Kin: Rooted in Hope

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A Coretta Scott King Honor Book

An imaginative and moving (The Horn Book, starred review) portrait of a Black family tree shaped by enslavement and freedom, rendered in searing poems by acclaimed author Carole Boston Weatherford and stunning art by her son Jeffery Boston Weatherford.

I call their names:
Abram Alice Amey Arianna Antiqua
I call their names:
Isaac Jake James Jenny Jim
Every last one, property of the Lloyds,
the states preeminent enslavers.
Every last one, with a mind of their own
and a story that aint yet been told.
Till now.

Carole and Jeffery Boston Weatherfords ancestors are among the founders of Maryland. Their family history there extends more than three hundred years, but as with the genealogical searches of many African Americans with roots in slavery, their family tree can only be traced back five generations before going dark. And so from scraps of history, Carole and Jeffery have conjured the voices of their kin, creating an often painful but ultimately empowering story of who their people were in a breathtaking book that is at once deeply personal yet all too universal.

Caroles poems capture voices ranging from her ancestors to Frederick Douglass to Harriet Tubman to the plantation house and land itself that connects them all, and Jefferys evocative illustrations help carry the story from the first mention of a forebear listed as property in a 1781 ledger to he and his mothers homegoing trip to Africa in 2016. Shaped by loss, erasure, and ultimate reclamation, this is the story of not only Carole and Jefferys family, but of countless other Black families in America.

Author Bio

CaroleBoston Weatherford has written many award-winning books for children, includingKin, illustrated by her son Jeffery and a Coretta Scott King Author Honor recipient;Box, which won a Newbery Honor;Unspeakable, which won the Coretta Scott King Award, a Caldecott Honor, and was a finalist for the National Book Award;Respect: Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, winner of the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award;ALA Notable Childrens BookYou Can Fly; and Caldecott Honor winnersFreedom in Congo Square;Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement; andMoses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom. Carole lives in North Carolina. Visit her at CBWeatherford.com.

Jeffery Boston Weatherfordis an award-winning childrens book illustrator and a performance poet. He has lectured, performed, and led art and writing workshops in the US,the Middle East, andWest Africa. Jeffery was a Romare Bearden Scholar at Howard University, where he earned an MFA in painting and studied under members of the Black Arts Movement collective AfriCobra. A North Carolina native and resident, Jeffery has exhibited his art in North Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, and Washington, DC. Visit him at CBWeatherford.com.