As a Black illustrator, Nikkolas is focused on creating captivating art that can spark important conversations around social justice in today’s world and inspire meaningful change. He is the author/illustrator of The Golden Girls of Rio, nominated for an NAACP Image Award, My Hair Is Poofy And That’s Okay, and World Cup Women. To learn more about Renée’s work, visit her at Nikkolas Smith is a Houston, Texas-born Artivist, picture book author, and Hollywood film illustrator. Renée grew up in Portland, Oregon, and splits her time between Portland and New York City. Renée is on the Council of Writers for the National Writing Project and is a member of the Academy of American Poets’ Education Advisory Council. She has given readings and lectures at many renown places including the United Nations, the Library of Congress, and the U.S. Her books for young readers include Harlem's Little Blackbird: The Story of Florence Mills, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and Ways to Make Sunshine, which received the SCBWI Golden Kite Award. Her young adult novel, Piecing Me Together (Bloomsbury, 2017) received a Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award. Renée Watson is a New York Times bestselling author.

Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, a training and mentorship organization geared towards increasing the numbers of investigative reporters of color. She has also won a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards, three National Magazine Awards, and the 2018 John Chancellor distinguished journalism award from Columbia University. In 2017, she received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, known as the Genius Grant, for her work on educational inequality. Nikole Hannah-Jones is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter covering racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine and creator of the landmark 1619 Project. With powerful verse and striking illustrations by Nikkolas Smith, Born on the Water provides a pathway for readers of all ages to reflect on the origins of American identity. She learns how the people said to be born on the water survived. Grandma gathers the whole family, and the student learns that 400 years ago, in 1619, their ancestors were stolen and brought to America by white slave traders.īut before that, they had a home, a land, a language. The 1619 Project’s lyrical picture book in verse chronicles the consequences of slavery and the history of Black resistance in the United States, thoughtfully rendered by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and Newbery honor-winning author Renée Watson.Ī young student receives a family tree assignment in school, but she can only trace back three generations.

Born on the water the 1619 project