"If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." Toni Morrison
Mildred DeLois Taylor is known for exploring powerful themes of family and racism faced by African Americans in the Deep South, in works that are accessible to young readers. She was awarded the 1977 Newbery Medal for Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and the inaugural NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature in 2003. In 2021, she won the Children's Literature Legacy Award.[5]