In a 25th anniversary edition, landmark Newbery Award-winning novel, "M.C. Higgins, The Great, " is reborn in a new package. As a slag heap, the result of strip mining, creeps closer to his house in the Ohio hills, 15-year-old M.C. is torn between trying to get his family away and fighting for the home they love.

The recipient of nearly every major award and honor in her field, including the 1992 Hans Christian Andersen Award, Virginia Hamilton (1934–2002) was the first African American woman to be awarded the Newbery Medal, for M.C. Higgins, the Great. Renowned as a storyteller, anthologist, and lecturer as well as a novelist, Ms. Hamilton made her home in Yellow Springs, Ohio.