Photo:Bloomsbury Publishing; Shawnte Sims
Bloomsbury Publishing; Shawnte Sims
“It’s bittersweet,” Watson says of the series ending. “I’m doing a lot of reflecting [on] what it meant to publish a book about joy and perseverance, and being intentional about making sunshine in the midst of everything we’ve gone through in these last three, four years.”
Bloomsbury Publishing
“I want to share stories, and however they come to me is how I want to give them to the world,” Watson says. “Sometimes it comes as a picture book and sometimes it comes as a novel.” She also credits poetry as her “first love;” writers like Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes, among others, inspired her and the poems she would pen in her journals growing up.
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Renée Watson.Shawnte Sims
Shawnte Sims
Watson also notes that Ryan taught her to let characters “be flawed and normal and human,” and to exist beyond just having a message for readers. This is a theme she wants to see extending beyond her books as well.“The fact that dark-skinned Black girls in natural hair are on covers is quite revolutionary in children’s literature,” Watson says. “I just want more nuanced stories. We deserve to be in every genre, not only realistic fiction…we deserve romance stories and thrillers, mysteries, all of that. We are multifaceted people, so I want to see every kind of story that there can be about us being written.”
Watson, who is also a teaching artist and founder of theI, Too Arts Collective, has no plans to stop writing once theRyan Hartseries ends. She has a new middle grade novel set to publish soon, as well as a picture book coming in 2024, about a young girl enjoying the first day of summer. The author’s aspirations for her readers are sure to follow into these stories as well.
“I’m thinking of how [I can] hopefully inspire them, encourage them, push them to go beyond what we’ve already done with this world, and continue to make it better,” she says. “All of that is with me when I’m writing.”Ways to Build Dreamsis now available where books are sold.
source: people.com
