Virginia Hamilton was the author of over forty books for young people, including The House of Dies Drear, The People Could Fly, M. C. Higgins the Great, Her Stories, and The Planet of Junior Brown. She was the first Black writer to win a Newbery Medal and won many significant other awards including the Newbery Honor, Coretta Scott King Award, National Book Award, Boston Globe / Horn Book Award, Children's Literature Legacy Award, and Hans Christian Andersen Award. She was the first children's book author to be awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant, and in 2010 the ALA established the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award in her honor, to recognize an African American author, illustrator, or author/illustrator's significant and lasting contribution to children's literature. Hamilton passed away in 2002 at the age of sixty-six.