JAVAKA STEPTOE is an outstanding artist/educator who utilizes everyday objects from aluminum plates to pocket lint, and sometimes a jigsaw and paint.  He wasonce a model and inspiration for his father, the late African American award winning author/illustrator John Steptoe. Following in his fathers footsteps his debut work, In Daddy’s Arms I Am Tall: African Americans Celebrating Fathers, earned him honors including the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award, and a NAACP mage Award nomination for Outstanding Children’s Literature.  Honors for his book  Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean Michel Basquiat  include the 2017 Caldecott Medal and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award.  Steptoe has illustrated thirteen books and is known for his reflective and thoughtful collage creations filled with vitality, playful energy and strength. He creates both personal and universal art that celebrates the richness of our collective past and memory. 

RADIANT CHILD – THE STORY OF YOUNG ARTIST JEAN MICHELE BASQUIAT

Radiant Child – The Story Of Young Artist Jean Michele Basquiat: The Story Of Young Artist Jean Michele Basquiat  is the winner  of the 2017 Caldecott Medal and Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration. This visually stunning picture book biography about modern art phenomenon Jean-Michel Basquiat, is written and illustrated by Javaka Steptoe.

Jean-Michael Basquiat and his unique, collage-style paintings rocked to fame in the 1980s as a cultural phenomenon unlike anything the art work had ever seen. But before that, he was a little boy who saw art everywhere: in poetry books and museums, in games and in the words that we speak, and in the pulsing energy of New York City. Javaka Steptoe’s vivid text and bold artwork introduce young readers to the powerful message that art doesn’t always have to be neat or clean–and definitely not inside the lines–to be beautiful.