The poetry and care with which Nikole Hannah-Jones, Renée Watson, and Nikkolas Smith approach Born on the Water make it both a gift for young readers (and the grown-ups in their lives) and a powerful tool for them to reimagine their place in the United States. In a statement, Namrata Tripathi, VP and Publisher of Kokila, said, “Picture books serve as our introduction to storytelling, and so it feels especially right that The 1619 Project, which examines the beginning of the American story, be shared in this form. In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa.

Born on the Water, a picture book in verse, will tell the story of a young girl doing a class assignment, which “chronicles the consequences of slavery and the history of Black resistance in the United States.” On Twitter, illustrator Smith, author and illustrator of children’s picture book The Golden Girls of Rio, and illustrator of World Cup Women, wrote that the picture book is “possibly the most important assignment of my career so far.” Watson, author of numerous young adult, middle grade and children’s picture books, including Harlem’s Little Blackbird: The Story of Florence Mills, called the collaboration “a supreme honor” on Twitter. THE 1619 PROJECT A New Origin Story Edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman and Jake Silverstein Has a book ever come into the world when at least four other books were. A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project- A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present.

The 1619 project a new origin story