Virginia Hamilton

Long before she wrote The House of Dies Drear, M. C. Higgins, the Great, and many other childrens classics, Virginia Hamilton grew up among her extended family near Yellow Springs, Ohio, where her grandfather had been brought as a baby through the Underground Railroad. The family stories she heard as a child fueled her imagination, and the freedom to roam the farms and woods nearby trained her to be a great observer. In all, Hamilton wrote forty-one books, each driven by a focus on the known, the remembered, and the imaginedparticularly within the lives of African Americans. Over her thirty-five-year career, Hamilton received every major award for childrens literature. This new biography gives us the whole story of Virginias creative genius, her passion for nurturing young readers, and her clever way of crafting stories theyd love.