In five weeks, Florence will be published!!! It's hard to believe the time is nearly here. I wanted to share her thoughts upon seeing the orphanage for the first time. It was a grand and impressive building, and surely must have taken a girl from a one-room tenement apartment by surprise. The Colored Orphan Asylum in New York consisted of classrooms, a seamstress room, and a shoe room where a tailor made the black brogans the students wore. The first floor accommodated a dini

Colored Orphan Asylum, New York. Girls on playground circa 1860s. (public domain) Various sources cite the above as a photograph taken on Good Friday. This is one of my favorite photographs of the orphanage. The girls all look neat and presentable while holding hula hoops. The smaller girls sit on the steps in the background where two women stand. Trees are bare, indicating it’s winter or maybe the end of winter. The girls don’t wear hats or mittens, so it must have been bear

LLA schedule - 1st up! Last week, I had the honor of presenting at the Louisiana Library Association conference with fellow author Pamela Courtney in Lake Charles, LA. We spent months working on our presentation and reading some wonderful books about our great state. But even with all our preparations, there was a small fear: Will our presentation be any good, and what if no one attends? Thankfully, we had no reason to worry. Kirstie Myvett and Pamela Courtney at LLA Our sess

Sarah Parker Remond was an abolitionist, physician, and anti-slavery lecturer. She also appears in my upcoming middle-grade book, The Four Seasons of Florence Wallace.