Young John Coltrane was all ears. And there was a lot to hear growing up in the South in the 1930s: preachers praying, music on the radio, the bustling of the household. These vivid noises shaped John’s own sound as a musician. Carole Boston Weatherford and Sean Qualls have composed an amazingly rich hymn to the childhood of jazz legend John Coltrane.Before John Was a Jazz Giant is a 2009 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book and a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children’s Book of the Year.
Two-time NAACP Image Award winner Carole Boston Weatherford is a New York Times best-selling author and poet. Her books include the Coretta Scott King Honor Book Becoming Billie Holiday, and the Caldecott Honor Books Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom, Freedom in Congo Square, and Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement. For career achievements, she has been recognized by the North Carolina English Teachers Association and the Children’s Book Guild of Washington, DC. She teaches at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina. Visit her online at CBWeatherford.com.
Sean Qualls is an award winning, Brooklyn-based, children’s book illustrator, artist and author. He has illustrated a number of highly acclaimed books for children, including Giant Steps to Change The World by Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis-Lee, Little Cloud and Lady Wind by Toni Morrison and her son Slade, and Before John Was a Jazz Giant, for which he received a Coretta Scott King Illustration Honor. Sean also created the art for Dizzy by Jonah Winter and Skit Scat Raggedy Cat by Roxane Orgill. His work has received two Blue Ribbon citations from the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books. Qualls has created illustrations for magazines, newspapers, and advertisements and his work has been shown in galleries in New York and across the country.
Nothing yet! Let Carole Boston Weatherford know that you want to hear from them about their book.
Nothing yet! Let Sean Qualls know that you want to hear from them about their book.
Are you the author or illustrator? Claim your book.