What better day for a book trailer than a Saturday? Coretta Scott King Award winner Sharon Draper used her own family history to write Stella by Starlight (Atheneum, January 2015). While the book is set in the early 20th century, many of the societal issues still exist. Draper’s writing of the past provides young people today an opportunity to understand our world in ways that they can relate.

In describing her relationship with her grandmother, Draper states

“My grandmother was my spirit muse, my writing inspiration, and neither she nor I knew it. She was a little girl living in 1915, yearning for more than working on a farm.  She wrote in a journal at night, under the stars, because that’s the only time she could do it.  Seventy-five years later, when she passed away, she gave the last remaining notebook to my father, who eventually gave it to me with the instructions, “Write my mother’s story.”  It took me a very long time to finish what he asked me to do.  The novelStella by Starlight is fiction, but the essence of the story is based on pure truth.”

Read more of the interview here.