Lesa Cline-Ransome
Lesa Cline-Ransome is the acclaimed author of numerous award-winning picture books that celebrate in story, Satchel Paige, an ALA Notable Book and a Bank Street College “Best Children’s Book of the Year, Major Taylor: Champion Cyclist, Young Pele: Soccer’s First Star, Words Set Me Free: The Story of Young Frederick Douglass, Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson, My Story, My Dance, Just a Lucky So and So: The Story of Louis Armstrong, Germs: Fact and Fiction, Friends and Foes, Game Changers: The Story of Venus and Serena Williams and The Power of Her Pen: The Story of Groundbreaking Journalist Ethel Payne and Not Playing by The Rules: 21 Female Athletes Who Changed Sports.
Her verse biography of Harriet Tubman, Before She Was Harriet received five starred reviews, was nominated for an NAACP image award, and received a Coretta Scott King Honor for Illustration. Her debut middle grade novel, Finding Langston, was the 2019 winner of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction and received the Coretta Scott King Award Author Honor. The companion, Leaving Lymon released this year.
Overground Railroad, Light in the Darkness: How Slaves Learned in Secret, Freedom’s School and Whale Trails: Before and Now are her titles that uncover the hidden stories in American history.
Lesa’s books have received numerous honors and awards including NAACP Awards, Kirkus Best Books, School Library Journal Best Book, New York Public Library Best Book, ALA Notable, an NCTE Notable, CBC Choice Awards, two Top 10 Sports Books for Youth, an Orbis Pictus Recommended Book, an ILA Teacher’s Choice, a Jane Addams Award and a Christopher Award. She frequently collaborates with her husband, illustrator James Ransome.
ISBN 978-0-8234-3960-7
It's 1946. Langston's mother has just died, and now they're leaving the rest of his family and friends. He misses everything— Grandma's Sunday suppers, the red dirt roads, and the magnolia trees his mother loved.In the city, they live in a small apartment surrounded by noise and chaos. It doesn't feel like a new start, or a better life. At home he's lonely, his father always busy at work; at school he's bullied for being a country boy.But Langston's new home has one fantastic thing. Unlike the whites-only library in Alabama, the Chicago Public Library welcomes everyone. There, hiding out after school, Langston discovers another Langston—a poet whom he learns inspired his mother enough to name her only son after him.