Kwame Alexander has a confession to make.

The award-winning children’s book author and global literacy advocate admits that he only truly came to appreciate the power of books because of … well, “a girl.”

“Being sort of uncool and goofy [as a teenager], I was always trying to figure out the best way to communicate with girls,” he said. “What I discovered that I did have, and a lot of guys didn’t, was a way with words. I knew how to arrange words and make them dance on a page. And, of course, that came from reading.”

Alexander will headline the next Authors! Authors! lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday at McMaster Center at the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library, 325 N. Michigan St. The event is co-sponsored by The Blade.

To be honest, he clarified, adolescence meant “rediscovering” reading after being introduced to the joy of books early on by his parents.

“My parents were my first librarians,” he said. “My father wrote 16 books; he was a book publisher — and my mother was an English teacher. From a very early age we were reading and writing, and certainly I enjoyed being read to as a child.

“But I think once I got to middle school I sort of fell out of love with books. I was being forced to read at home, and a lot of these books were these huge texts my father made me read. Both at home and school I wasn’t really being given books that I was interested in, so I sort of lost the interest and excitement I had as a kid.”

In February, Alexander won the Newbery Medal, the American Library Association’s highest honor in children’s literature, for The Crossover, which details the exploits of basketball-playing twins JB and Josh. Written in verse, the writer said it was designed to introduce children to poetry, while also targeting a neglected segment of the youth market: boys.

“I know I wanted to play outside with my friends when I was a boy, and my sister was probably more apt to be in the house reading a book,” he said. “If you give boys books that are interesting to them they will read, and that’s ultimately the goal. That’s what I set out to do with The Crossover, write a book that boys couldn’t put down.

“Books are like amusement parks; sometimes you have to let kids choose the ride. I think boys do want to read and imagine a world for themselves. But you have got to give them something that will connect with them. That really goes for anybody.”

Despite his early introduction to literature, Alexander didn’t set out to be a children’s book author. His first published books were written and or edited for an adult audience, including The Flow: New Black Poets in Motion (1994), Just Us: Poems and Counterpoems (1995), Crush: Love Poems (2007), and And Then You Know: New and Selected Poems (2009).

In 2011 he turned his focus to younger readers with Acoustic Rooster and His Barnyard Band, followed by Indigo Blume and the Garden City (2012) and the teen hip hop novel He Said, She Said (2013).

The Crossover has brought Kwame Alexander his greatest success, pairing a morality tale about growing up on and off the basketball court, with a keen appreciation of how elastic poetry can be.

His success has enabled him to found the Book-in-A-Day Program, where he’s taken his poetry workshop into schools around the world, and enticed 6,000 students to create their own books of poems.

He’s also been racking up frequent flyer miles gathering kudos for his literacy effort. In addition to the Newbery Medal, this year he’s received the Coretta Scott King Author Honor, the Penn State/​Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Charlotte Huck Award for Outstanding Fiction for Children.

While he appreciates those adult honors, he said he most cherishes the praise he receives from children. His secret? Tapping into the cultural lexicon of youth, be it sports or texting, and urging them to write in a cadence they know, he said.

“I say let’s use technology to our advantage. Texting is all about economy of words, which is all about rhythm, which is all about trying to make sure the few words we do convey have power. Is that not a poem? Is that not a way of looking at writing from a vantage point of trying to create something that’s memorable, even if it’s in a text message?

“Let’s take that and show students that you’re already writing poems, or you’re already writing in a concise manner. You’ve already got several of the ingredients that go into making a piece of writing behave. Taking that to the next level is something I try to do in my writing workshops.

“Certainly there are other tools, but poetry is the one I’m passionate about, and the one I see work the swiftest and most effectively. Even when you take the most reluctant readers, when they see a poem on the page, it has a lot of white space. It’s unintimidating to the eye. It seems easy, whether it is or not.”

Alexander defines literacy as “reading, writing, speaking and listening. The ability of all people to do all of those things, hopefully at a level that allows them to move through the world and take advantage of the opportunities, while also creating opportunities for themselves.”

As for why he focuses on children, the reason hits close to home.

“I’ve got a 7-year-old daughter, so I think my interest now is trying to help young people imagine and re-imagine a better world for themselves. I don’t know that I’ve given up on us adults,” he said, “but I certainly see a lot of value in working with children who have an opportunity to live in a much better place than we do.”

Contact Mike Pearson at mpearson@theblade.com or 419-724-6159.

First Published October 18, 2015, 4:00 a.m.