A Friendship for Today

Patricia L’Ann Carwell McKissack (August 9, 1944 – April 7, 2017) was a children’s author who chronicled African American history and Southern folklore in more than 100 early reader and picture books.

Patricia L’Ann Carwell was born to civil servant parents Robert and Erma Carwell in Smyrna, Tennessee. She was inspired to be a writer by her mother who always read her poetry and also by her grandparents who told her many stories. Her father’s stories usually included the names of her and siblings Nolan and Sarah. The characters in these stories were always smart and brave, characteristics present in Patricia’s later works. Patricia and her siblings grew up in the south and they all remember the poetry her mother told by Paul Laurence Dunbar.