In commemoration of Black History Month, we'll be featuring articles, speeches, and interviews from The Horn Book's past year that are by and/or about African American authors, illustrators, and luminaries in the field — one a weekday through the month of February.

Last Monday's ALA Youth Media Awards announcement saw a Newbery medal for Renée Watson's All the Blues in the Sky (and it was a Horn Book Fanfare 2025 title!) as well as a Caldecott honor for Jashar Awan's Every Monday Mabel. CSK Book Award winners this year were Will's Race for Home by Jewell Parker Rhodes (CSK Author) and The Library in the Woods illustrated by R. Gregory Christie, written by Calvin Alexander Ramsey (CSK Illustrator). These titles and more award winners and honorees will be celebrated in our forthcoming July/August 2026 Horn Book Magazine special issue: ALA Awards.

Check back here to follow along each day/week and look for the social media tag #HBBlackHistoryMonth on Facebook (@TheHornBook) and Bluesky (@thehornbook.bsky.social). Be sure to also follow The Brown Bookshelf's "28 Days Later" initiative ("designed to celebrate Black children’s book creators and raise awareness of those who may be under the radar of librarians, educators and families"), and on Bluesky (@thebrownbookshelf.bsky.social).

Week 1

2/2: Monique Duncan's "The Writer's Page: Freedom Braids: The Power of Metaphors in 'Liberation Literature'" from the September/October 2025 Horn Book Magazine

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Week 2

2/9:

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Week 3

2/16:

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Week 4

2/23:

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Click the tag HBBlackHistoryMonth26 for more articles in this series.