Author Kwame Alexander spoke to students at The Steward School earlier this week. (photo courtesy Kwame Alexander)
Kwame Alexander stands in front of more than a hundred students at The Steward School and describes how he makes sense of the world through poetry. He wasn’t cool in high school, he says. But he was good with words. He used this strength to get his crush to notice him, and to later to create his life’s work.
The New York Times Best-selling author made a visit to the school Wednesday and delivered a series of inspirational performances to children ranging from kindergarten to 12th grade about not taking "no" for an answer. When Alexander wrote his first novel more than 20 years ago, he was rejected by 22 publishers, he says. He is now a Newbery Medal-winning author. Alexander says he hopes his books inspire children to say "yes" to life, and "yes" to possibility.
“I wanted to write a book that I would’ve wanted to read at your age. I wanted to write a book about family and friendship. I wanted to write a book that told a really cool story through poetry,” Alexander told the students. “Because I believe that poetry ultimately — with its conciseness, its rhythm, its figurative language – poetry is the coolest way to tell a story because there’s all this white space on the page and you’re not wasting words. Every word counts.”
Alexander combines sports and poetry to tell stories and has sold nearly 500,000 copies of his first novel, “Crossover,” about brothers who are stars on their middle school basketball team. Alexander has a new novel, “Rebound,” coming out in April as a prequel to "Crossover."
Alexander has visited more than 300 schools and travels around the world to inspire children’s passion and to share his journey. He’s one of the three guests the school invites every year as part of their Visiting Innovators Program.
“From what I can tell, the children are all the same. They’re curious, they’re smart and they want to read,” Alexander says. “They want us to be able to give them something that’s going to engage them, excite them - intelligent entertainment.”
