Creating Winning Picture Book Biographies with Don Tate

 Don Tate is an award-winning author and/or illustrator of numerous critically acclaimed nonfiction biographies for kids including (this is a partial list!) Carter Reads The Newspaper, No Small Potatoes: Junius G. Groves and his Kingdom in Kansas, Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions, The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch, Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton, It Jes’ Happened: When Bill Traylor Started To Draw, Strong As Sandow: How Eugen Sandow Became The Strongest Man on Earth, William Still and his Freedom Stories: Father of the Underground Railroad, Jerry Changed The Game! How Engineer Jerry Lawson Revolutionized Video Games Forever, and Swish! The Slam-Dunking, Alley-Ooping, High-Flying Harlem Globetrotters.

In today's fantastic session on crafting picture book biographies Don demonstrates the power of finding your next nonfiction story by looking for what was missing from your own childhood library and shining a light on the role models you wish you'd been able to read about when you were growing up. 

Little Don!

Don, growing up in Iowa, did not see black men as heroes in the books of his school or public libraries—in highschool he was assigned to read European folktales, Edgar Allan Poe, Thoreau, Steinbeck, Hemingway. Don felt like these books weren't for him, but for his white friends. And that didn't change after college when Don's new job as a book designer for an educational publisher had him designing guides for, you guessed it, European folktales and books by Edgar Allan Poe, Thoreau, Steinbeck and Hemingway.  But that publisher also had him designing a guide for a book he'd never seen before, Black Boy by Richard Wright.

It was the first time Don had seen a black male centered in a book, the first book he could really relate to. Don says that Wright's autobiography saved his life and is what made him a reader. Don went on to read the biographies of Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Claude Brown, Nathan McCall, and many more. Don saw himself in these black men in America who faced obstacles, most often racism, and how they overcame these obstacles to contribute greatly to the American story. All of which was so inspiring to Don that when he entered publishing he knew he wanted to create books that were missing from his childhood library with subjects such as these inspiring men. 

And that's just the first bit! The rest of Don's session takes us deeper into how to find your next biography inspiration (including thinking of heroes in our news today, not just of the past), he shares tips on research (we all bow down to the amazing resource that is librarians!!), and ways for artists to develop their written voice (super cool tips from Don and how he uses 'mentor texts').