Sharon Dennis Wyeth

Sharon Dennis Wyeth is an American poet and author of numerous children's books. She is best known for Evette: The River and Me, which tells the story of a young girl, Evette, who is inspired to clean up the polluted tributary her grandmother once swam in. Wyeth's fiction was the basis for the first biracial American Girl doll, part of its World By Us collection. Evette: The River and Me was derived from Wyeth's childhood in Washington, D.C., where she grew up swimming in the Anacostia River, in part, because Black Washingtonians were harassed when they attempted to access desegregated community pools.