Books like It Began With a Page: How Gyo Fujikawa Drew the Way
By Kyo Maclear
For the kid who's already noticed which faces show up in books and which don't, this is the story of the artist who decided to change that. Quiet, resolute, and moving, with moments of real historical weight.
A true portrait of an enslaved man in 1800s South Carolina who became a master potter, shaping massive clay jars and carving his own poetry into them despite the world telling him he had no voice.
A Black boy growing up in segregated 1940s North Carolina loves to draw everything around him, but becomes a football star instead — until his dream of making art finds its way to him.
A real-life picture book biography follows young Alma Thomas from a childhood soaking up color in Georgia to becoming a celebrated painter — teaching art for decades before beginning her own boundlessly colorful paintings near age seventy.
A young left-handed girl picks up her brother's guitar, flips it upside down to play it her own way, and by age eleven has written "Freight Train," a song the world would come to know.
An aspiring young musician hauls his double bass through busy city streets on the long walk home from school, weaving between crowds while music fills his heart the whole way.
A determined young dancer in the 1930s and 40s trains for ballet despite discriminatory schools, then refuses to paint her skin white for a company's offer — and rises to become the Met Opera's first Black prima ballerina.
A biography of jazz pioneer Duke Ellington, tracing his rise from playing pool halls and cabarets as a teenager to leading his orchestra through a groundbreaking Carnegie Hall performance of Black, Brown, and Beige.
A boy who loves to draw anytime, anything, anywhere loses his confidence after one careless comment from his older brother — until his little sister shows him a different way to see his own work.
A child piano prodigy flees revolution in Venezuela for the United States, and despite feeling lonely and out of place, grows famous enough to be invited to play for President Lincoln at the White House.
A girl convinced she can't draw jabs an angry dot onto a blank page just to prove her teacher wrong — and that single mark becomes the start of something unexpected.
With a baby on her hip and laundry still waiting, a no-nonsense creator demands light and dark, earth and sky, and every living creature into being — then sits back satisfied with what she's made.
A picture-book biography traces Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s path from a childhood in the segregated South to becoming a minister and civil rights leader, told through his own powerful words.
