Award-winning children’s and young adult author Carole Boston Weatherford has written more than 80 books, several in collaboration with her son, artist Jeffery Boston Weatherford.
Among the awards her 80-plus books have garnered are two NAACP Image Awards, 18 American Library Association Youth Media Awards, a Newbery Honor, Coretta Scott King Award and four Caldecott Honors. She and Jeffery speak to children and educators around the world and here in Baltimore, where she was raised and where she now lives after several decades as an English professor at North Carolina University in Fayetteville.
We spoke to her about her creative journey, her love for her hometown, and her excitement about matching wits with Baltimore Curriculum Project (BCP) students on May 15, 2025 as a celebrity contestant for the BCP gala, “Are You Smarter Than a BCP Student?”
Did you always want to be a writer?
I’m a product of Baltimore. I went to Edgewood Elementary School and was Class of 1974 at Northwestern High School. I grew up wanting to be either a librarian or a fashion designer. For about two years, I was a fashion designer. I went to American University for undergraduate, and then I got my first graduate degree in publications design from the University of Baltimore and my M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina Greensboro. I always say writing is not what I do, it’s who I am.
I dictated my first poem at age six to my mother on the way home from school. Both my parents worked for Baltimore City Public Schools; mom was an administrator, and my dad was chair of the industrial arts department at Douglas High School and taught printing. He used some of my early poems as type-setting exercises for his classes before the dawn of desktop publishing. I got to see my work in print early on, which is a powerful thing.
I believe that all children need opportunities to demonstrate excellence. My parents definitely showcased my work. Seeing my work printed was a big deal. Not so for today’s kids because they’re digital natives. All they have to do is just print on their device and what they’ve written looks like it came off the press.
Were you also a reader growing up?
Oh, definitely! I love books, and I loved the librarian at the elementary school, Gloria Barnes Johnson. Her voice was wonderful when she shared books and stories. It spoke to my heart.
What can books do for a child that no other medium can?
When books are shared, between an adult and child, they create an intimacy. The act of reading to a child conveys a parents’ love. It says, ‘I love you and love books, and therefore, am going to share books with you in hopes that you, too, fall in love with them.’ This is why books are so important in the home. Of course, reading develops the synapses in the mind, so it’s crucial regardless of the endeavor a child envisions for himself or herself as they grow up. You just can’t overemphasize the importance of books in the home, in the classroom, in community settings, and most importantly in the hands of a child.
How did you pivot to writing children’s and young adult poetry, picture books, and nonfiction from fashion design?
I never stopped writing even when I was designing clothes. Writing is my original gift. I also like the visual arts and drawing and painting. I came to writing quite by accident. I wrote my first poem, “The Four Seasons” as a first grader. That poem just came out of the blue. My mother was driving me home from school, and I said, ‘Mommy, I made up a poem.’ She parked the car and asked me to recite it a second time, and she wrote it down. I think that poem was God’s way of letting my parents know that I had a gift and that they had to nurture that gift and any interest I had in the arts.
They allowed me to explore my artistic gifts to the best of their abilities and within their budget. By the time I was out of college and had been designing clothes, another poem came to me. It’s only the second poem that I’ve written that came out of the blue. It was a poem about jazz, and at the time, was the longest poem I had ever written. I sent it to a local Baltimore magazine called Metropolitan, which was kind of like the Black community’s equivalent of Baltimore magazine in the 80s, and it was published. When I saw that work in print, which was the first time that my work had been published by someone other than my dad and some place other than a school publication, I was over the moon. I began telling people that I was a poet. I knew then that I wanted to be an author. This was in the early 1980s. I had my first two books published in 1995, a children’s book, Juneteenth Jamboree, and an adult book, The Tan Sanoos.
Talk about your career focus on children’s books.
This has been almost the sole focus of my career. Most of my 80-plus books are for children. I was a young mother when I started writing for children. My own children introduced me to children’s books. As a new mother, I began taking my children to library story time and buying books for them as well. During library storytime, we were introduced to multicultural or diverse books. I noticed that there were a lot more diverse books for them than there had been for me when I was a child. While reading one book in particular, Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold, a light bulb went off in my head that perhaps I could write too. I tried my hand at writing for children, and lo and behold, it’s worked!
I certainly believe that I’ve been able to share my gift for writing and my gift for poetry with more people as a children’s book author than I ever would have been able to write for adults. The audience for adult poetry is very small, and that realm is extremely rarefied. But with children, I can address almost any topic through poetry. I find with a young audience, I can touch some hearts and minds, and that’s what it’s about for me.
What theme or mission is woven through all your work?
My mission is to create books that affirm a sense of justice and joy, to share family stories, fading stories, and forgotten struggles that center African-American resistance, rejoicing, remembrance, and remarkability. This provides an overarching theme and leaves room for me to explore a lot of different subject matter.
It’s a timeless message. It’s important right now because of the movement to impose book bans fueled by racism and systemic prejudice. We need to find ways in our homes and in our communities to share books about what we care about and about diverse cultures about people who don’t necessarily look like us. There are chapters of American history that might be a bit shameful but are part of the American story. Those chapters make us who we are and the power that we are in our world.
I believe that children are not too tender for tough topics. They deserve and will demand the truth. And they will know how to interrogate injustice when they see it. It’s on us as adults to be as brave as children, to be as open-minded and openhearted as children. That’s another reason I love writing for children because they’re open-minded and open-hearted.
When did you and your son start collaborating?
This has been one of the greatest rewards of my career. It started when he had a senior project in high school, and I suggested that he illustrate one of my manuscripts. We had our first book together, You Can Fly: The Tuskegee Airmen, in 2016, and have been working together ever since. We’ve traveled for speaking engagements in West Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and throughout the United States. In March this year, we are going to Singapore together. Our presentations aim to spark children’s curiosity, creativity, consciousness and confidence. Representation matters. We also know that kids have to see it to be it. We tell them that if we can do this, imagine what they can do. It’s about lifting the ceilings off of the young people’s dreams.
This March, we have our first co-authored book coming out, Rap It Up, a how-to picture book about writing and performing rap.
What are you excited about for the BCP “Are You Smarter Than a BCP Student” gala?
To match wits with young hotshots! I don’t get out a lot in Baltimore. I was a caregiver for the first three years when I returned from North Carolina in 2021, and, honestly, I am excited about a social event. I was away from Baltimore for 36 years. I call it my Gilligan’s Island moment. I came back up to Baltimore for two weeks and ended up on a three-year cruise. I’m living in the house where I grew up now and plan to stay.
Get your tickets to see Carole at the “Are You Smarter Than a BCP Student?” gala
Thursday, May 15, 2025 at the Baltimore Museum of Industry
At the event, Carole will be signing several books available for purchase, with 10% of all sales supporting BCP.
Visit cbweatherford.com to learn about Carole’s career and see her extensive booklist. Just a few of her dozens of titles are below:
