From award-winning author Elissa Brent Weissman comes a collection of quirky, smart, and vulnerable childhood works by some of today's foremost children's authors and illustrators--revealing young talent, the storytellers they would one day become, and the creativity they inspire today.

Everyone's story begins somewhere...

For Linda Sue Park, it was a trip to the ocean, a brand-new typewriter, and a little creative license.

For Jarrett J. Krosoczka, it was a third grade writing assignment that ignited a creative fire in a kid who liked to draw.

For Kwame Alexander, it was a loving poem composed for Mother's Day--and perfected through draft after discarded draft.

For others, it was a teacher, a parent, a beloved book, a word of encouragement. It was trying, and failing, and trying again. It was a love of words, and pictures, and stories.

Your story is beginning, too. Where will it go?

Ashley Bryan says, "My mother had a proverb for any situation, attitude, or event." Many of us have had the same experience. But have you ever heard, "As a crab walks, so walk its children" or "A log may lie in the water for ten years, but it will never become a crocodile"? These are two of the twenty-six African proverbs Ashley Bryan has chosen to illustrate in this book.

Having grown up with proverbs, it was no surprise to Mr. Bryan when he began reading African literature to find African proverbs along with African stories. The proverbs grew out of the lives and experiences of the varied African peoples.

Each proverb here is credited to a specific tribe, yet, as Ashley Bryan explains, most were known in other tribes as well. And in fact, all are true for people everywhere. We may not see crabs often, but we understand about crab children, and even people who do not have crocodiles nearby know that they do not begin as logs. This is a book to treasure for its rich universal wisdom and its gloriously evocative illustrations.

Long ago, Blackbird was voted the most beautiful bird in the forest. The other birds, who were colored red, yellow, blue, and green, were so envious that they begged Blackbird to paint their feathers with a touch of black so they could be beautiful too. Although Black-bird warns them that true beauty comes from within, the other birds persist and soon each is given a ring of black around their neck or a dot of black on their wings -- markings that detail birds to this very day.

Coretta Scott King Award-winner Ashley Bryan's adaptation of a tale from the Ila-speaking people of Zambia reso-nates both with rhythm and the tale's universal meanings -- appreciating one's heritage and discovering the beauty within. His cut-paper artwork is a joy.

Who built the stable where Jesus lay? Multiple Coretta Scott King Award-winner Ashley Bryan has a very good idea in this beautiful and moving new layer to the nativity story.
Riding in an open Jeep across the plains of Africa, beloved and nationally acclaimed author and illustrator Ashley Bryan found himself comparing the terrain to Jerusalem, and the bumpy journey to that of Mary's travel on a donkey. And he came up with a question: Who built the manger where Mary and Joseph found shelter?
The answer is conveyed in this beautifully crafted picture book that envisions a young boy, a shepherd and carpenter both who, out of love and kindness, cleared the way for another shepherd and carpenter to be born on Christmas day.
"The boy looked in the infant's eyes
""And in his heart he knew
""The babe would be a carpenter
""He'd be a shepherd too.
"Told in gentle rhyme and illustrated with Ashley Bryan's enormous talent, this is a picture book that captures the reason for the season in all its wonder and beauty. "Who Built the Stable?" is a celebration of Christmas, of the kindness of children, and of the new hope born with each new baby.

"Walk Together Children" is a collection of spirituals songs brought to life from award winning children's book author and illustrator Ashley Bryan. Lovingly updated and with a foreword from Dr. Henrietta Mays Smith, recipient of the 2011 Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Practitioner Award for lifetime achievement, this edition includes such favorites as "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands;" "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot;" and "When the Saints Go Marching In." Each song is accompanied by linocut illustrations that capture the strength and spirit of the music.

Located in a rapidly-growing county in the southeastern United States, Peachtree Alternative School is a dumping ground for chronically disruptive students that regular teachers can no longer handle. The school has some of the toughest kids that society has to offer: kids who have dealt drugs, attempted rape, brought weapons to school, and made terrorist threats. Neglect, understaffing, and overcrowding create a volatile situation; Teachers survive threats, assaults, brawls, and rampages with their therapeutic philosophies barely intact. The Forgotten Room is a teacher survival story. It examines the darker side of American education through chronicling the course of Peachtree Alternative School's tenth and final year. It offers a glimmer of hope in the safe zones created by hardworking teachers, but it is also a cautionary tale about the consequences of bureaucrats neglecting troubled teens. Hollowell's multidisciplinary book provides a rare look at public alternative schooling in America. This gritty and compelling ethnography is part of a growing movement in academia to make ethnographic studies more accessible. It exposes punitive school policy, demonstrates the prison-industrial complex, and reveals school board corruption. In addition, it pinpoints quality teaching of chronically disruptive youth. As ethnographic nonfiction, The Forgotten Room breaks down the walls between social science and literature.