The Reading Culture

Give a story to twenty kids, and you might get twenty different takeaways. Some will catch the details you didn’t even notice. Others will pull out meaning that wasn’t intentionally placed, but rings true all the same. Sharon M. Draper writes for everyone and fiercely advocates for students’ right to read for themselves.

Sharon knows the capacity of a book to transport and transform kids; she was the kid who maxed out her library card every Saturday at the Cleveland Public Library. She then became the teacher who read aloud to even the most skeptical students, and the writer whose bestselling novel, Out of My Mind, which was adapted into a film for Disney+ and remains requisite reading for many middle schoolers year after year. A two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner, Sharon is the author of Stella by Starlight, Blended, Tears of a Tiger, and many, many more.

We all want to believe in heroes and villains, right and wrong, and clear-cut answers. But history and life are rarely that simple. Debbie Levy has spent her career exploring the gray areas, challenging readers to see multiple perspectives and embrace complexity. 

A former lawyer, journalist, and now award-winning children’s author, Debbie has written books like I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark, The Year of Goodbyes, and A Dangerous Idea: The Scopes Trial, the Original Fight Over Science in Schools. Her work invites readers to think critically, recognize misinformation, and understand that even those we disagree with are still human.