She identifies as a Muslim Palestinian woman and, as co-chair of the Women's March on Washington in 2017, led the largest single-day protest in history. 'I'm not an author, I'm an organizer,' said Linda Sarsour, who adapted her adult memoir ( We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders, 37 Ink) for young readers as We're in This Together (Salaam Reads, Nov. The State Department wanted me to be afraid of them, but I befriended them.' Paula Young Shelton added, 'Young children need to know you can't let other people's opinion determine who you are.' 'My father's advice worked not just when I was four years old, but also as a 40-year-old in South Africa during apartheid, and while negotiating the Panama Canal treaty. 'Don't get mad, get smart,' Young's father told him.

That was the inspiration for his picture book written with his daughter Paula Young Shelton, Just Like Jesse Owens (Scholastic), illustrated by Gordon C. 'You don't get mad at people for being sick.' That same year, Young's father took him to a segregated movie theater to see Jesse Owens win a gold medal in the Olympics in Berlin.

When Young, just four years old in 1936, asked his father who the Nazis were, his father explained they held racist ideas. Charles said that she and Collier are at work on a third picture book and, when all three spines line up, they will read: All Because You Matter/ We Are Here/ United Together.Īmbassador Andrew Young spoke of growing up in a neighborhood with an Italian grocer on one corner, an Irish pub on another and a Nazi headquarters on another corner. The session took its name from Tami Charles's picture book We Are Here (Orchard/Scholastic, January 3), illustrated by Bryan Collier, their follow-up to All Because You Matter, which, Charles explained, she wrote for her son following George Floyd's murder and subsequent protests. The panel was moderated by Bunnie Hilliard, founder and owner of Brave + Kind Bookshop in Decatur, Ga. 'We Are Here' was the resounding theme of Monday's kickoff author breakfast at SIBA/NAIBA's virtual New Voices New Rooms event.

Tom doherty tor books