Indie-folk singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco will release her first book for children next year, the Associated Press reports.
Rise x Penguin Workshop will publish DiFranco’s The Knowing, illustrated by Julia Mathew, in 2023. The press describes the book as “a picture book with purpose, with heart, and with words that sing.”
DiFranco, widely known as both a musician and an activist, gained a cult following in the early 1990s before shooting to national fame with her 1996 album Dilate. All of her albums have been released on her own label, Righteous Babe, which she founded when she was 19.
She’s the author of two previous books released in the U.S.: a poetry collection, Verses, and an autobiography, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, which a critic for Kirkus called “a refreshingly frank and free-spirited memoir from a feminist icon.”
In her children’s book, Penguin says, “Di Franco weaves a story that incorporates themes of individual power and collective responsibility,” and that the book is “designed to be read aloud or sung, and pored over.”
DiFranco told the AP, “I’m hoping that young people will connect with the message I am sending out in this book—that underneath all the labels and social and cultural signifiers, we are spirit, we are love incarnate, we are one.”
The Knowing is slated for publication on March 7, 2023.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
