Carole Boston Weatherford Receives National Book Award

by Kathy Grear 09/03/2016

Carole Boston Weatherford, a professor of English at Fayetteville State University (FSU), is a recipient of The 2016 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award. The winners were announced by The Boston Globe and The Horn Book in a video presentation that was launched onhbook.com.

Weatherford won for her book Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement. The book, a poetic biography, has won several national awards, including the Flora Steiglitz Straus Award from Bank Street College of Education and the Caldecott Honor, Sibert Honor, and Coretta Scott King New Talent Award from the American Library Association.

In their 50^th year, the Boston Globe–Horn Book awards are among the most prestigious honors in the field of children’s and young adult literature. A winner and two honor books were selected in each of three categories: nonfiction, fiction, and picture book.

Horn Book editor in chief Roger Sutton remarked, “I am so pleased that the judges recognized such a range of both big and small diversity, with choices reflecting intimate moments of contemporary child life as well as larger themes drawn from U.S. and world history.”

“The Boston Globe congratulates the winners of this year’s Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards as we celebrate the fiftieth year of this special program honoring authors of children’s and young adult literature. Since 1967, The Boston Globe has been proud to partner with The Horn Book on this annual literary awards program which is one of the many ways the Globe promotes excellence in the arts and letters nationally,” said Linda Pizzuti Henry, Boston Globe managing director.

Weatherford has received accolades for her books and teaching. She previously has been named one of the Top 25 Professors at Affordable Historically Black Colleges by Affordable Colleges Online. To be selected, the schools at which the professors teach had to be classified as “Historically Black,” be fully accredited, and also have annual tuition under $12,000. The professors were selected based on recent achievements in their fields, the classroom, and the community. A New York Times Best Selling Author, she was also the recipient of the North Carolina Literature Award. Weatherford’s book, Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America,recently won the NAACP Image Award for children’s literature.