Eleanora E. Tate

TEACHERS GUIDES!
  Finally! I have a discussion guide for Celeste's Harlem Renaissance! I also have teacher's guides for The Secret of Gumbo Grove; Thank You, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.!; and Front Porch Stories at the One-Room School. Excerpts from my teacher's guide for The Secret of Gumbo Grove are now online! Click on A Blessing in Disguise, its sister book, on my home page. My Thank You, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.! teacher's guide will get online in due time. It's a sister book, too in my Carolina Trilogy.
  A teacher's guide for Just an Overnight Guest is available at Just Us Books, Inc.'s web site.
  For a teacher's guide developed by Christina Cooper for my book Don't Split the Pole:Tales of Down-Home Folk Wisdom go to http://www.teacheruniverse.com
/tools/language_corner/split_pole.html
  A teacher's guide developed by Pat Scales for my book A Blessing in Disguise may still be available online (or cached) at Random House Teachers Resource Center:
http://www.randomhouse.com
/teachers/authors/bles.html#

A Writing Tip
For Music and Poetry Lovers
  Poet Langston Hughes liked to use the rhythmic patterns of jazz and blues songs to help spark his poetic imagination. Try writing a poem based on the rhythmic pattern of songs in your own favorite kinds of music, like hip-hop, rock-n-roll, heavy metal, rhythm and blues, gospel, country music, too!
  Can you write a poem based on the rhythmic patterns of, say, "The War of 1812 Overture?"
  Langston Hughes, who was born in Joplin, Missouri, was a prolific writer. He produced novels, short stories, newspaper stories, and plays as well as collections of poetry. You'll find his works in your local library -- or you SHOULD -- as well as online.
  You can also read more about his life by checking out my article in Dream/Girl Magazine, Issue No. 19. I love this magazine for girls. You can also read my articles about musicians Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Queen Latifah in past issues.

Answers to Books into Movies Quiz
  1. Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor
  2. The Incredible Journey, by Sheila Burnford
  3. Sarah, Plain and Tall, by Patricia MacLachlan
  4. Just an Overnight Guest, by Eleanora E. Tate
  5. The House of Dies Drear, by Virginia Hamilton
Copyright 1997 by Eleanora E. Tate

Name That Musician!
  1. Aretha Franklin
  2. Queen Latifah
  3. Marian Anderson
  4. Scott Joplin
  5. James Brown

Copyright 2000 by Eleanora E. Tate

   I was born just a few blocks west of the Mississippi River in Canton, Missouri. Canton is located in Lewis County in the extreme Northeastern part of the state. I have an older brother and sister, and was raised by my maternal grandmother, Mrs. Corinne Johnson. Had she lived, she would have celebrated her one hundredth birthday in 2002, born in the same year and in the same state as poet Langston Hughes.
  The African American side of the Tate name in Lewis County goes back at least 128 years. On my father's side, my grandfather Isaac Tate was born in Lewis County in 1875, my grandmother Daisy Burris Tate in 1880. They had at least twelve children. With exhaustive research over the past thirty years I've been able to trace my ancestry on Grandma Daisy's side back to the very early 1800s, possibly even to the late 1700s. My great grand aunt Harriet Dade, born in 1849, was a cook for Civil War veterans in Keokuk, Iowa.
  On my mother's side, I can trace my ancestry back to my great-grandparents, whose births were prior to 1900.
  I spent my first year of school in Lincoln School, a one-room, segregated facility for African American students in Canton. It had only about 15 students in first through eighth grades, and one teacher, Mrs. Birdie Nickerson. She was probably the first African American professional that I came in close contact with.
  At Lincoln School I learned to read. Lincoln School, which was built in 1880, was closed in 1955, when we Lincoln students were integrated into the "white" Canton school district. My sister and her classmates, who were being bussed some forty miles each way to the segregated Douglas High School in Hannibal prior to that time, had been integrated into the "white" system the year before.
  Lincoln School is still standing. Just get on Business Highway 61 in northeast Missouri and go north to Canton. This little brick schoolhouse is located in Martin Park there and is on Missouri's National Register of Historic Places. Lincoln School (and other African American schools like it) has a proud history. Those Black teachers who taught in those schools instilled in their students a firm educational foundation.
  You who are in all-Black schools today, learn, learn, learn and strut your stuff!
   In second grade I began attending the integrated Canton School District. After my first-grade friend Christine from Lincoln moved away, I think I became the only African American student left in second grade there. In third grade I remember reading The Wizard of Oz, the Boxcar Children, and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. My teacher's name was Mrs. Lasswell.
  A terrible nightmare that I had when I was around nine or ten became the basis for the first short story I can remember writing. I don't think I wrote down many more stories for a while, though. I was too busy playing soccer (in a dress on a gravel and asphalt playground)and softball.We girls played soccer with the boys. We had to be tough and not cry when we fell and cut up our knees on that gravel.
   I wrote my first "book" when I was in sixth grade. It was thirty pages long and it took me all summer.
   I still have that little manuscript -- proof that even as a child I wanted to plant my messages on paper, see them develop deep roots, strong stalks, and bloom, and share the blossoms and the harvest with others.
  The Lord has blessed me, because I have.
Copyright 2003 by Eleanora E. Tate

About the Author
(My Official Biography)
Eleanora E. Tate is a children's book author, folklorist, short story writer, creative writing teacher and former newspaper reporter. She’s a 1999 Zora Neale Hurston Award winner, the highest award given by the National Association of Black Storytellers, Inc., of which she is a former national president. She teaches children’s literature at North Carolina Central University and is an instructor with the Institute of Children's Literature,
West Redding, CT.
Her short stories, books, and articles celebrate neighborhoods, communities, and the families who live there.
Her book Celeste's Harlem Renaissance, the 2007 AAUW North Carolina Book Award Winner in Juvenile Literature, was published in April 2007 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. She’s also author of The Minstrel’s Melody (Pleasant Company, 2001), a Notable Children’s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies, and A Blessing in Disguise (Delacorte, 1995), an American Book-sellers Association Pick of the Lists. Thank You, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.! (Watts, 1990) is a Notable Children’s Trade Book and a Child Study Book Committee Children’s Book of the Year. The Secret of Gumbo Grove (Watts, 1987) won the Parents Choice Gold Seal Award and was a finalist for the California Young Reader Medal.
Her other books include Retold African Myths (Perfection Learning, 1993); To Be Free (Steck-Vaughn/Harcourt, 2003); African American Musicians (Wiley, 2000); Don’t Split the Pole: Tales of Down-Home Folk Wisdom (Delacorte, 1997); Front Porch Stories at the One-Room School, a North Carolina Junior Children’s Book Award nominee; and Just An Overnight Guest (Dial, 1980/Just Us Books, 1997), made into an award-winning film in 1983. Her short stories have appeared in American Girl, Scholastic Storyworks, and Goldfinch magazines, among others, and in anthologies Big City Cool: Short Stories about Urban Youth (Persea Books, 2002); In Praise of Our Fathers and Our Mothers, A Black Family Treasury by Outstanding Authors and Illustrators (Just Us Books).
Her essays have been in the Journal of Children’s Literature; Book Links; Obsidian Three; North Carolina Literary Review; The New Advocate; African American Review; and more. She wrote the introduction to Sayin' Somethin', Stories from the National Association of Black Storytellers, Inc.; and the introduction to Ronald Daise's picture book Little Muddy Waters. She was cited by the South Carolina House of Representatives and the South Carolina Senate for her contributions to children’s literature and community activism, and she received the Dr. Annette Lewis Phinazee award from North Carolina Central University during its 2000 Charlemae Rollins Colloquium. She received the Iowa Author award from the Des Moines Library Foundation.
Ms. Tate was born in Canton, Missouri, attended a one-room school, grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, and is a graduate of Drake University there with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Journalism (news-editorial). With her husband, photographer Zack E. Hamlett, III, she was co-owner and president of Positive Images, Inc., a public relations company. They live in North Carolina and are members of St. Paul AME Church, Raleigh. And they have a dog named Shaka Zulu who now has a column of his own.