This event has been cancelled, due to weather. Please stay safe, and we hope to reschedule when possible.
Join us for this rare opportunity to meet children’s authors Nikki Grimes and Gloria Jean Pinkney together in conversation.
What better way to spend an early Friday evening than in the presence of two award-winning authors of some of our most beloved children’s books: Nikki Grimes and Gloria Jean Pinkney. Tonight’s conversation will focus on Nikki’s latest book - A Walk in the Woods - created in collaboration with the late Jerry Pinkney and his illustrator son Brian. We hope you’ll join us for this very special author event.
This event is free, but we ask for RSVPs to help with planning. Books will be available for purchase and signing.
Special offer: The first 20 people to arrive for this event will receive an exclusive book poster, thanks to Holiday House Books.
About A Walk in the Woods
In this moving account of loss, a boy takes a walk in the woods and makes a discovery that changes his understanding of his father.
A week after the funeral
I stare in the morning mirror
Angry that my father’s eyes
Stare back at me.
Confused and distraught after the death of his father, a boy opens an envelope he left behind and is surprised to find a map of the woods beyond their house, with one spot marked in bright red. But why? The woods had been something they shared together, why would his father want him to go alone?
Slowly, his mind settles as he sets off through the spaces he once explored with his dad, passing familiar beech and black oak trees, flitting Carolina wrens, and a garter snake they named Sal. When he reaches the spot marked on the map, he finds pages upon pages of drawings of woodland creatures, made by his father when he was his age. What he sees shows him a side of his dad he never knew, and something even deeper for them to share together. His dad knew what he really needed was a walk in the woods.
New York Times bestselling author Nikki Grimes and the Caldecott Award winning illustrator Jerry Pinkney spent the early days of the pandemic emailing back and forth and talking about collaborating on a book, with Jerry sharing all of the pictures he took of the woods around his house. From this, they conjured a story of a boy’s struggle with grief, and all the things he sees and feels on a walk through the forest.
Jerry sadly passed away in the fall of 2021, but not before he delivered tight pencil sketches of the forests he loved. When his son Brian took on the task of completing the illustrations, he found himself connecting with his father in a whole new way, his experience mirroring that of the boy in the book. The result is a simultaneously touching and deeply authentic story about the ways shared pastimes keep us close to those we’ve lost.
About Nikki Grimes
Nikki Grimes is the recipient of the Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award, the ALAN Award for outstanding contributions to young adult literature, the Children’s Literature Legacy Award, the Virginia Hamilton Literary Award, and the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. Her memoir, Ordinary Hazards, received both a Sibert and a Printz Honor. Other distinguished works include the Coretta Scott King Book Award winner Bronx Masquerade, and Coretta Scott King Book Award Honor books Jazmin’s Notebook, Talkin’ About Bessie, Dark Sons, Words with Wings, and The Road to Paris. She is also the creator of the popular Meet Danitra Brown. Ms. Grimes lives in Corona, California.
About Gloria Jean Pinkney
One could not live and grow up around Jerry Pinkney without being inspired to perform creative acts and works. Costuming models, posing, taking photographs, silver designing, millinery designing, recorded singing, ministering, and authoring conscientious literature for children and adults. For years Gloria Jean’s zeal in using her God given talents to create good things for the world has touched local nursing home residents with weekly visits. To date she has been published five times. Her most cherished work In the Forest of Your Remembrance, thirty-three true tellings of the Holy Spirit was published by Dial Books, a division of Penguin Putnam. When Penguin merged with Random House, the decision was madeto keep In the Forest of Your Remembrance in print, available on demand. What a blessed legacy.
About Jerry Pinkney
Jerry Pinkney was the author and illustrator of many books for young readers, including the Orbis Pictus Award winner A Place to Land and The Lion & the Mouse, for which he earned a Caldecott Medal. He received five Caldecott Honors, five Coretta Scott King Book Awards, four Coretta Scott King Honors, and five New York Times Best Illustrated Book citations. He died in 2021.
About Brian Pinkney
Brian Pinkney has illustrated many books for children, including Duke Ellington by his wife, Andrea Pinkney, and The Faithful Friend by Robert D. San Souci, both of which received Caldecott Honors. He also received the Coretta Scott King Book Award for In the Time of the Drums by Kim L. Siegelson. Brian continued illustration of A Walk in the Woods after Jerry Pinkney passed away, supplementing his father’s sketches with watercolor painting. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.