Carole Boston Weatherford’s Juneteenth Celebration

“It was a fine day for daydreaming,” begins Carole Boston Weatherford’s joyful picture book, Juneteenth Jamboree, about a young girl who has just moved to her parents' hometown in Texas. After enjoying all the surprises of Juneteenth—an emancipation celebration that is said to have begun on June 19, 1865, when Union Army soldiers arrived in Texas and informed slaves that they were free—Cassie comes to realize that they have indeed come home.

Join Weatherford at The Ivy for a family-friendly celebration inspired by Juneteenth Jamboree and Standing in the Need of Prayer, a deeply moving picture book based on the popular spiritual. She will read some of her favorite books, lead the Roland Park Elementary Middle School chorus and the audience in singing “Standing in the Need of Prayer,” and show everyone how to make a corn husk doll. Red velvet cupcakes, a traditional Juneteenth treat, will be available from Jackson’s Bakery, a local food truck vendor.

The Ivy is honored to be part of this very personal celebration of Weatherford and her amazing contributions to children’s literature. A New York Times best-selling author, she recently released Beauty Mark: A Verse Novel of Marilyn Monroe and R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul. Her 50-plus books include the Caldecott Honor winners Freedom in Congo Square, Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement, and Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom. She won a Coretta Scott King Author Honor for Becoming Billie Holiday, NAACP Image Awards for Moses and for Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America, the Arnold Adoff Poetry Award for The Legendary Miss Lena Horne, and an SCBWI Golden Kite and WNDB Walter Award for Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library. Among her most popular titles are Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-ins and The Roots of Rap: 16 Bars on the 4 Pillars of Hip Hop. Baltimore-born, Weatherford teaches at Fayetteville State University In North Carolina.

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