Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library

In luminous paintings and arresting poems, two of children's literature's top African-American scholars track Arturo Schomburg's quest to correct history.

Where is our historian to give us our side? Arturo asked.

Amid the scholars, poets, authors, and artists of the Harlem Renaissance stood an Afro-Puerto Rican named Arturo Schomburg. This law clerk's life's passion was to collect books, letters, music, and art from Africa and the African diaspora and bring to light the achievements of people of African descent through the ages. When Schomburg's collection became so big it began to overflow his house (and his wife threatened to mutiny), he turned to the New York Public Library, where he created and curated a collection that was the cornerstone of a new Negro Division. A century later, his groundbreaking collection, known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, has become a beacon to scholars all over the world.

Publisher: Candlewick Press (MA)
Published: 09/12/2017
Pages: 48
Weight: 1.49lbs
Size: 11.80h x 9.90w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780763680466
Age: Ages 9-12

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 6.9
Point Value: 1
Interest Level: Lower Grade
Quiz #/Name: 193117 / Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 06/15/2017 pg. 156
Booklist 07/01/2017 pg. 65
School Library Journal 08/01/2017 pg. 120
Publishers Weekly 08/07/2017
Horn Book Magazine 09/01/2017 pg. 119
Shelf Awareness 09/22/2017
Shelf Awareness 12/19/2017
Hornbook Guide to Children 01/01/2018 - Superior,Well Above Average

About the Author
Carole Boston Weatherford, a New York Times best-selling author and poet, was named the 2019 Washington Post Children's Book Guild Nonfiction Award winner. Her numerous books for children include the Coretta Scott King Author Award winner Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre, illustrated by Floyd Cooper; the Caldecott Honor Books Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom, illustrated by Kadir Nelson, and Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement, illustrated by Ekua Holmes, which was also a Robert F. Sibert Honor Book; and the critically acclaimed Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library, illustrated by Eric Velasquez. Carole Boston Weatherford lives in North Carolina.

Eric Velasquez is the illustrator of numerous books for children, including several previous collaborations with Carole Boston Weatherford. He won the John Steptoe New Talent Illustrator Award for his illustrations of The Piano Man, written by Debbi Chocolate. Eric Velasquez is also the author-illustrator of the Pura Belpré Illustrator Award-winning Grandma's Gift. Born in Harlem, he lives and works in Hartsdale, New York.