Best Selling Author Entrances Middle School Students
Award-winning author Andrea Davis Pinkney knows the power of music, art and conversation to move and engage an audience.
Opening her presentation in the Lyndhurst Chapel on Thursday with the song “Let It Shine,” Pinkney invited participation, mesmerizing middle schoolers by weaving lively artwork, dramatic readings, personal stories and direct questions into her narrative.
And she had an important message to share with students: You don’t have to be a genius to be a writer. But you do have to carry a notebook with you everywhere you go.
She also emphasized that you need to do your research. That, she explained, can require persistence to ensure your facts are correct. But you need more than just facts; you have to think outside the box to imagine what it’s like to walk in your characters’ shoes. Or in one particular case, what it’s like to wear their boxing gloves: Pickney actually tracked down and purchased a pair of championship heavyweight boxer Joe Louis’ gloves to gain a better understanding of what it means to be a “fighter,” – providing insight and inspiration that helped bring to life the characters in her novel Bird in a Box.
Pinkney’s stories are compelling in part because of their powerful subject matter, which runs the gamut from slavery to civil rights to the war in Sudan to lighter subjects like Motown and jazz. But they are also compelling because she brings them to life through words, images and sound.
“Pictures will tell you the story,” she insists. To prove her point, she shares pictures from Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down, a book that chronicles a defining moment during the civil rights movement. Illustrated by her husband Brian Pinkney, the book skillfully depicts the Woolworth’s lunch counter where four black students staged a peaceful protest in 1960. The counter itself takes on symbolic significance as it appears to be crashing under an invisible force on one page and morphing into a roller coaster on another, reflecting the power and trajectory of that peaceful and pivotal protest.
Of course, words tell stories, too, and Pinkney chooses hers artfully. Her Hawken audience was treated to a dramatic, live reading of the opening of her book The Red Pencil, written entirely in free verse. Her reading demonstrated the ways in which rhythm, emotion and meaning combine to convey a powerful message of pain and hope.
Perhaps Pinkney is right about “the myth of genius;” maybe it isn’t a requirement for success. But if the author herself is any indication, creativity, persistence and passion definitely are.
An independent, coeducational, college preparatory day school, toddler through grade 12
Early Childhood, Lower, and Middle Schools, 5000 Clubside Rd, Lyndhurst, OH 44124
Birchwood School of Hawken, 4400 West 140th Street, Cleveland, OH 44135
Upper School, PO Box 8002 (12465 County Line Rd), Gates Mills, OH 44040
Mastery School of Hawken, 11025 Magnolia Dr, Cleveland, OH 44106
Gries Center, 10823 Magnolia Dr, Cleveland, OH 44106
Early Childhood, Lower, and Middle Schools, 5000 Clubside Rd, Lyndhurst, OH 44124
Birchwood School of Hawken, 4400 West 140th Street, Cleveland, OH 44135
Upper School, PO Box 8002 (12465 County Line Rd), Gates Mills, OH 44040
Mastery School of Hawken, 11025 Magnolia Dr, Cleveland, OH 44106
Gries Center, 10823 Magnolia Dr, Cleveland, OH 44106
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