Books like Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat
By Javaka Steptoe
For the kid who scribbles outside the lines and colors the sky purple on purpose, this is a picture book that tells them: keep going. vivid, textured, citified, defiantly joyful
A rhyming journey traces hip-hop's roots from folktales, spirituals, and poetry through James Brown's showmanship to the four pillars of graffiti, breaking, DJing, and MCing that built a global culture.
A lyrical journey through the history of Black music in America, from spirituals and blues to jazz, soul, and hip-hop, packed with over 80 references to real artists like Billie Holiday and Kendrick Lamar.
A quiet, piano-loving boy — the son of a man once enslaved — grows up to compose music so joyful and rhythmic it earns him a new name: the King of Ragtime.
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 young painter defies a male-dominated art world by pouring paint straight onto canvas and pushing it with mops and squeegees, inventing a whole new way to make pictures.
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 proper young boy named Vasya Kandinsky hears colors sing and sees sounds dance when he opens his paint box — but will he dare to paint music instead of pretty houses and flowers?
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 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 true story about a young inventor who builds his own microphone from a broomstick, a cinderblock, and a telephone, then goes on to engineer the world's first solid-body electric guitar.
