Book Launch: The Door of No Return by Kwame Alexander

Join Hugo House in welcoming Kwame Alexander for a conversation around and reading from his highly anticipated new children’s book, The Door of No Return (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers).

For tickets and more information please visit Elliot Bay's Eventbrite page here.

Along with our friends and colleagues at Elliott Bay Book Company and The Seattle Public Library, we are thrilled to help present this special evening with one of the most beloved and honored writers, poets, educators, and publishers anywhere, Kwame Alexander. He appears at Hugo House tonight for his eagerly anticipated new children’s book, The Door of No Return (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers). In it, an eleven-year-old boy finds out about life’s surprising twists and turns—towards death, towards a deeper knowing of life—in this extraordinary new novel.

“Alexander lures you in and endears you to Kofi and his world in a way that has you fully invested in time and place…His writing is at once vivid and simple, lyrical and surgical, expressive and exacting, comforting and cutting. It hypnotizes and sobers, hypnotizes and sobers, in a rhythm as timeless as the talking drum that carries the tales of his people: Kum-PUM PUM! Kum-PUM PUM! I wish this book existed alongside Huckleberry Finn when I was in school. I am glad it exists now!” —Lupita Nyong’o.

“As I read The Door of No Return, I kept thinking about how transformative it would have been to have had a book like this when I was young. This novel moves a devastating history beyond the realm of abstraction and fills our imaginations with characters who laugh, cry, love, learn, worry, and wonder. I will be thinking about this book for a long time. Kwame Alexander has given us a gift.”—Clint Smith.

About the Author

Kwame Alexander is the New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty books, including his Newbery Medal-winning novel The Crossover and The Undefeated, winner of the Caldecott Medal and Newbery Honor. He is the founding editor of Versify, which aims to change the world one word at a time.

About the Book

11-year-old Kofi Offin dreams of water. Its mysterious, immersive quality. The rich, earthy scent of the current. The clearness, its urgent whisper that beckons with promises and secrets…

Kofi has heard the call on the banks of Upper Kwanta, in the village where he lives. He loves these things above all else: his family, the fireside tales of his father’s father, a girl named Ama, and, of course, swimming. Some say he moves like a minnow, not just an ordinary boy so he’s hoping to finally prove himself in front of Ama and his friends in a swimming contest against his older, stronger cousin.

But before this can take place, a festival comes to the villages of Upper and Lower Kwanta and Kofi’s brother is chosen to represent Upper Kwanta in the wrestling contest. Encircled by cheering spectators and sounding drums, the two wrestlers from different villages kneel, ready to fight.

The match is over before it has barely begun, when the unthinkable–a sudden death–occurs…

As his world turns upside down, Kofi soon ends up in a fight for his life. What happens next will send him on a harrowing journey across land and sea, and away from everything he loves.