Kate DeCamillo

Kate DiCamillo is one of six authors to have received the prestigious Newbery Medal twice (in 2004 for The Tale of Despereaux, and in 2014 for Flora and Ulysses). Her first book Because of Winn Dixie garnered a Newbery Honor in 2000, while The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane won the 2006 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award. DiCamillo joins us (remotely) in a live discussion with illustrator Sophie Blackall on their soon-to-be-published collaboration The Beatryce Prophecy.

Javaka Steptoe

For children’s book author and illustrator Javaka Steptoe, “collage is a means of survival. It is how Black folks survived four hundred years of oppression, taking the scraps of life and transforming them into art forms.” In his debut work, In Daddy’s Arms I Am Tall: African Americans Celebrating Fathers, Steptoe showcased what would become a signature collage technique, earning a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for his effort. Since then, Steptoe has gone on to illustrate a significant body of children’s books, including titles by such authors as Karen English, Nikki Grimes, and Walter Dean Myers. More recently, Steptoe wrote and illustrated the biography Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, which was awarded the 2017 Caldecott Medal.

Javaka Steptoe earned his BFA degree from The Cooper Union in NY. Once a model and inspiration for his late father, award winning author/illustrator John Steptoe, Javaka Steptoe has established himself as an outstanding illustrator in his own right. Utilizing everyday objects, from aluminum plates to pocket lint, he delivers reflective and thoughtful collage creations filled with vitality and strength.

Sophie Blackall

Sophie Blackall works daily, crafting intricately designed images in Chinese ink and watercolor in a Brooklyn-based studio which she shares with a group of fellow children’s book illustrators. Blackall says that “as a kid I loved Richard Scarry books with their crowded pages of details and, as an illustrator, I love information graphics, especially 19th-century diagrams and medieval maps and mid-century science charts.” She pays tribute to Scarry’s Busytown and to bygone maps and charts, with illustrated pages burgeoning with mini-narratives, documentary portraits, and unveiled interior layouts. Blackall holds an “obsession with old things—especially enigmatic things,” and her illustration research leads this desire to “forage for the stories of other people’s treasures.”

Originally from Sydney, Australia, Blackall has enjoyed immense success as an author/illustrator since moving to New York in 2000. She is one of an elite few who have garnered two Caldecott Medals, one for Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear by Lyndsay Mattick (2016), and a second for her self-authored book Hello Lighthouse (2019). She has illustrated over 30 children’s books, collaborating with numerous authors including Amy Barrows (the Ivy and Bean series), John Bemelmans Marciano (The Witches of Benevento series), Jacqueline Woodson, and Jane Yolen. Blackall met with children in schoolhouses in the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Rwanda, and Bhutan in support of UNICEF and Save the Children and in preparation for her book If You Come to Earth, which would go on to win the 2020 NY Times award for Best Children’s Book of the Year.