Newbery Honor award recipient Lesa Cline-Ransome is the author of numerous non-fiction and historical fiction titles for picture book, chapter book, middle grade and young adult readers. Her work has been named to ALA Notable Books and Bank Street Best Children’s Book lists.

Her verse picture book biography of Harriet Tubman, Before She Was Harriet was nominated for an NAACP image award and received a Jane Addams Honor, Christopher Award, and Coretta Scott King Honor for Illustration. Finding Langston, the first in the Finding Langston trilogy, was the winner of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction and received the Coretta Scott King Award Author Honor. Her picture book, They Call Me Teach, received the 2025 Jane Addams Award. Her MG novel-in-verse, One Big Open Sky, was recipient of the Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award Author Honor, as well as being named a Best Book of 2024 by Kirkus, the Boston Globe, and the New York Times.

She is the host of KidLitTV’s Past Present: Giving Past Stories New Life.

Lesa is the mother of four and frequently collaborates with her husband, illustrator James Ransome. She lives and works in the Hudson Valley region of New York where she consumes large quantities of books and chocolate and each day, she takes long walks and short naps. In between she writes.

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