How the Word Is Passed (Adapted for Young Adults)

Remembering Slavery and How it Shaped America

by Clint Smith
adapted by Sonja Cherry-Paul

A must-read narrative that takes readers to historical sites across America, exploring the legacy of racism to help readers make sense of our nation’s past and present, and be better stewards of their own future, adapted from Clint Smith’s #1 New York Times bestselling and universally acclaimed How the Word Is Passed.

Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads young readers through an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—offering an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation’s collective history, and ourselves.

How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country’s most essential stories are hidden in plain view—whether in places we might drive by on our way to school, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods (like downtown Manhattan) on which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved people has been deeply imprinted.

Informed by scholarship and brought alive by the story of people living today, this adaptation of Clint Smith’s #1 bestselling, award-winning work of nonfiction offers kids a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country, and shows how they can reckon with the past and present to become better stewards of their future.

Ages 8 and up
Hardcover | 272 pages | Little, Brown Books for Young Readers | 2025

Clint Smith is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and was named one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2021. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling poetry collection Above Ground and the award-winning poetry collection Counting Descent. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul is a renowned author, educator, curriculum developer, educational consultant, and the founder of Red Clay Educators. She adapted the #1 New York Times bestselling Stamped (for Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You from the bestselling book by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi.