In 2012, Vaunda Micheaux Nelson won a Coretta Scott King Author Honor award for No Crystal Stair(Carolrhoda, 2012), a young adult “documentary novel” based on the life and work of her great-uncle and Harlem bookseller, Lewis H. Michaux. InThe Book Itch: Freedom, Truth, and Harlem’s Greatest Bookstore (Carolrhoda, 2015), Nelson introduces a younger audience to the owner of the historic National Memorial African Bookstore. The story is told from the perspective of his son, Lewis Michaux, Jr., and emphasizes his father’s role as a literacy pioneer in the civil rights movement–one who established a refuge and creative think-space for other activists, scholars, and anyone interested in literature by or about people of the African diaspora. Michaux’s bookstore held over 200,000 such titles, making it the largest “black bookstore” in the country at the time.
The Book Itch is a 2016 CSK Illustrator Honor book. A description from the publisher reads:
“In the 1930s…
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The Eclectic Kitabu Project 