Board member, alumni parent, and bestselling and award-winning author Andrea Davis Pinkney visited the lower school to talk about her new book—which is the current selection of the Bergen Street Book Club— Because of You, John Lewis: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship. It’s the story of Tybre Faw, young boy who, inspired by John Lewis’s friendship with his own idol, Martin Luther King, persuades his grandmothers to take him on a 7-hour road trip in the hope of meeting his hero, Rep. Lewis, as he prepares for his annual memorial walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. John Lewis invited Tybre to march with him that day, and the two activists—one 10 years old and one 78 years old—formed a bond that lasted until Rep. Lewis’s death two years later. The whole lower school is reading this wonderful book as part of its Black History Month celebration.
Andrea was joined by the book’s illustrator, Keith Henry Brown. Andrea and Keith spoke to rapt audiences about how they wrote and illustrated the book. Hard to believe, but this was the first time that Andrea and Keith met! One thing we learned that day was that authors and illustrators often don’t meet to discuss a book while they’re working on it.
It’s always a treat when Andrea Davis Pinkney visits MMFS. She began and ended her presentation by leading the students and teachers in song, starting with “This Little Light of Mine” and closing by encouraging her audience to change the words of “I’m on My Way to Freedomland” to “I’m On My Way to Reading Land.”
Enjoy these pictures of our special guests.
