Vaunda micheaux nelson biography
- Vaunda Micheaux Nelson.
- Vaunda Micheaux Nelson is an American writer known for her fiction and nonfiction books for children and young adults.
- An author, librarian, and educator, she has published more than a dozen books for young readers.
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Vaunda Micheaux Nelson
American writer
Vaunda Micheaux Nelson is an American writer known for her fiction and nonfiction books for children and young adults. She was the winner of the 2010 Coretta Scott King Award and Gelett Burgess Children's Book Honor for her non-fiction book Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal about the life of Bass Reeves.[1][2] Nelson is also the author of The Book Itch: Freedom,Truth & Harlem's Greatest Bookstore. Her book Who Will I Be, Lord? received a Charlotte Zolotow Award Commendation in 2010.[3]
She is a youth services librarian at the public library in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, where she lives with her husband. She is the grand-niece of brothers Solomon Lightfoot Michaux, better known as Elder Michaux, minister and advisor to presidents, and Lewis H. Michaux, the pioneer Harlem bookseller.
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Vaunda Micheaux Nelson has written award-winning picture books and the Coretta Scott King Award honoree No Crystal Stair—a young adult documentary novel with illustrations by R. Gregory Christie. Below Vaunda answers questions about her latest bookThe Book Itch: Freedom, Truth & Harlem’s Greatest Bookstore(also illustrated by R. Gregory Christie), a picture book about her great-uncle Lewis Michaux’s National Memorial Bookstore in Harlem.
1. In this Horn Book interview, you mentioned that you spent fifteen years researching and writing The Book Itch’s YA companion, No Crystal Stair. How did you distill that research into a picture book?
When I reached the end of the first draft of No Crystal Stair (when Lewis Jr. shares some of his memories of his father and of growing up in the bookstore), it occurred to me that a picture book from Lewis Jr.’s point of view might be a great way to introduce the bookstore to younger readers. Lewis Jr. had told me stories of riding his bike to the store, helping his father, and meeting Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X.
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Vaunda Micheaux Nelson was born October 10, 1953, to Norris and Olive (Batch) Micheaux of Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, the youngest of their five children. Both parents worked to support the family; her father owned and operated an auto body repair shop, while her mother was a laundromat attendant and domestic worker.
Storytelling, creativity, and family were powerful forces in Nelson’s childhood home. The Micheaux parents had a profound influence on their children’s relationship with reading and writing. Olive Micheaux read to the children every night, even after they learned to read themselves; though the town of Elizabeth had no public library, she took the children to the bookmobile every two weeks. Meanwhile, Norris Micheaux recited poetry and wrote his own verses. He also played the piano, and the family formed a large contingent of the small church choir at Elizabeth’s Allen Chapel AME Church. Nelson’s extended family lived in Elizabeth and nearby Pittsburgh, and Sundays after church often involved family gatherings at her maternal grandparents’ home.
Education also shaped Ne
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