Though I didn’t realize it at the time, reading her piece inspired in me a desire to be a part of changing the landscape for all of our kids. “The typical children’s picture books featuring black characters focus on the degradation and endurance of our people…These stories consistently paint African-Americans as the aggrieved and the conquerors, the agitators and the superheroes who fought for their right to be recognized as full human beings.”įor a few weeks, I walked past the article that I had since cut out and pinned to my vision board. But four years ago, I came across Denene Millner’s opinion piece: Black Kids Don’t Want to Read About Harriet Tubman All the Time. What made you interested in becoming a picture book creator?Ĭlothilde Ewing: Thanks for having me! Though I’ve done a lot of writing in my career during jobs as a television producer and director of communications, I never thought of myself as a writer.

But before long, Stella begins to wonder…are there downsides to keeping the sun up forever?īest of all, she was willing to answer some of my questions:īetsy Bird: Thank you so much for joining me today, Clo! I have a wide variety of things I want to talk to you about but the first involves your own personal journey. They enact their magnificent, wonderful, genius plan, offering the sun a cup of coffee, shining a light at it so it will shine back, and jumping on a trampoline to reach the sun and push it higher. If she can keep the sun in the sky, she and her best friend, Roger, can stay up for a hundred years! People only have to go to bed when it gets dark, and it only gets dark because the sun goes down. And there are so many better things you could be doing. If Stella had her way, she would stop sleeping on her sixth birthday.

Welp, the future is nigh! And Clo was kind enough to let me interview her about her new title STELLA KEEPS THE SUN UP.

In that group I had the pleasure of meeting Clothilde Ewing who let me know that she’d have a book coming out in the future. We’d talk about titles like James Baldwin’s Little Man, Little Man or Harriet the Spy. A year or two ago I was part of an interesting book group in Chicago where we’d meet regularly and discuss a variety of interesting children’s books.

Stella keeps the sun up