Featured Author Event: Ibi Zoboi (Manhattan)
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Colleagues with middle-grade-aged children looking for a fun weekend family outing are invited to meet and hear author Ibi Zoboi talk about and read from her new Dutton Books for Young Readers title, MY LIFE AS AN ICE CREAM SANDWICH, at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, August 24, at Books of Wonder in Manhattan (18 W. 18th St.) This is a joint launch event with fellow children’s book author Mariama J. Lockington (For Black Girls Like Me).
Zoboi, a National Book Award-finalist, makes her middle-grade debut with a moving story of a girl finding her place in a world that’s changing at warp speed. Twelve-year-old Ebony-Grace Norfleet has lived with her grandfather Jeremiah in Huntsville, Alabama ever since she was little. As one of the first black engineers to integrate NASA, Jeremiah has nurtured Ebony-Grace’s love for all things outer space and science fiction—especially Star Wars and Star Trek. But in the summer of 1984, when trouble arises with Jeremiah, it’s decided she’ll spend a few weeks with her father in Harlem.
Harlem is an exciting and terrifying place for a sheltered girl from Hunstville, and Ebony-Grace’s first instinct is to retreat into her imagination. But soon 126th Street begins to reveal that it has more in common with her beloved sci-fi adventures than she ever thought possible, and by summer’s end, Ebony-Grace discovers that Harlem has a place for a girl whose eyes are always on the stars.
Ibi Zoboi is the author of two novels for young adults, Pride and American Street, the latter a National Book Award finalist. She also edited the anthology Black Enough. She holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Born in Haiti and raised in New York City, she now lives with her family in New Jersey.