Tonya Bolden

Award Winning Author and Editor of Books for Children and Young Adults
10/15/2009

On October 15, 2009, Tonya Bolden spoke on "A Passion for History: Teaching beyond the Lesson Plan." Approximately 50-55 people attended this event and she was very engaging and a wonderful speaker. Many people hung around after the event to buy her books.

Tonya Bolden and Dean Shelley Wepner (Photo by Linda Tarrant-Reid)

Tonya Bolden is a prolific writer and editor who has authored more than twenty books for adults and young readers and has written numerous articles and study guides. Ms. Bolden graduated from Princeton University, magna cum laude, and holds a master's degree from Columbia University. She has taught at Malcolm-King College in Harlem and the College of New Rochelle's School for New Resources.

Ms. Bolden's books include 33 Things Every Girl Should Know; The Champ: The Story of Muhammad Ali (illustrated by awardwinning artist R. Gregory Christie); and a biography of a 19th century New Yorker, Maritcha, which was a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and a James Madison Book Award winner.

Her MLK: Journey of a King received the NCTE's 2008 Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children and Bolden's book George Washington Carver was among the 2009 Orbis Pictus Honorable Mention books.

Faculty members (L to R) Jane Gangi, Sheri McClem, Dean Shelley Wepner, Kristin Rainville with Tonya Bolden. (Photo by Linda Tarrant-Reid)

A "balanced and lively account" is what School Library Journal had to say about Bolden's recently published biography, Up-Close: W.E.B. Du Bois. Her latest book FDR's Alphabet Soup, New Deal America, 1932-1939 will be published Winter 2010.