Ashley Lukashevsky is an American visual artist, illustrator, and graphic designer. Her work mainly focuses on social movements and issues, including LGBTQ+ rights, Black Lives Matter, and immigrant rights. [1] She has created work for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Planned Parenthood, and Rock the Vote. [2] [3]
Lukashevsky was born and grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii. She graduated from the University of Southern California in 2015 with a major in international relations. [1] [2]
She is the illustrator of the board book Antiracist Baby , written by Ibram X. Kendi and published in 2020. [4] The book was first on the New York Times bestseller list for Children’s Picture Books in August 2020. [5] In 2021, it was announced that Netflix would adapt the book into an animated series of musical shorts. [6]
She illustrated the Pocket Change Collective book series, which began publishing in June 2020. [7]
In October 2023, Lukashevsky signed the Artists4Ceasefire open letter to Joe Biden, President of the United States, calling for a ceasefire of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. [8]
Lukashevsky is based in Los Angeles, California. [1]
A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. With the narrative told primarily through text, they are distinct from comics, which do so primarily through sequential images.
The Randolph Caldecott Medal, frequently shortened to just the Caldecott, annually recognizes the preceding year's "most distinguished American picture book for children". It is awarded to the illustrator by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). The Caldecott and Newbery Medals are considered the most prestigious American children's book awards. Beside the Caldecott Medal, the committee awards a variable number of citations to runners-up they deem worthy, called the Caldecott Honor or Caldecott Honor Books.
Eric Carle was an American author, designer and illustrator of children's books. His picture book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, first published in 1969, has been translated into more than 66 languages and sold more than 50 million copies. Carle's career as an illustrator and children's book author accelerated after he collaborated on Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?. Carle illustrated more than 70 books, most of which he also wrote, and more than 145 million copies of his books have been sold around the world.
Ronaldo del Carmen is a Filipino writer, director, storyboard artist, illustrator, and voice actor. He co-directed and co-wrote the story for the Pixar film Inside Out (2015), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Suzy Lee is a Korean picture-book illustrator and author. She is critically acclaimed as an artist who explores the pleasures and tensions that lie between reality and fantasy. She is also known for her remarkable achievements in the field of wordless picture books, or silent books. She gained global attention for her three works – Mirror (2003), Wave (2008), and Shadow (2010), known collectively as "The Border Trilogy" – using the center binding of the pages of a book as a means to create a narrative crossing the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Wave and Shadow were respectively named by The New York Times as Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2008 and 2010. Wave was also awarded the gold medal for Original Art by the Society of Illustrators in 2008. In 2016, Suzy Lee was shortlisted for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, regarded as the Nobel Prize for children's literature, an award which she received in 2022. Lee has received a number of other prestigious awards from around the world including the FNLIJ Award Luís Jardim for the Best Book without Text in 2008 and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Excellence in Children's Literature in 2013.
Aaron Blabey is an Australian author of children's books.
Olivia is a fictional pig character in a series of children's picture books written and illustrated by the late Ian Falconer, the first entry of which was published in 2000. A computer animated television series of the same name inspired by the character premiered in 2009.
Grace Lee Boggs was an American author, social activist, philosopher, and feminist. She is known for her years of political collaboration with C. L. R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya in the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1960s, she and James Boggs, her husband of some forty years, took their own political direction. By 1998, she had written four books, including an autobiography. In 2011, still active at the age of 95, she wrote a fifth book, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century, with Scott Kurashige and published by the University of California Press. She is regarded as a key figure in the Asian American, Black Power, and Civil Rights movements.
Kelly Murphy is an American author, illustrator and educator. She is based in Providence, Rhode Island.
Lisa Hanawalt is an American illustrator, writer, and cartoonist. She has published comic series, as well as three books of illustrations. She worked as the production designer and a producer of the Netflix animated series BoJack Horseman (2014–2020), and co-hosts the podcast Baby Geniuses (2012–present) with comedian Emily Heller. She created and executive produced the Adult Swim animated series, Tuca & Bertie (2019–2022).
Ibram Xolani Kendi is an American author, professor, anti-racist activist, and historian of race and discriminatory policy in America. In July 2020, he founded the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University where he serves as director. Kendi was included in Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2020. Kendi has attracted criticism for his alleged financial mismanagement of the Center for Antiracist Research.
The Last Kids on Earth is a children's animated television series, based on the book series of the same name by Max Brallier, that premiered on Netflix on September 17, 2019 with a one-hour first season. A ten-episode second season, or "Book 2", titled The Last Kids on Earth and the Zombie Parade, premiered on April 17, 2020. The third season also known as "Book 3", was released on October 16, 2020 which ended the series on a cliffhanger. An interactive special, subtitled Happy Apocalypse to You, was released on April 6, 2021.
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America is a non-fiction book about race in the United States by the American historian Ibram X. Kendi, published April 12, 2016 by Bold Type Books, an imprint of PublicAffairs. The book won the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
How to Be an Antiracist is a 2019 nonfiction book by American author and historian Ibram X. Kendi, which combines social commentary and memoir. It was published under Random House's One World imprint. The book discusses concepts of racism and Kendi's proposals for anti-racist individual actions and systemic changes.
Baek Hee-na is a South Korean author of picture books, an illustrator and animator. She writes picture books with characters that have distinct personalities and with charming storytelling based on various illustration production experiences. Her representative work, Magic Candies, was selected as a recommended work and included on the IBBY Honour List in 2018 and produced as a musical in South Korea. Baek is the first South Korean to win the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) in 2020. Her picture books have been translated and published in several languages, including English, German, Chinese, Japanese, Swedish and Norwegian.
Netflix Animation is an American animation studio and a subsidiary of Netflix, Inc. It was founded in March 2018. The studio primarily produces and develops animated programs and feature films.
Michaela Goade is a Native American illustrator. A member of the Tlingit and Haida tribes, she is known for her work on picture books about Indigenous people. She won the 2021 Caldecott Medal for her illustrations in We Are Water Protectors and is the first Indigenous artist to receive the award. Her book, Berry Song, was a Caldecott Honor book in 2023.
Antiracist Baby is a 2020 children's book written by Ibram X. Kendi and illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky. The book, inspired by the author's four-year-old daughter, was conceived as a tool for discussing racism with young children. The book proposes nine steps for discussing racism, with the ultimate goal of teaching children to be antiracist. The book states that "Antiracist Baby is bred not born. Antiracist Baby is raised to make society transform" and that a choice is necessary: "babies are taught to be racist or antiracist—there's no neutrality."
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019 is a 2021 anthology of essays, commentaries, personal reflections, short stories, and poetry, compiled and edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain. Conceived and created to commemorate the four hundred years that had passed since the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia, the book concerns African-American history and collects works written by ninety Black writers. A winner or finalist of multiple awards in its print and audiobook editions, Four Hundred Souls has been widely praised by reviewers for its prose and historical content.
Stamped from the Beginning is an 2023 American documentary film, directed and produced by Roger Ross Williams. It is based upon the non-fiction book of the same name by Ibram X. Kendi.