For Portland-based author Philip Hoose it's been a week to remember. He headed to New York knowing he had, statistically, a 20 percent chance of winning a National Book Award for his book "Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice." He came back with a $10,000 cash prize, a weighty bronze statue, and the satisfaction of having succeeded in what's known as the Oscars of literature. The book, which won the best Young People's Literature category, was inspired by a 15-year-old black girl from Alabama who bravely challenged the Jim Crow bus segregation laws a full-year before Rosa Parks' more famous stand. Hoose says he got the idea while working on another book.

For Portland-based author Philip Hoose it's been a week to remember. He headed to New York knowing he had, statistically, a 20 percent chance of winning a National Book Award for his book "Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice." He came back with a $10,000 cash prize, a weighty bronze statue, and the satisfaction of having succeeded in what's known as the Oscars of literature.

 The book, which won the best Young People's Literature category, was inspired by a 15-year-old black girl from Alabama who bravely challenged the Jim Crow bus segregation laws a full-year before Rosa Parks' more famous stand. Hoose says he got the idea while working on another book.

Philip Hoose: I'd written a book about young people in U.S. history and came across her story when I reached the civil rights movement. It was a such a dramatic story, she had done such important things for U.S. history, refusing to surrender her seat on a public bus in Montgomery Alabama a full year before Rosa Parks did the same thing, and then having the nerve to fight the charges in court - nobody had ever done that before. And then a year later having the courage to put her name on a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the bus segregation laws. That was just amazing. And I kept thinking - she did this when she was 15 or 16, if only she were still alive and could remember the young, the teenage girls inside those historical events, and tell them to me, what a book that would make.

Tom Porter: And you found out she was alive but it took a few years of pestering to get her to talk to you didn't it?

PH: She was alive and it took four years. She is a very private person who lives in New York City and has unlisted phone number. I tried everything, I couldn't reach her, and finally found a reporter who had interviewed her and the reporter agreed to act as an intermediary. I said "Would you tell her I'd like to write a book with her, about her life?" and the message came back, "Maybe when I retire." So did this about twice a year for four years and always it came back "maybe when I retire." I didn't give up but I had another project going and one night I came home in the fall of 2006 and there was a light blinking on my phone machine, I picked it up. It was reporter, and it said simply, "Claudette says she'll talk with you, here's her number. Good luck."

TP: And you set about talking to her about what happened. It happened more than 40 years previously, were you concerned about the recall, the accuracy of her memory?

PH: I was concerned about the accuracy of her memory, just what happened, when, the factual part, but I was more concerned about whether she could remember how it felt because after all that's the key to a story. I wasn't out to write a textbook, I was out to write the story of a girl. And she turned out to have a wonderful memory on both counts.

TP: Why didn't she get defended by the civil rights movement in the same way that they leapt to the defence of Rosa Parks a year later?

PH: It's hard to know. She was a teenager, she was probably harder to predict and control. Claudette thinks that she looked the wrong way, came from the wrong pedigree, she thought that the adult readers were looking for someone who went to the right two or three churches - Dexter Baptist Church, which was Dr. King's church - that they were looking for someone with lighter skin, straighter hair. She has a lot of thoughts about that. I don't want to put words in her mouth, but I think she's less any more offended by the fact that she was not chosen to be the poster person, as that she was not thanked or acknowledged at all. After all she risked her life again and again and again for social justice in a town. If you put your name on a lawsuit, it's on a paper. And that was just a Klan-soaked time, and she really put her life on the line. And to fight the charges when the police haul you off a bus for refusing to surrender your seat to a white passenger, to fight back, that could get you killed back then.

TP: So tell me about what it was like to win the award this week - you had Claudette with you didn't you?

PH: Yes I did, we had Claudette, we all dressed in black, it was quite a fancy occasion in an old bank building, which had been classily redone as an events center. When the moment came, just before the choice was announced, I said to Claudette "Look, we have one chance in five, but if I win, will you go with me?", and she said yes. So my name was called, I hugged my daughters, Hannah and Ruby, and my wife Sandy was with me, and I said to Claudette, "We've got all the time in the world, let's go slowly." So she got up and we held hands and walked up there, she ahead of me. And you know this ripple through the room, you could hear people say "That's Claudette Colvin, that's her." We very slowly got to the podium and I introduced her and thanked her, it was quite a moment, I'll never forget it.

TP: It's a book written for young adults, teenagers, why do you choose this particular audience with your books? What's appealing about them?

PH: With this book and others it could have gone either way, the material would have supported either presentation, but in this case Claudette and I talked a long time about and her basic question to me was, "Can you get it in schools?" And I said yes, if we publish it as a book for young adults, teens, if we do it this way with sidebars of information and so forth, we can do it. It's a strength of mine, I'm strong in that marketplace. So we decided to do it that way. It's a great story - it's the story of a girl. There's a teenage girl in the middle of all this who really did brave things and really, really suffered, mocked at school, not supported by members of her community, and how she handled that is captivating.

National Book Award-winner Philip Hoose of Portland.

"Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice" is published by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.

To listen to comments from Claudette Colvin herself, click here.