The Day You Begin
Featured in its own episode in the Netflix original show Bookmarks: Celebrating Black Voices!
National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson and two-time Pura Belpré Illustrator Award winner Rafael López have teamed up to create a poignant, yet heartening book about finding courage to connect, even when you feel scared and alone.
There will be times when you walk into a room
and no one there is quite like you.
There are many reasons to feel different. Maybe it's how you look or talk, or where you're from; maybe it's what you eat, or something just as random. It's not easy to take those first steps into a place where nobody really knows you yet, but somehow you do it.
Jacqueline Woodson's lyrical text and Rafael López's dazzling art reminds us that we all feel like outsiders sometimes-and how brave it is that we go forth anyway. And that sometimes, when we reach out and begin to share our stories, others will be happy to meet us halfway.
BEST DEALS
About the Author
The illustrations created by Rafael López bring diverse characters to children’s books and he works to produce and promote books that reflect and honor the lives of all young people.
His 2018 picture book release, The Day You Begin written by Jacqueline Woodson was a New York Times #1 Children’s Picture Books Bestseller and the recipient of the 2019 Jane Addams Children’s Book Award. Just Ask! Be Different, Be Brave, Be You, written by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor focuses on differently abled kids working together to create a garden. The book is a #1 New York Times Children’s Picture Books Bestseller and won the American Library Association's 2020 Schneider Family Book Award.
Rafael López has received three Pura Belpré Award medals from the American Library Association for Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreño Played the Piano for President Lincoln (2020) Drum Dream Girl (2016) and Book Fiesta! (2010). In addition he secured three Pura Belpré honors. Upcoming illustrated books in 2022 include The Year We Learned to Fly by Jacqueline Woodson released in January and The Little Book of Joy by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu due out in September.
His illustrations for Bravo! Poems about Amazing Hispanics were honored with the 2017 Silver Medal from the Society of Illustrators New York Original Art Exhibition. The book Maybe Something Beautiful based on his own work reclaiming neighborhoods with community murals secured the 2017 Tomás Rivera Book Award. Additional children's books have received three Pura Belpré honors and two Américas Book Awards for illustration.
He created a series of 54 portraits for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino. In 2022 he served as the first guest artist of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum giving workshops to children and families. He was asked by the Library of Congress to create the National Book Festival Poster in 2012, an event featuring best-selling authors, poets and illustrators on the National Mall in Washington D.C. He has created thirteen stamps for the United States Postal Service.
To learn more visit rafaellopez.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_L%C3%B3pez_(illustrator_and_artist)