PAST PRESENT with Lesa Cline-Ransome FINDING LANGSTON

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PAST PRESENT with Lesa Cline-Ransome FINDING LANGSTON

Ever wonder how authors are able to write about the past as if they’ve actually been there and seen things for themselves? On this episode of PAST PRESENT with Lesa Cline-Ransome, Lesa reveals her research techniques for creating FINDING LANGSTON, a historical novel set during The Great Migration which hums with life and authenticity.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A moving story of one boy’s experiences during the Great Migration.

Langston’s mother has just died when he and his father leave rural Alabama to make a new home in Chicago’s South Side of the 1940s. It’s lonely in the small apartment with just his father and at school he’s bullied.
But Langston’s new home has one fantastic thing. Unlike the whites-only library in Alabama, the Chicago Public Library welcomes everyone. There, hiding out after school, Langston discovers another Langston, a poet whom he learns inspired his mother enough to name her only son after him.

ABOUT Lesa Cline-Ransome

Lesa Cline-Ransome is the writer of many picture books. Her picture book biography titles include Satchel Paige, Major Taylor, Champion Cyclist, Young Pele, Soccer’s First Star, Helen Keller, The World in Her Heart, Before There was Mozart and Words Set me Free: The Story of Young Frederick Douglass. Other titles are Quilt Alphabet, Quilt Counting and her newest is Light in the Darkness, A Story about How Slaves Learned in Secret. Originally from Malden, Massachusetts, Lesa has worked as a proofreader, fashion copywriter, publicist, teacher in the New York City Schools, and taught writing for adults. She has a B.F.A. in Merchandising and Management from Pratt Institute and an M.A. in Education from N.Y.U. She lives in Rhinebeck, New York and with her husband and frequent collaborator, illustrator James Ransome, four children and St. Bernard, Nola.

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