Angela Shelf Medearis Papers

Children’s author and cookbook writer Angela Shelf Medearis was born on November 16, 1956, in Hampton, Virginia. In 1975, she married Michael Rene Medearis, and the couple moved to Austin, Texas. She attended Southwest Texas State University, has one daughter, Deanna, and one grandchild, Anysa. After working as a secretary for a number of years Ms. Medearis began writing full time in 1987. She founded Book Boosters in 1988, a non-profit, grant supported, multicultural reading program tutoring and teaching literacy to grade school children. Her sister Sandra currently directs the program. In 1990, Medearis published her first book, Picking Peas for a Penny, a picture book counting rhyme. According to Medearis, "Picture books are a child's first step into a lifetime of reading. That is why I feel that my job is important. I want to write in such an interesting and exciting way that the memory of reading my book, and the information I've related about a particular event, will linger with a young reader for a lifetime." Medearis has gone on to publish dozens of children’s books about Black Americans with real life themes, as well as history books geared towards young readers, such as Come This Far to Freedom (1993), and brief biographies of Coretta Scott King and Ida B. Wells.

Medearis routinely visits schools and performs storytelling, she produced Children’s Radio Bookmobile for the University of Texas at Austin (a weekly program featuring multicultural children’s literature), and curated Black American exhibits for the George Washington Carver Museum in Austin. Additionally, Medearis (and her husband, Michael) act as a consultants and writers for Scott Foresman, Scholastic, and Macmillan publishers, creating or contributing textbooks and children’s books. Among many other awards, Medearis won the first ever Teddy, a children’s-book award presented by Laura Bush (Poppa’s New Pants, 1996). In 1997, Texas Monthly magazine featured Ms. Medearis and described her as the best-selling children’s book author in Texas, with over 1.5 million copies of works in print. "I write the kind of books I always longed to find in the library when I was a child. Every child needs to find a reflection of himself or herself when looking for a book in the library or bookstore."