The Catcher in the Rye, a book about a teenager who was in real distress writing in his own voice, became a kind of starting point for a new genre in books for young people.
Award-winning author Matt de la Peña talks about a reference to addiction in one of Loren Long’s illustrations of their picture book Love and the ways in which that reference has empowered young people to talk share their own stories.
The achievements, courage and stories of her family, way back to her great-great-grandparents, inspire Woodson to bear witness to the African-American experience in the U.S.
At 27, Cooper abruptly left England to marry an American with three teenage children. Homesickness inspired her to write about the experience of living in the U.S. and an autobiographical book about growing up in England during World War II.
