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| From
the July/August 2009 issue of The Horn Book Magazine Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award Acceptance
Thank you to my family — Velma, Dayton, and Kai — for standing by me. Thank you, Henrietta Smith — for your constant support of me and my work. Thank you, Carole McCollough, Brenda Hunter, Martha Ruff, Jonda McNair, Alan Bailey, Eunice Anderson, and Robin Smith, members of the 2009–2010 Coretta Scott King Award jury, for your support, your commitment, and your courage. It takes audacity to dust off an old guy and bestow upon him this magnificent prize! I look forward to thanking each of you personally. Thank you also to EMIERT luminaries Deborah Taylor, Darwin Henderson, Myra Appel, Dorothy Guthrie, and Satia Orange. Thank you to my editor and publisher, Joanna Cotler, for your unwavering belief in me. Your patient guidance helped me shine, and I am very grateful. Thank you, Karen Nagel, the assuager. Production was not without its struggles, and you smoothed it all out. Thanks, Alyson Day, for being such a graceful go-between. Thank you, HarperCollins Children’s Books, for your ongoing support. Most of all, thank you, Joyce Carol Thomas, leader, true genius, the voice. For many years now, in many venues, I’ve proclaimed my answer to the “favorite author” question: Joyce Carol Thomas. She has been an inspiration to me since our very first book together, and our relationship has only mellowed with time. I count myself fortunate to have come under her spell. Joyce and I met for the very first time — on the dais — when we were being honored by the Coretta Scott King committee for our first book, Brown Honey in Broomwheat Tea, also a HarperCollins book edited by Joanna Cotler, some sixteen years ago. What an amazing privilege to return — full circle — with the same winning team! I was particularly inspired by the text for The Blacker the Berry, which, for me, is such a joyous and triumphant celebration of being black and praises the diversity in the black community. As an artist and parent who just so happens to be black, I felt that Joyce’s words spoke to my heart and allowed me to explore what I’ve always loved to explore as an artist: faces! Beautiful faces lit with wonder, faces that reflect our community and our humanity. I find it emotionally stirring that this particular book comes along at this moment in history where it seems we are finally celebrating blackness on a global level. As Joyce asks in The Blacker the Berry, “What Shade Is Human?” All shades! For this book I wanted to create a tapestry of faces all linked by the common thread of Joyce’s text — showing that all shades of black are beautiful, from midnight to biscuit brown. For the most part, the art flowed smoothly, naturally, off my fingertips, from Joyce’s poems to my art board. Working in such a trance was not really work, more like a sweet encounter with my own childhood memories. As I turned each page, painting my way through her text, I simply followed the divine power of her words, translating as best I could that magic in her poetry. As I thought about how to give the book flow, how to animate the page turns, how to give life to Joyce’s words, I imagined a sea of joyful faces, self-accepting and beautiful. Our standards of beauty are shaped — and for children of color sometimes misshaped — while growing up. I knew that for this book the most important thing was that I convey pride in self in each face, that each color of black be specific and each child be specifically appreciated. I wanted kids to see their own beauty in these pages. I illustrated this book using my subtractive method, where images are erased from a ground of color. If you’ve ever seen me demonstrate this technique, you know its potential for magic. The magic for me is when I demonstrate this technique for kids. Oh, the looks on their faces when the images emerge from the umber surface, as if just waiting to get out!
I am proud to be here this morning not just because it is such an honor for me to receive this award on behalf of The Blacker the Berry but because I understand how the Coretta Scott King Award is about so much more than an individual book. This recognition is a personal affirmation that brings me and my family great happiness after all these years as an artist and with eighty books published. Even more exciting to me is that — particularly at this fortieth anniversary celebration — the history of this award brings weighty credibility to the messages we seek to give to our future leaders, artists, and teachers. Joyce writes: “Colors, without black, couldn’t sparkle quite so bright.” It gives one ground to stand on when encouraging a young, struggling talent and saying, Hold fast to your dream, don’t give up. Thank you, librarians and keepers of books, for generating so much excitement about books. Thank you for the hand you lend in promoting brother- and sisterhood amongst children of all cultures through books. Great are these gifts you bestow. Some say we who create books are gifted. We feel this thing we do is our gift to the world, we try to strike a chord in kids’ hearts, harmonious and familiar, once struck difficult to damper. “That’s me,” one little boy said when he looked at a page of a book I illustrated. That image, an image in which he could recognize himself, struck the chord. I am reminded of a school visit in Georgia. A young questioner, maybe seven or eight years old, wanted to know how she could “get up in them books”; she wanted to be a model for a picture book: to her this was a big deal, a spotlight on her for the world to see. She wanted to say to the world, “Me, too!” It’s a basic human need to be recognized, seen, heard, loved, and portrayed with love. Putting the beauty of dark skin “up in a book” serves to promote its import. The Blacker the Berry highlights this worthiness. Joyce writes, “Because I am dark the moon and stars shine brighter.” We will become that which we honor. Your honor of this contribution gives hope that we are already well on our way to celebrating our many differences and that which binds us together. This acceptance of our creator’s entire palette, in all its glory, will truly be a revolution of evolution!
From the July/August 2009 issue of The Horn Book Magazine |
ood morning!
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