The Autobiography of Ms. Cicely Tyson

The #1 book in the country is Just as I Am by Cicely Tyson, who died two days after its publication, at age 96. “In her spirited debut memoir,” our review said, “actor Tyson recalls her extraordinary life, as well as the racial and gender stereotyping, movie-business prejudice, and ill-behaved men that shaped her seven-decade career.” Several of her lauded performances originated in books, including her Oscar-nominated turn in 1972’s Sounder, adapted from William H. Armstrong’s Newbery Medal winner, and her Emmy-winning starring role in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, the 1974 TV movie adaptation of Ernest J. Gaines’s novel.

Winner’s Circle

Illustrator Michaela Goade received the 2021 Caldecott Medal for We Are Water Protectors, a March publication that, post-announcement, debuts on our picture book list at #17. Goade, an enrolled member of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, is the first BIPOC woman and the first Indigenous illustrator to win the Caldecott; the book was written by Metis/Ojibwe author Carole Lindstrom. Their “passionate call for environmental stewardship,” our starred review said, includes an author’s note tracing the story’s genesis to the 2016 Standing Rock protests. It heralds numerous forthcoming children’s and adult titles on environmental activism and climate change; see our feature “Vital Signs.”

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose

Brigid Kemmerer concludes her Cursebreaker YA trilogy with A Vow So Bold and Deadly, #6 in children’s fiction. We gave series opener A Curse So Dark and Lonely a starred review; in a q&a ahead of the publication of book two, A Heart So Fierce and Broken, Kemmerer told PW why the idea of writing a “Beauty and the Beast” retelling appealed: “There’s something that’s really fascinating about falling in love with someone for who they are rather than the exterior impression they give the world,” she said. “The person you fall in love with often is the person who sees you for who you truly are.”

NEW & NOTABLE

LET ME TELL YOU WHAT I MEAN
Joan Didion
#12 Hardcover Nonfiction
“Organized chronologically from 1968 to 2000,” our review said, these previously uncollected works “trace Didion’s development as an essayist and offer glimpses of late-20th-century social history.”

THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS
Stephen Graham Jones
#16 Trade Paperback
“Jones spins a sharp, remarkable horror story out of a crisis of cultural identity,” said our starred review from before the book’s 2020 hardcover release. “This novel works both as a terrifying chiller and as biting commentary on the existential crisis of indigenous peoples adapting to a culture that is bent on eradicating theirs.”