The Huntsville-Madison County Public Library invites the public to listen to award-winning author and former Huntsville resident Hester Bass discuss her latest children's book that retells of the emerging Rocket City's peaceful integration in the early 1960s.
The Huntsville-Madison County Public Library invites the public to listen to award-winning author and former Huntsville resident Hester Bass discuss her latest children's book that retells of the emerging Rocket City's peaceful integration in the early 1960s. The program is Sunday at 2 p.m. at the main branch. (Paul Huggins/phuggins@al.com)
The book is called "Seeds of Freedom," and it highlights several achievements the African American community contributed to the local Civil Rights movement and how those separate events came together with a domino effect of change. It includes a look at Dr. Sonnie Hereford and when his son, Sonnie Hereford IV, was the first black child to integrate an Alabama public school in 1962.
Both Herefords will join Bass at the library program on Sunday at 2 p.m.
Bass, a Georgia native who lived in Huntsville from 2003 to 2013 when her husband, Clayton Bass, was CEO of the Huntsville Art Museum, said her talk will include other inspiring local stories not included in the book and details of how the book evolved over a six-year period. There also will be visual displays with historical images and a visual explanation of how the book's illustrator, E.B. Lewis, developed his images from sketch drawings and photographs of re-enactments.
"I'll talk about what it's like to be a writer and what it's like to have this story tap you on the shoulder, and how it took six years of re-writing and the long process of getting a book down," she told AL.com on Thursday. "There's lots and lots and lots of information."
A Los Angeles Times review said the events from Seeds of Freedom "serve as an eerie echo of today's 'Black Lives Matter' protests." Publishers Weekly said the book is "Unflinchingly honest and jubilantly hopeful, this is nonfiction storytelling at its best."
Seeds of Freedom comes after the recent success of Bass's southern tale, "The Secret Life of Walter Anderson," which received the National Council of Teachers of English's ORBIS PICTUS AWARD for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children.
Barnes & Noble will have copies of "Seeds of Freedom" for sale after Bass' library discussion, which she will be on hand to sign. Other upcoming book signings:
- Huntsville - Barnes & Noble in Jones Valley on Feb. 5 at 4 p.m.; and Barnes & Noble at BridgeStreet on Feb. 8 at 4 p.m.
- Tuscumbia - Coldwater Books on Feb. 7, from 10 a.m. to noon.
- Homewood - Little Professor Book Center on Feb. 10, from 5 to 7 p.m.