Langston Hughes. Underwood Archives/Contributor (Getty Images). Looking back to an incident during my middle-school years, I realize I’ve had the sensibilities of a scholar for a very long time. A student submitted a Langston Hughes poem to the school literary magazine as his own; the faculty sponsor did not know...

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards are part of a profoundly rich history of African American children’s literature. It is a history that stretches back into the nineteenth century through the early-twentieth century Brownies’ Book magazine and the mid-twentieth-century Ebony Jr! publication.It is a history that encompasses the bibliographies of...