Charles Smith Jr.

Charles R. Smith Jr. is an award-winning author, poet and photographer with over forty-five books to his credit. His awards include the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children (2025), the Knickerbocker Award in New York (2024), both given to a children’s book poet, recognizing their body of work. The Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration (2010) for his photographs accompanying the Langston Hughes poem, My People and a Coretta Scott King Honor Author Award (2008) for his biography on Muhammad Ali, Twelve Rounds to Glory. Many of his books, including his most recent, have made notable lists and garnered numerous reluctant reader awards, proving that kids that don’t like to read, do like to read his books.

Charles has combined his passions of writing and photography to create a variety of titles, covering subjects from basketball with the Sports Royalty series, featuring Hoop Kings and Queens, to Black history with 28 Days, to diversity with I Am America and I Am the World, to Greek mythology with The Mighty 12, to biography with Song for Jimi: The Story of Guitar Legend Jimi Hendrix, Bessie the Motorcycle Queen, and Major Taylor: World Cycling Champion. His photography work was recognized by the Earl Carle Museum in 2026 as part of an exhibition called CLICK! Photographers Make Picture Books. Selected images from his first book, Rimshots, were featured.

A few of Charles’s books