Husband and wife team, James Ransome  and Lesa Cline-Ransome collaborated on their first book together with a biography of Satchel Paige, an ALA Notable Book and a Bank Street College “Best Children’s Book of the Year".  They later created Quilt Alphabet, a collection of alphabet poems, Major Taylor: Champion Cyclist, Young Pele:  Soccer’s First Star, Words Set Me Free:  The Story of Young Frederick Douglass,  Light in the Darkness: A Story about how Slaves Learned in Secret, Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson:  Taking the Stage as the first Black and White Jazz Band in History, Freedom’s School, and Just a Lucky So and So:  The Story of Louis Armstrong.  My Story, My Dance: Robert Battle’s Journey to Alvin Ailey was a 2016 Orbis Pictus recommended Book. Before She was Harriet, the  verse biography of Harriet Tubman, received the Coretta Scott King Honor for Illustration and was named the Booklist 2017 Top of the List.  Game Changers: The Story of Venus and Serena Williams is their newest picture book collaboration and an Orbis Pictus Recommended Title.

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Lesa’s first middle grade novel, Finding Langston is a Kirkus, and School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and winner of the  2019 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction and the Coretta Scott King Author Honor.

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James and Lesa’s books have received numerous honors and awards including the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor Book for Picture Book, the Coretta Scott King award, Coretta Scott King Honor Award, NAACP Awards , Kirkus Best Books, two Top 10 Sports Books for Youth, and  the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance Award.

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They currently live in New York’s Hudson Valley region with their family.  Visit their websites, www.jamesransome.com and www.lesaclineransome.com