Coretta Scott

Ntozake Shange is a celebrated poet and author of many novels and plays, including the Obie Award-winning play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, which was made into a feature film. Ms. Shange is also the author of several children’s books, including the Coretta Scott King Award-winning book Ellington Was Not a Street, illustrated by Kadir Nelson.

Kadir Nelson won the 2012 Coretta Scott King Author Award and Illustrator Honor for Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans. He received Caldecott Honors for Henry's Freedom Box by Ellen Levine and Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom by Carole Boston Weatherford, for which he also garnered a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award and won an NAACP Image Award. Ellington Was Not a Street by Ntozake Shange won a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award. Nelson's authorial debut, We Are the Ship, was a New York Times bestseller, a Coretta Scott King Author Award winner, and a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor book. He is also the author and illustrator of the acclaimed Baby Bear.

“Poetic language paired with powerful images make this biography/history of the Civil Rights Movement a moving, provacative read–aloud. Every library will want copies of this lyrical tribute to an elegant woman and the era she represents.” — School Library Journal (starred review)

“Nelson’s jacket portrait, monumental and tender at the same time, sets the tone for this intimate picture biography. Shange’s rhythmic lines and formal syntax roll like waves carrying readers on a soul–stirring ride through Coretta’s coming of age in the Civil Rights Movement.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Poet and painter have joined forces to offer an indelible, emotional expression of the strength, beauty, and joy of one woman’s character.” — Booklist (starred review)