Kwame Mbalia is a New York Times bestselling author and a former pharmaceutical metrologist (the science that deals with measurement). His middle-grade debut book, “Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky” (Rick Riordan Presents), is a 2020 Coretta Scott King Honor Award Winner and a Children’s Africana Book Award Winner. “Tristan Strong Destroys the World,” the sequel to this West African mythology and African American folk hero tale, is eagerly anticipated this fall. Mbalia says of his children, “They are my joke testers. … If I’m thinking of putting something funny in a book, I run it by them first. If they laugh or show interest, I know I have a hit and try to work it into the manuscript.”
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