When Carole Boston Weatherford was a baby, a neighbor gave her a book that was turned upside down, but she turned it right-side up. At only a few months old, that simple action seemed to symbolize the beginning of Weatherford’s mission to use books to right some wrongs in the world of children’s literature, an industry where a very small percentage of the books published yearly are by and about Black people. Our stories matter, and Weatherford tells them. She has made her mark in the publishing industry as a prolific, award-winning author of over 30 books, mostly historical nonfiction—about people and events—told in verse. “The Creator called me to be a poet,” says Weatherford. She likens her gift for putting words together to that of a composer making music.
Weatherford’s 2015 release, Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement has won several awards, one of which is the 2016 Robert Sibert Informational Book Honor Award. The Tuskegee Airmen are the subject of a book expected to be released in May. Jeffery Weatherford, her son, is the illustrator. Elementary and middle grade readers are the primary audience for Weatherford’s historical nonfiction books. In addition to writing, Weatherford teaches courses in children’s writing and literature at Fayetteville State University. For more information about our spotlight author, see Sources and Additional Reading below.
Writing is not just what I do; it’s who I am.
Books by Carole Boston Weatherford
You Can Fly: The Tuskegee Airmen (2016)
Freedom in Congo Square (2015)
Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement (2015)
Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America (2015)
Leontyne Price: Voice of a Century (2014)
Sugar Hill: Harlem's Historic Neighborhood (2014)
Africa (2013)
Oprah: The Little Speaker (2010)
Michelle Obama: First Mom (2010)
Obama: Only in America (2009)
The Beatitudes: From Slavery to Civil Rights (2009)
First Pooch: The Obamas Pick a Pet (2009)
Racing Against the Odds: The Story of Wendell Scott, Stock Car Racing's African-American Champion (2009)
Before John Was a Jazz Giant: A Song of John Coltrane (2008)
Becoming Billie Holiday (2008)
Birmingham: 1963 (2007)
I, Matthew Henson (2007)
Jesse Owens and the 1936 Olympics (2006)
Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom (2006)
Dear Mr. Rosenwald (2006)
The Carolina Parakeet: America's Lost Parrot in Art and Memory (2006)
Champions on the Bench: The 1955 Cannon Street YMCA All-Stars (2006)
A Negro League Scrapbook (2005)
Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-ins (2004)
Great African-American Lawyers: Raising the Bar of Freedom (2003)
Remember the Bridge: Poems of a People (2002)
Princeville: The 500-Year Flood (2001)
Sidewalk Chalk (2001)
Jazz Baby (2000)
The Sound That Jazz Makes (2000)
The African-American Struggle for Legal Equality in American History (2000)
Sink or Swim: African-American Lifesavers of the Outer Banks (1999)
The Tar Baby on the Soapbox (1999)
Mighty Menfolk (1997)
My Favorite Toy (1997)
Me and My Family Tree (1997)
Grandma and Me (1996)
Juneteenth Jamboree (1995)
