Tonya Bolden Popular Books

Tonya Bolden Biography & Facts

Tonya K. Bolden (born March 1, 1959) is an American writer best known for her works of children's literature, especially children's nonfiction. Bolden has authored, co-authored, collaborated on, or edited more than forty books. Hillary Rodham Clinton praised her 1998 book 33 Things Every Girl Should Know in a speech at Seneca Falls, N.Y. on the 150th anniversary of the first Women's Rights Convention. Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl (2005), her children's biography of Maritcha Rémond Lyons, was the James Madison Book Award Winner and one of four honor books for the American Library Association’s Coretta Scott King Author Award. M.L.K.: Journey of a King (2007) won the Orbis Pictus award from the National Council of Teachers of English, the organization’s highest award for children’s nonfiction, and the next year, her George Washington Carver (2008) was one of five honor books for the same award. In 2016, the Children’s Book Guild of Washington, D.C. selected Bolden for its Nonfiction Award in recognition of her entire body of work, which, according to the award, has “contributed significantly to the quality of nonfiction for children.”. Life and career Early years Tonya Bolden was born on March 1, 1959, in New York City to Willie J. and Georgia C. Bolden, who had moved to New York from North Carolina and South Carolina, respectively. Georgia received formal education only through sixth grade, Willie through ninth. However, both were firmly dedicated to providing as many educational opportunities as possible to Tonya and her sister Nelta. Although her parents were careful with money, they were generous when it came to buying books, and Bolden specifically recalls that “whenever I came home with the list of books I wanted to buy at the Arrow Club book fair, they never, ever denied me.” Although Bolden has claimed that her love of writing while in her parents’ home influenced her eventual choice of career, her parents’ habit of encouraging reading had as much to do with her personal joy as it did her eventual professional prospects. Her parents, she recalls, “encouraged me to seek to earn a living doing something I absolutely loved. And when I was a child, I was crazy about reading and writing.”. Indeed, Bolden has said that she has “been in love with books since I learned my ABCs” (Trussell). Ironically, although Bolden is today best known for her historical fiction and nonfiction, as a child she was pointedly uninterested in history, especially in history learned through books. “It was usually presented in such an uninteresting way,” she recalls. “I didn’t see myself or my people in history.” Even when her uncle, whom she describes as “a history freak,” tried to introduce her to black history in Harlem, she often found herself thinking, “I don’t care.” A rare exception was that she enjoyed the Little House on the Prairie television program, though today she suspects that she probably enjoyed it “for the props” or its “old-timey” aspects. Education Bolden's early education was also marked by her parents’ firm investment in her growth. Although her mother had no personal experience with quality education in New York, she did extensive research to learn where her daughter could get the best education (Maher 40). Bolden attended M.E.S. 146, a public school in East Harlem, and later the Chapin School, a private school on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Bolden has credited excellent teaching at both of these schools with influencing her growth as a writer and desire to publish. After graduating from Chapin, Bolden attended Princeton University, where, in 1981, she completed an undergraduate degree in Slavic Languages and Literature, with an emphasis on Russian., Following her graduation from Princeton, Bolden worked for two years before returning to school. She then continued her studies at Columbia. Bolden has suggested that, along with the multicultural setting of her childhood, her study of Russian in higher education deeply influenced her writing. She completed her M.A. in 1985, again in Slavic Languages and Literatures with a concentration in Russian. Early career Following her graduation, Bolden taught at both Malcolm-King College and the College of New Rochelle. Her responsibilities included English courses, and she has mentioned that “the course I taught the most was TEE (Translating Experience into Essay). Many of my students were my age or older. They were living proof that it’s never too late to learn.” Although she intended to earn a doctorate and become a professor of Russian literature, it was while in graduate school that Bolden's work began appearing in print, at first mainly through freelance projects, notably in Black Enterprise magazine. In 1987, Bolden began writing full-time, putting her in a position in which, as she later recalls, “I could not be picky. I do not think I ever turned down any writing jobs no matter how small or seemingly insignificant.” Bolden's first major book project, a young adult novel adaptation of Vy Higginsen’s musical Mama, I Want to Sing, was published in 1992 by Scholastic. Bolden has argued that this opportunity came about in part because of the work she had put in on smaller pieces and in part good fortune. She says, “Marie Brown, my agent at the time, pitched me to Vy Higginsen and to Scholastic,” and the experience went so well that “the editor talked about my doing another book for her.” Thus, she remembers, “writing for the young found me and I found myself loving it more and more.” Themes Central to the overwhelming majority of Bolden's writing is an awareness of identity and the role that books can play in the formation and revision of identity. In a 2014 essay entitled “All the Children Need All the Books,” Bolden borrows a set of terms from Rudine Sims Bishop to argue that We, who truly care about the future of this nation, we who truly want our youngsters to be their best selves, we absolutely must become more involved in the campaign for all children to have mirrors—books in which they see themselves—and for all children to have windows—books through which they learn about people who do not look like them, speak as they do, or worship as they do—people who do not share their cultural norms.Children's books in general are important to this process, she argues, but she has stated elsewhere that nonfiction, especially historical nonfiction, is especially key to such a project. “What I came to understand as an adult,” she explains, “is that there is power in the past. Knowing history can be a powerful antidote to shame/self-hatred/identity-confusion.” A subset of the theme of the importance of identity in her work is a specifically black experience of history. She explains:I write because I am the beneficiary of the prayers, hopes, and labors of generations, of people I never knew who braved water cannons, police dogs, burning crosses on lawns, so that I might have wider o.... Discover the Tonya Bolden popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Tonya Bolden books.