Showing posts with label awards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label awards. Show all posts

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Good News from the Coretta Scott King Award Committee!

Okay, I admit, it's been a while since my last update, Oct. '08 in fact, but rest assured my pencils and paintbrushes have not been resting on their laurels! I recently finished a project for Random House, Who Will I Be, Lord?, set for an Oct. '09 pub date. It's a little different than most of my previous books, but more about it later. I'm also busy working on a couple other projects that will appear on bookshelves in 2010. But the real "giant" (hint, hint) news that I'm happy to report, is that I received the Coretta Scott King Award Honor for Before John Was A Giant! The call came early Monday morning Jan. 26th and I'm a little embarrassed to say that I was still in bed when a very enthusiastic Coretta Scott King Award committee announced the news over the phone.

Oh no, maybe I'm still sleeping and this is all a dream...The Coretta Scott King Award was given to Floyd Cooper for The Blacker The Berry. Kadir Nelson: We Are the Ship and Jerry Pinkney: The Moon Over Star were also given honors and Shadra Strickland won the John Steptoe New Talent Award for Bird. I'm so honored to be included with such talented people! The video for the announcements can be seen here - awards video. And if you're interested, here's a video of the ALA Committees calling the various award winners. View award calls here. - pretty cool.
In addition, Before John Was a Jazz Giant was also named an ALA Notable book for 2009.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Americas Award


I was in DC this past weekend to recieve the Americas Award for my illustrations in Poet Slave Of Cuba along with the author Margarita Engle. The award ceremony took place in The Library of Congress. Margarita was very appreciative and grateful to receive the original cover art as a gift from me and it was a pleasure for me to finally meet her. The book is listed for middle readers but is also an excellent read for adults. An award was also given to Jennifer Riesmeyer Elvgren and Nicole Tadgell for their book Josias, Hold the Book.
Here are a few more images from Poet Slave.
I finished work for the book in Sept/ Oct. 2006. Around the same time I finished art for Dizzy and How We Are Smart.
The book was fun to work on because no photos of Juan Francisco Manzano exist and the art was to be suggestive and poetic rather than narrative.