PAGES : Wedding History With ‘Humanness’

New Day Press is a Cleveland-based nonprofit corporation that grew out of a one-day workshop 25 years ago on “Books That Don’t Exist: Literature for Inner-City Children.”

In short order, a group of East Cleveland teachers had organized to publish a series of books about pre-Civil War black history.

Soon there were other books about well-known and lesser-known African-Americans--among them Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator, and James Forten, a leader in the underground railroad.

The books strive to balance historical accuracy with what the publishers call “humanness,” making them easy for young readers to digest and comprehend.

In its latest effort to help guide the dreams of youthful readers, New Day has published “Dr. Mae C. Jemison, First Black Female Astronaut,” the only book in print about Jemison.

With illustrations by a teen-age artist named Leonard Johnson, the book tells the story of a young woman who grew up to become a physician whose assignment on the September, 1992, flight of the space shuttle Endeavor was to study the effects of biofeedback on motion sickness in space.

New Day Press is located in Karamu House, 2355 E. 89th St., CLeveland, Ohio, 44106.