What’s New in Our World

Thank you for celebrating our 28 Days Later campaign. It’s our 12th year honoring outstanding Black children’s book creators. We’re filled with pride at the amazing work they do and are inspired by their stories of grit, perseverance and creativity. Ten Black children’s book authors and illustrators make up our Brown Bookshelf family. Our mission [ Read the full article… ]

Book Party – No Small Potatoes

Last I looked, BBS Don Tate was one busy author/illustrator. Blink and you’ll miss his latest, No Small Potatoes: Junius G. Groves and His Kingdom in Kansas, a wonderful tale about hard work paying off with author, Tonya Bolden. The Buzz on No Small Potatoes “The mixed-media illustrations, awash in blues, greens, and browns, successfully [ Read the full article… ]

Book Party – Naomis Too

What do you do after launching a successful MG novel about blending families? Why follow it with a sequel, of course. Help us celebrate our Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich and the book birthday of Naomi’s Too. Co-authored by Audrey Vernick, Naomi’s Too follows Naomi E. and Naomi Marie as they try to navigate their new lives as step sisters. In this sequel to Two [ Read the full article… ]

Black Kids on Covers

This is a wonderful time in children’s book publishing, where the faces of black girls and boys on covers is not an anomaly. When I was a kid, I almost never saw myself on the cover of a book, and certainly not ones as spectacular as those upcoming in the next few months. There was [ Read the full article… ]

Javaka Steptoe On The Sounds of a Rainbow

Javaka Steptoe is an award-winning, eclectic artist, designer, and illustrator. His debut work, In Daddy’s Arms I Am Tall: African Americans Celebrating Fathers, earned him the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award, a nomination for Outstanding Children’s Literature Work at the 1998 NAACP Image Awards, and countless other honors. More accolades followed for his work on [ Read the full article… ]