Award-Winning Author Kwame Alexander Inspires Young Readers At Calvert Library Event

PRINCE FREDERICK, Md. — On Monday, March 9, Calvert Library hosted a fireside chat with Mt. Harmony Elementary School’s teacher librarian Dr. Melaney Sánchez and award-winning author Kwame Alexander. The event was live-streamed on YouTube.

Sánchez said in an email to The BayNet that she first encountered Alexander at a Maryland Association of School Librarians conference in 2015.

“He brought a guitar player with him, and the room of librarians was in the palm of his hand from the moment he entered the room,” Sánchez said. “One of his gifts is the ability to look at the world from multiple points of view and make the reader realize multiple perspectives. The moment it was over I knew that I needed my students to have the gift of time with him. My first step was to add more of his books to our library, and then I began to dream about how we could bring him to Calvert County. I never imagined it would happen like this!”

Alexander is a poet, educator, publisher and producer as well as a writer. He has published 47 books, including “Why Fathers Cry at Night: A Memoir in Love Poems, Letters, Recipes, and Remembrances,” “Black Star,” “The Mighty Macy,” and “The Crossover,” which won the Newbery Medal and was adapted into an Emmy-winning series on Disney+.

The event on the 9th was not the first time Alexander had planned to visit Calvert County.

“I feel like we were supposed to do this right before COVID,” Alexander said during the event. “This was the last event I canceled. I was living in London, and I remember calling my booking agent to say, ‘We gotta cancel this thing in Calvert County.’ And I remember her saying, ‘Well, they’re gonna be pretty upset.’ And I think you guys got pretty upset. But then two weeks later y’all were like ‘oh, we get it.’ So this is six-seven years in the making.”

The crowd was made up of around 200 people, mostly families with elementary- or middle-school-aged children. The kids in the crowd got a kick out of Alexander’s reference to the six-seven meme, a non sequitur inside joke that’s been popular on the internet since last year.

Behind the scenes, Sánchez herself nearly missed the opportunity to host this interview. She said that she spent some time at a conference in South Korea without access to her school account and found a week-old email from Beverly Izzi, the Youth Services coordinator for Calvert Public Library, in her inbox when she finally reconnected in the DC.

“I read it three times before I could comprehend the opportunity and was mortified when I realized the email was a week old!” Sánchez said. “As you can imagine I put my suitcase aside and immediately fired off an email begging for forgiveness in responding so late while praying they had not asked another fortunate soul to take my place. I was overjoyed to find out that they waited for my overdue response! I consider the public librarians to be my partners in crime and have consistently worked with them to ensure that my students had access to materials and programming on a larger scale. It has been a lot of fun collaborating with Beverly and Robyn Truslow along with Calvert High’s very own Dr. Donna Mignardi and our technology integration specialist, Ms. Casey Grenier.”

Sánchez said she and her colleagues worked diligently to get the word out that Alexander would be at this event, motivated by the fact that hearing and meeting such an accomplished author can have an immense positive impact.

Sometimes that meeting can impact the author as well. During the event, Alexander read a letter that he had received from a fan.

“I left the States in the end of February 2020 back to London where I was living so that I could avoid being stuck here, because I had been told that airports were gonna be closing down. This was right before the pandemic,” Alexander said. “So in London, living there, and living in a place called St. John’s Wood, and no one really knows my address except my publishers.”

“Somehow I ended up getting a fan letter in my mailbox,” Alexander said. “And so I open up the letter and read it. It says, ‘Dear Mr. Kwame Alexander, hello, my name is [Alexander paused to indicate he was omitting the writer’s name] and I am a feminist. I am 10 years old, and I live in Santa Monica, California. I’m starting fifth grade this year, and I love to read and play sports. However, more importantly I am an enormous admirer of your books, your teaching poetry videos and your work that you do in Ghana. I have read Booked, Crossover, Rebound, Undefeated, Playbook, and He Said, She Said is on my summer reading list. I have also watched your poetry videos, and it has guided me into writing several marvelous poems. Furthermore, I support your work you’re doing in Ghana, and I think it’s necessary.’”

“Second paragraph,” Alexander said to the audience, indicating this was a long and thorough letter. “’After reading and rereading your books, Mr. Alexander, your phenomenal books, I came to the realization that none of your book’s main characters are female. This realization brings me to the purpose of writing this letter to you. I highly encourage that in your next book, you include a female main character. There are many great reasons for writing that kind of book. First, your books are very inspirational and will not only inspire boys but also more young women. Being a feminist, one problem that we face is not having enough diverse books. You have written books about boys, now it is time for you to write the same for girls. Also, you can dedicate it to your daughters, because after all you do have daughters.’”

Alexander read the third and final paragraph, which politely but firmly asked for a personally written response rather than a form letter and included postscript instructions for his publisher to deliver the letter to him directly rather than be left in a pile of other fan letters because it was a genuine request.

“So I think maybe that Thanksgiving I flew from Heathrow to LAX, and I’d been in touch with her aunt who I found on LinkedIn, and I surprised her at school,” Alexander said. “I showed up at her school, in her classroom, and her classmates were like ‘What!? You got him to come?’ and they were all so excited, and she was like ‘thank you, thank you,’ and then she was like ‘so what are you gonna do?’ And I ended up writing a novel called ‘Black Star,’ which is the first in 40-plus books that features a female main character.”

After the interview, Alexander spent an hour signing books like “J vs. K,” “Say Yes: Find Your Passion, Unleash Your Potential, Transform Your Life!,” “The Door of No Return,” “Surf’s Up” and “Acoustic Rooster and His Barnyard Band,” books that are already lining the stacks of public and school libraries around Southern Maryland.

Sánchez later said that the fireside chat was a dream come true.

“The event was incredibly heart-warming, interactive and meaningful,” she said. “I would argue that Kwame makes everyone feel as though they are sitting in the chair beside him because he talks so openly, honestly and is beyond amusing! He is the master storyteller, and we savored every word.”

“To be honest, the very best part of all was watching the faces of future authors light up as they playfully exchanged ideas with Kwame,” Sánchez said. “He met with students at a reception, included them in his chat onstage and playfully encouraged them during the book signing.”

When asked if she had any final thoughts, Sánchez had this to say:

“I would encourage readers to follow authors on social media and to reach out to those who inspire them! I have found writers to be some of the most encouraging, receptive and kind people I know. Learn from their experiences, focus on their strengths and note the way they have created their unique voice. The next step is the most important of all. Consider the stories from your life that have been precious to you and write them down. If you don’t, they will be forever lost, and the legacy of your experiences will fade instead of lighting a path for others.”

You can learn more about Kwame Alexander on his website and watch the fireside chat below.

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