Launch Party! Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie & Gordon School - Magic Will Happen

Join us on Saturday, November 21st at 3:00pm to celebrate a new book by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie inspired by Frances Martindale! Magic Will Happen - Launch Party! Magic is happening! The first copies of Magic Will Happen, the new picture book set at Gordon, have arrived. Magic Will Happen is a new picture book written by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie and illustrated by Laurel Aylesworth. The book’s central character is based on Frances Martindale, a longtime librarian at the Gordon School. Ms. Martindale retired from Gordon after the spring of 2026. As parents, coworkers and friends dreamed up ways to honor her work and secure her legacy, it seemed natural to write a picture book about her so that future students, at Gordon and beyond, would be able to experience Frances’ magic. Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie (MFA Mills College, Ph.D. Brown) is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, and scholar. Tallie is the author of We Go Slow (Atheneum Books for Young Readers) which was chosen as a New York Public Library Best Book of 2025, a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, and an NCTE Charlotte Huck Recommended Book. She is also the author of the Ezra Jack Keats Honor-winning children’s book Layla’s Happiness (Enchanted Lion Books), the poetry collections Strut (Agape Editions), Karma’s Footsteps (Flipped Eye), and the epistolary work Dear Continuum:Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation (Grand Concourse Press). She and photographer Dominique Sindayiganza were recipients of an IGNITE Selection Award at the 4th International Eco Performance Film Festival for their cinepoem Barefoot Stroll. Tallie’s poetry is the subject of the film “I Leave My Colors Everywhere.” She is also featured in “Tell Me Another Story” a film about the importance of inclusivity in children’s literature. Her first academic publication, The Unwieldy Otherwise: Rethinking the Roots of Performance Studies in and through the Black Freedom Struggle co-authored with Leon Hilton was published in the journal Performance Matters. Tallie is the mother of three galaxies who look like daughters.