During assembly leading up to Spring Break, Pre-K through Grade 5 students, faculty and DCD family members gathered in the Lowell Center to welcome Lesa Cline-Ransome, acclaimed author, MacDowell Fellow and 2022 NAIBA Legacy recipient. Ms. Cline-Ransome’s diverse range of over 30 books includes everything from picture book biographies, non-fiction and fiction titles, and her newest book One Big Open Sky was released on March 5.
During her visit, Ms. Cline-Ransome shared with our students her path to becoming such a prolific author, from falling in love with words at the Malden Public Library, and reading books about about brave, adventurous girls (while she herself was extremely shy). She also shared the story of meeting her husband while they were both students at Pratt Institute in New York City, and how he became an illustrator for many children’s books, including her own!
Students then had the opportunity to ask questions regarding Ms. Cline-Ransome’s writing process and her own favorite books. Regarding favorite books, Ms. Cline-Ransome stated, “I see books as children, they are all special, and I don’t have a favorite!” However, she mentioned two books she’s written that are particularly special to her: Before She Was Harriet, as it reminds her very much of her mom, and Finding Langston, a book about someone who finds themself when they step into a library, just as she did as a young girl.
When asked about her research process, Ms. Cline-Ransome responded that research is by far the longest part of her process. “I love more than anything doing ethnographic research,” she explained, “walking in the footsteps of the people I write about. Not just who they were but what they did, and even more important is how they lived everyday.”
Following the assembly, as a continuation of Black History Month and Women’s History Month, Grade 7 English students were lucky to have Ms. Cline-Ransome visit class to speak about her inspiration, what informs her work, and her writing process. She shared with the class how important she feels it is to read all types of books at any given time, and how important it is to be a reader, in order to write. She expressed that as a young girl learning about history in the 70’s, there was very little heard about important contributions by African Americans, especially women, and noted that all of the important contributions documented were of white men. Ms. Cline-Ransome went on to say that she has written many books about the important contributions of women and people of color, and is very passionate about these subjects.
Ms. Cline-Ransome explained that she writes about difficult subjects from history because she feels that these subjects are not addressed often enough, and are not satisfactory to her, that race and racial issues are more complex and difficult than many other topics addressed, and that we must tell the truth in order to fix what has happened. She went on to quote Byron Stevenson, Civil Rights Attorney and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative: “There is beauty in the truth telling”. Ms. Cline-Ransome explained that she looks for and sees parallels with the past and present, and wants her stories to feel like they’ve been written in the contemporary times of their period.
Ms. Cline-Ransome then introduced her new book One Big Open Sky, a historical novel in verse that explores the history of the Black homesteader movement, and the experience of women during this movement, as a result of Ms. Cline-Ransome’s desire to understand why people would choose to leave their lives behind in search of the unknown. Through her research, and in reading the diaries of these women, she discovered their great sadness, loss, and all that they were leaving behind.
Thank you to Ms. Cline-Ransome for such an inspiring and thought provoking visit to DCD, and for helping us to celebrate Black History Month and Women’s History Month, and for celebrating community in all forms!
