Breanna J. McDaniel

BIO

BREANNA J. MCDANIEL is an emerging creative and recovering scholar. She’s published in myriad academic journals, an academic anthology, and her third picture illustrated by April Harrison, published in 2024 by Penguin is Go Forth and Tell: The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller. It has received 5 starred reviews and is on numerous “Best of 2024” booklists. Her debut picture book, Hands Up! was awarded the “2021 First Novelist Honor Book” by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, Inc. and School Library Journal. She is also the author of Impossible Moon which was published with Denene Millner Books/ Simon & Schuster and Cute Toot released by Macmillan in April 2024. She has three more forthcoming picture books with Henry Holt Books for Young Readers. Breanna completed her PhD at a university in the UK and her monograph based on her research was longlisted for the Cassava Republic Press Global Black Woman’s Non-Fiction Prize in November of 2024. She resides in Atlanta and the UK.

 

GO FORTH AND TELL: THE LIFE OF AUGUSTA BAKER, LIBRARIAN AND MASTER STORYTELLER

From an award-winning author Breanna McDaniel and illustrator  April Harrison comes this picture book biography about beloved librarian and storyteller Augusta Braxton Baker, the first Black coordinator of children’s services at all branches of the New York Public Library.

Before Augusta Braxton Baker became a storyteller, she was an excellent story listener. Her grandmother brought stories like Br’er Rabbit and Arthur and Excalibur to life, teaching young Augusta that when there’s a will, there’s always a way. When she grew up, Mrs. Baker began telling her own fantastical stories to children at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library in Harlem. But she noticed that there were hardly any books at the library featuring Black people in respectful, uplifting ways. Thus began her journey of championing books, writers, librarians, and teachers centering Black stories, educating and inspiring future acclaimed authors like Audre Lorde and James Baldwin along the way. As Mrs. Baker herself put it: “Children of all ages want to hear stories. Select well, prepare well and then go forth and just tell.”