{"id":6678,"date":"2026-08-21T00:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T04:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.celebrateandlearn.com\/?p=6678"},"modified":"2026-02-02T21:07:28","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T02:07:28","slug":"birthdays-286","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.celebrateandlearn.com\/?p=6678","title":{"rendered":"Birthdays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Kwame Alexander\u00a0<\/b>(born New York, New York, 1968) writes children&#8217;s books and poetry. His verse novel <em>The Crossover<\/em> earned him the 2015 Newbery Medal. That book also received a Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award. He also earned a 2020 Newbery Honor Award for <em>The Undefeated<\/em>. Children can learn more at: <a href=\"https:\/\/kwamealexander.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kwame Alexander<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><b>William \u201cCount\u201d Basie<\/b> (born Red Bank, New Jersey, 1904; died Hollywood, Florida, April 26, 1984) was a composer, pianist, and bandleader who loved jazz.<\/p>\n<p><b>X. J. Kennedy<\/b> (born Dover, New Jersey, 1929; died Peabody, Massachusetts, January 31, 2026) wrote poetry and novels for both adults and children. His children\u2019s books include <i>Elefantina\u2019s Dream<\/i> and <i>Uncle Switch: Loony Limericks<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Arthur Yorinks<\/strong> (born Roslyn, New York, 1953) writes and directs plays and operas. He has also written at least 40 books for children. he wrote <em>Hey, Al<\/em>, which earned illustrator Richard Egielski the 1987 Caldecott Medal. Older children can learn more at: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arthuryorinks.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Arthur Yorinks<\/a><strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kwame Alexander\u00a0(born New York, New York, 1968) writes children&#8217;s books and poetry. His verse novel The Crossover earned him the 2015 Newbery Medal. That book also received a Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award. He also earned a 2020 Newbery Honor Award for The Undefeated. Children can learn more at: Kwame Alexander. William \u201cCount\u201d Basie <a href='https:\/\/www.celebrateandlearn.com\/?p=6678' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5801,6330,5799,5800],"class_list":["post-6678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthdays","tag-arthur-yorinks","tag-august-21-birthdays","tag-william-count-basie","tag-x-j-kennedy","category-4-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celebrateandlearn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celebrateandlearn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celebrateandlearn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celebrateandlearn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celebrateandlearn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6678"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.celebrateandlearn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30468,"href":"https:\/\/www.celebrateandlearn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6678\/revisions\/30468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celebrateandlearn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celebrateandlearn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celebrateandlearn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}