Andrea Davis Pinkney

The daughter of a civil rights activist and an English teacher, Andrea Davis Pinkney “started carrying a notebook with me wherever I went... I had that notebook with me all the time: by my side, in my book bag, in my pillowcase, you name it. I wrote about everything that was important to me... I don’t know how I got the idea or the habit to carry this notebook, but somewhere along the line, I  did...Somewhere along the line, it occurred to me that a living, breathing person was writing those books, and that maybe I could do that.” Since then, Pinkney has authored several notable titles, including the novels The Red Pencil and Bird in a Box, and the non-fiction picture books A Poem for Peter: The Story of Ezra Jack Keats and the Creation of The Snowy Day; Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up By Sitting Down; and Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride. Andrea is also the author of the Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book Let it Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters and Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America, which won the 2013 Coretta Scott King Author Award.

Brian Pinkney

Brian Pinkney grew up in a household where art infused his everyday life. Brian’s mother, Gloria Pinkney, an author and artist, fostered creativity within the family circle. “When I was a child, my mother would pull out paper and we’d all start drawing. Soon drawing came to me naturally. My mother often found me in the corner drawing and would say, ‘Wow, that’s beautiful. Go show your father.’”* Brian’s father, of course, was the well-known illustrator Jerry Pinkney. Brian Pinkney would himself go on to illustrate more than fifty children’s books, authoring six of them, including the 1997 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award-winning The Adventures of Sparrowboy. Often utilizing his signature technique of oil paint over scratchboard, he has teamed with his wife Andrea Davis Pinkney on numerous titles including the Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra. In collaborations with Robert San Souci on folktale adaptations, Pinkney received a Coretta Scott King Honor for Sukey and the Mermaid and both King and Caldecott Honors for The Faithful Friend. For his artwork in Kim Siegelson’s In the Time of Drums, Pinkney was awarded the 2000 Coretta Scott King Award for Illustrators.