Ludell

A National Book Award nominee in 1975, Ludell is the first book in a groundbreaking trilogy about a young African American girl growing up during the 1950s in a small Georgia town. Ludell Wilson is a bookworm and burgeoning writer who adores her best friend Ruthie Mae, her loving—but strict!—grandmother, and, of course, the new shoes and television her mom sent from New York. But Ludell’s grandmother has to wash floors to support them, and Ruthie Mae’s sister is a mother at sixteen. Would life be different if she, like her mother, one day left to go to the big city?

Brenda Wilkinson was born in 1946 in Moultrie, Georgia. Her works have been awarded the New York Times Book Review Outstanding Children’s Book of the Year and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and she has been both a nominee for the National Book Award and the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.