One Maryland One Book

2025 Selection: Kin: Rooted in Hope

The One Maryland One Book selection for 2025 is Kin: Rooted in Hope by Carole Boston Weatherford with art by Jeffery Boston Weatherford.

A multi-generational family history told in the voices of the author's ancestors, spanning enslavement alongside Frederick Douglass at Maryland's Wye House plantation, service in the U.S. Colored Troops, and the founding of all-Black Reconstruction-era communities.

Poet and children’s author Carole Boston Weatherford and her son, artist Jeffery Boston Weatherford, collaborated on this book that gives voice to their earliest enslaved ancestors back to the founding of Maryland. With each poem and its accompanying illustration, Carole and Jeffery tell their family story through each of their kin and the world they lived in: the Chesapeake Bay, the plantation house, Frederick Douglass, Harriett Tubman, and more. The selection committee was enthralled by how Kin uses art and poetry to illuminate what can’t be said by historical records (when they are available), in a vital story that is about Maryland’s past and its present.

Hybrid in form, and even more expansive in what it has to say, Kin: Rooted in Hope is a book created by, and about, a Black family and its generations.

Visit the Maryland Humanities website for more information, including frequently asked questions. One Maryland One Book is a program of the Maryland Center for the Book at Maryland Humanities.

How To Participate

All Marylanders can participate in One Maryland One Book!

Get involved by checking out a copy of Kin: Rooted in Hope  from the Pratt Library.

Each year, more than 10,000 Marylanders read the One Maryland One Book. How many of those people are your friends or family members? How many are perfect strangers you sit next to on the train or stand in line with at the grocery store? Use the book to jump-start a meaningful conversation with an old friend or make a new one.

Check back this fall for Pratt Library's One Maryland One Book community events including book discussions, themed events, and more.