modern children's eyes grow wide. Young Virginia, named for her grandfather's home state, was one of these children listening at her mother's and father's knee. "My mother said that her father sat his ten children down every year and said, 'I'm going to tell you how I escaped from slavery, so slavery will never happen to you,"' the author related in a telephone interview. She added that she traces her own interest in literature to the fact that her parents were "storytellers and unusually fine storytellers, and realized, although I don't know how consciously, that they were passing along heritage and culture and a pride in their history." Hamilton has picked up on those strains, writing or editing stories for more than 30 children's books, including contemporary novels about teen-agers, biographies of the historical figures Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois, and collections of African-American folklore and slavery-era "liberation" stories. For her work, she has been repeatedly honored with the National Book Award, the John Newbery Medal, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award, and, most prestigious of all, the Hans Christian Andersen Medal. Still, probably her most satisfying award has been knowing the contribution she's made for children who didn't have family storytellers to tell them of their rich ethnic culture. "Up until this year, I think," Hamilton said in the interview, "5,000 new children's titles were published every year. And out of that, maybe 40 of them were African-American books." Thanks to Hamilton, who has lent her name for the past decade to an annual conference on multicultural children's literature -- and thanks to writers who have followed her lead – the dearth of literature about the ethnic experience is beginning to change. Virginia Hamilton died in 2002 at age 66. In January 2010 the first Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement award was given to Walter Dean Myers

Virginia Hamilton: Speeches, Essays, and Conversations
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Arnold Adoff (Editor), Kacy Cook (Editor)

Reading level: Ages 9-12
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: The Blue Sky Press (February 1, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0439271932
ISBN-13: 978-0439271936

Read and AALBC.com Book Review

Virginia Hamilton (1936-2002) changed children's literature for generations of readers, bringing a Faulknerian style of sophisticated and cutting-edge writing to the world of books for young readers. Hamilton was awarded the Newbery Medal, three Newbery Honors, the National Book Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Hans Christian Andersen Medal, and many more. Readers will be enlightened by Hamilton's engaging, powerful, and witty perspective on African American literature as well as her own experiences as a writer and an American.

 

The People Could Fly
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Reading level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover: 32 pages
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers; Har/Com Re edition (September 11, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0375845534
ISBN-13: 978-0375845536
Product Dimensions: 12.1 x 9.2 x 0.5 inches

Read an AALBC.com Review by Kam Williams

Leo and Diane Dillon's award-winning picture book interpretation of Newbery Medalist Virginia Hamilton's beloved tale now includes an unforgettable word-for-word CD narration by James Earl Jones and Virginia Hamilton. This tale of slaves who could fly to freedom offered hope in the darkly brutal times of slavery. "That is what Virginia Hamilton set out to show, what the Dillons have so astutely expounded on and what ultimately makes this version of 'People' so powerful. Think of it as a triad of words, pictures, and storytelling." - New York Times Book Review

An elegant gift for reading, looking, and listening.

 

Her Stories! African American Folktales, Fairy Tales and True Stories
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Reading level: Ages 9-12
Hardcover: 128 pages
Publisher: Blue Sky Press; 1st Ed. edition (November 1, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0590473700
ISBN-13: 978-0590473705
Product Dimensions: 11.4 x 8.6 x 0.6 inches

(Coretta Scott King Author Award Winner)

Virginia Hamilton, who previously won a Newbery Medal and a MacArthur Foundation grant, gives us 17 pugnacious and heroic female characters in a collection of tales that demonstrates the breadth of African-American cultural tradition. The characters in Her Stories, which won the 1996 Coretta Scott King Award, are strong, competent, and sometimes bigger than life, like the "coal black and tree tall" Annie Christmas. Drawn from a variety of sources, the tales in Her Stories have been crafted to blend together smoothly while remaining true to their original tone. Text and art are laid against a buff background in a stylish, oversize format, with a heavy binding built to stand up to the repeated use that's sure to come.

Second Cousins
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Reading level: Ages 9-12
Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Scholastic Paperbacks (February 1, 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0590473697
ISBN-13: 978-0590473699
Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches  

It's a year after the tragic death of Cammy's first cousin, Patty Ann.  Many good things have happened since.  Cammy's third cousin, Elodie, has moved in at Cammy's house.  And now the two of them are best friends.    But something exciting is going to happen when a huge family reunion takes place in August.  There will be aunts, uncles and cousins from all over.  Two cousins from New York know family secrets that will change Cammy's life forever.

 

Bruh Rabbit And The Tar Baby Girl
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Reading level: Baby-Preschool
Hardcover: 40 pages
Publisher: Blue Sky Press (October 1, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 059047376X
ISBN-13: 978-0590473767
Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 9.3 x 0.4 inches

Bruh Rabbit may indeed have met his match when he comes across a tar baby in the middle of the road. The baby's deaf, dumb and blind attitude infuriates the plucky trickster, just as Wolf planned! When Bruh Rabbit gets entangled in the tar baby's sticky embrace, has he finally been foiled by his long-time enemy? Certainly not, if Wolf falls for Bruh Rabbit's clever reverse-psychology and flings the wily rabbit into the briar patch! Spun in Virginia Hamilton's unique vernacular, this will be a delight to those familiar with Bruh Rabbit's games, and a unforgettable introduction for newcomers!

 

M.C. Higgins, the Great
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Reading level: Ages 9-12
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Aladdin (April 25, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1416914072
ISBN-13: 978-1416914075
Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches

(Newbery Medal Winner)

Mayo Cornelius Higgins sits on his gleaming, forty-foot steel pole, towering over his home on Sarah's Mountain. Stretched before him are rolling hills and shady valleys. But behind him lie the wounds of strip mining, including a mountain of rubble that may one day fall and bury his home.

M.C. dreams of escape for himself and his family. And, one day, atop his pole, he thinks he sees it -- two strangers are making their way toward Sarah's Mountain. One has the ability to make M.C.'s mother famous. And the other has the kind of freedom that M.C. has never even considered.

 

The Planet of Junior Brown
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Reading level: Ages 9-12
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Aladdin (April 25, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1416914102
ISBN-13: 978-1416914105
Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.6 inches

(Newbery Honor Winner)

Junior Brown, an overprotected three-hundred pound musical prodigy who's prone to having fantasies, and Buddy Clark, a loner who lives by his wits because he has no family whatsoever, have been on the hook from their eighth-grade classroom all semester.

Most of the time they have been in the school building -- in a secret cellar room behind a false wall, where Mr. Pool, the janitor, has made a model of the solar system. They have been pressing their luck for months...and then they are caught. As society -- in the form of a zealous assistant principal -- closes in on them, Junior's fantasies become more desperate, and Buddy draws on all his resources to ensure his friend's well-being.

Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush
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Reading level: Young Adult
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Amistad (October 1, 1983)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0380651939
ISBN-13: 978-0380651931
Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches

(Newbery Honor Winner)

Why had he come to her, with his dark secrets from a long-ago past? What was the purpose of their strange, haunting journeys back into her own childhood?Was it to help Dab, her retarded older brother, wracked with mysterious pain who sometimes took more care and love than Tree had to give? Was it for her mother, Vy, who loved them the best she knew how, but wasn't home enough to ease the terrible longing?

Whatever secrets his whispered message held, Tree knew she must follow. She must follow Brother Rush through the magic mirror, and find out the truth. About all of them.

 

In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World
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(Newbery Honor Winner)

Reading level: Ages 9-12
Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Sandpiper (September 15, 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0152387420
ISBN-13: 978-0152387426
Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 8 x 0.6 inches

A thought-provoking collection of twenty-five stories that reflect the wonder and glory of the origins of the world and humankind. With commentary by the author. ?A must for mythology shelves

 

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