It is truly an honor to receive a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Award for Nonfiction. Congratulations to the winner of this award and my fellow honorees, and thank you to the panel of judges who looked at so many children’s books and chose our books, acknowledging our contributions to children’s literature and the vital stories we are striving to tell at this time. I wrote this book for all children, but especially my children, my African American children, who long to hear the stories of their enslaved ancestors that are not about what happened to them but rather about who they were, about their extraordinary contributions to America, about their ingenuity, their grace, their dignity. Thank you for acknowledging this book. Thank you for buoying me up to write another book. It is really an incredible honor to receive this award. Thank you.

[Read Horn Book reviews of the 2022 BGHB Nonfiction winners.]

From the January/February 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. For more on the 2022 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, click on the tag BGHB22. Read more from The Horn Book by and about Schele Williams.