Thanks for stopping by! If you’re looking to practice saying my name, TeachingBooks has got you covered. (With a lot more resources over there too!)

In short: I was the ‘new kid’ at school many times over, in more than one country, and currently live with my family in NYC, where I love walking and working on crafts in many forms. I used to keep a knitting and craft blog; I may reboot it one day!

Visit my page at African American Literature Book Club and over at the Children’s Defense Fund where their legendary Freedom Schools do phenomenal work!

Biography

OLUGBEMISOLA RHUDAY-PERKOVICH is the author of several children’s books, including Operation Sisterhood, an IndieNext Top Ten Pick and BCALA Best Book of the Year, Makeda Makes A Birthday Treat, a Chicago Public Library and Bank Street Best Book of the Year, It Doesn’t Take A Genius, a Kirkus Best Book of the Year, as well as the picture book Someday Is Now: Clara Luper and the 1958 Oklahoma City Sit-Ins (a Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People by the National Council for the Social Studies and CBC). Her debut novel, 8th Grade Superzero, was an Amazon Best Book of the Month, a Notable Book for a Global Society by the International Reading Association (IRA), and a Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People by the National Council for the Social Studies and CBC). Two Naomis, co-authored with Audrey Vernick, was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Saving Earth: Climate Change and the Fight For Our Future, is a Junior Library Guild Selection and YALSA nominee for Excellence in Nonfiction, and her release: The Sun Does Shine: An Innocent Man, A Wrongful Conviction, and the Long Path to Justice (Young Readers Edition), co-authored with Anthony Ray Hinton and Lara Love Hardin, was a YALSA nominee for Excellence in Nonfiction, a School Library Journal and Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year.

She has contributed to several collections, including We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices (edited by Cheryl and Wade Hudson of Just Us Books), The Journey Is Everything: Teaching Essays That Students Want to Write for People Who Want to Read Them, edited by Katherine Bomer; and Imagine It Better: Visions of What School Might Be, edited by Luke Reynolds.

She’s written for various outlets, including PBS Parents, Read Brightly, American Baby, Healthy Kids, and some of her childhood favorite hip hop fanzines, like the iconic Right On! Magazine.

Olugbemisola is a member of The Brown Bookshelf, a Web site dedicated to amplifying Black and Brown voices from across the African Diaspora in children’s literature.

Olugbemisola has worked extensively in youth development and education, and was twice awarded a public service fellowship by the Echoing Green Foundation for her work on a creative arts and literacy project with adolescent girls. Olugbemisola lives with her family in New York City where she writes, makes things, and needs to get more sleep.