The only picture book biography of Dudley Randall—a poet, publisher, and leader of the Black Arts movement of the 1960s—from Ezra Jack Keats Award Winner Don Tate and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award Honoree and New York Times bestselling illustrator Laura Freeman**★★★ 3 starred reviews! "An inspiring, informative, and entirely satisfying tribute.” (**Kirkus starred review)

From acclaimed author and illustrator Don Tate, the picture book Pigskins to Paintbrushes tells the rousing story of Ernie Barnes, an African American pro football player and fine artist.He realized how football and art were one and the same. Both required rhythm. Both required technique. Passing, pulling, breaking down the field—that was an art.Young Ernie Barnes wasn’t like other boys his age. Bullied for being shy, overweight, and unint...

Little Friedrich Müller was a puny weakling who longed to be athletic and strong like the ancient Roman gladiators. He exercised and exercised. But he to no avail.As a young man, he found himself under the tutelage of a professional body builder. Friedrich worked and worked. He changed his name to Eugen Sandow and he got bigger and stronger. Everyone wanted to become “as strong as Sandow.”Inspired by his own experiences body-building, Don Tate tells the story of how Eugen S...

Junior Library Guild Selection | Eureka! Excellence in Nonfiction Honor | CBC Best STEM Book List | Mathical Book Prize Honor | BCALA Youth Literary Nonfiction Award | Communication Arts Illustration ShortlistMeet Jerry Lawson, the Black engineer who revolutionized the video game industry, in this engaging picture book biography perfect for fans of Whoosh!: Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions and Little Legends: Exceptional Men ...

...a memoir that is at once dramatic, disturbing, sexually charged, and often very funny, but ultimately a moving portrait of a man who has found the inner strength to overcome....- Paul Ham, international journalist and authorThis is a complex, virtuoso analysis of an Australian life written by an unabashed and unrepentant authoran acidic dissection of the role that genes and environment have in developing a persons character, as well as a sauntering chronicle of s...

The War Within is a complex, virtuoso analysis of an Australian life written by an unabashed and unrepentant author- an acidic dissertation on the roles of genes, environment and litany of trauma play in developing a person's character, and at the same time, a sauntering chronicle of social mores. In turn, we follow the life of the author as he comes to terms with male status anxiety- apparently inexhaustible in its capacity to cause suffering. Along the way, Tate examines the dark crevice...

From award-winning author-illustrator Don Tate comes a remarkable picture book biography of William Still, known as Father of the Underground Railroad.William Still's parents escaped slavery but had to leave two of their children behind, a tragedy that haunted the family. As a young man, William went to work for the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, where he raised money, planned rescues, and helped freedom seekers who had traveled north. One day, a strangely familiar man came into...

George loved words. Enslaved and forced to work long hours, he was unable to attend school or learn how to read.But he was determined?he listened to the white children's lessons and learned the alphabet. Then he taught himself to read.Soon, he began composing poetry in his head and reciting it aloud as he sold fruits and vegetables on a nearby college campus. News of the enslaved poet traveled quickly among the students, and before long, George had customer...

The inspiring biography of self-taught (outsider) artist Bill Traylor, a former slave who at the age of eighty-five began to draw pictures based on his memories and observations of rural and urban life in Alabama.Growing up as an enslaved boy on an Alabama cotton farm, Bill Traylor worked all day in the hot fields. When slavery ended, Bill's family stayed on the farm as sharecroppers. There Bill grew to manhood, raised his own family, and cared for the land and his...

William Still’s parents escaped slavery but had to leave two of their children behind, a tragedy that haunted the family. As a young man, William went to work for the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, where he raised money, planned rescues, and helped freedom seekers who had traveled north. And then one day, a strangely familiar man came into William’s office, searching for information about his long-lost family. Could it be? Motivated by his own family’s experience, William began collect...

A cool idea with a big splashYou know the Super Soaker. It’s one of top twenty toys of all time. And it was invented entirely by accident. Trying to create a new cooling system for rockets, impressive inventor Lonnie Johnson instead created the mechanics for the iconic toy.A love for rockets, robots, inventions, and a mind for creativity began early in Lonnie Johnson’s life. Growing up in a house full of brothers and sisters, persistence and a passion for problem solving be...

**Essential Black History ReadingThe first-ever picture book biography of Carter G. Woodson, the Father of Black History MonthCarter G. Woodson Book Award (Honor Book), NCSSParents' Choice Silver Honor AwardChicago Public Library Best of the Best BookTop 10 Books for Kids ?New York Public LibraryBest Children's Books of the Year (Starred) ?Bank Street College of Education"An important and inspiring tale well told." ?**Kirkus R...