![]() ![]() Milton Turner School-a change McKissack characterized as both “difficult” and “traumatic” for a sixth-grader. ![]() In 1954, McKissack was one of the first black students to integrate all-white Robinson Elementary School in Kirkwood, Missouri, after leaving “overcrowded, underfunded” J. Louis area when Patricia was three years old. Robert Carwell, her father, worked as an administrator for the city jail, convention center, and airport, while her mother, Erma Petway Carwell, was a hospital admissions aide. She was born Patricia L’Ann Carwell on August 8, 1944, in Smyrna, Tennessee, a town near Nashville. ![]() ![]() We want children to learn our stories and our heroes.” “We do not write only for black children,” she once said. Yet her books were intended for readers of every race. Many of McKissack’s works sought to fill voids in children’s literature by creating identifiable characters for black children so they could see themselves in the stories they read. She received some of the highest honors in children’s literature, including a Newbery Honor, a Caldecott Honor, and, with Fredrick, nine Coretta Scott King Author Honors and Awards. The prolific author wrote over one hundred books, coauthoring many with her husband, Fredrick L. McKissack dedicated her career as a writer to showcasing black voices through children’s books and biographies that highlighted prominent African American figures. ![]()
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