The Journey
A story
in the Making
Black Boy started off as a fun story I made up for my nephew Tiny.
Tiny is a restless little boy who will stay up all night if you let him. Late nights when he would refuse to go to sleep, hours after his brother fell asleep, Tiny would guilt me into reading him a book before he went to sleep.
A task I was happy to oblige.
After a few nights like this, I noticed Tiny wasn’t truly interested in the book I was reading for him. I assumed it was because he didn’t truly want to read the books, he just wanted to stay up as long as he could.
Oh, was I wrong.
Tiny wasn’t interested in the books.
It wasn’t until I went in search for books by black authors and for black kids, that I realized they were far and few in between. The few books I did find, Tiny devoured. He couldn’t get enough of them. He loved that the characters looked like him. He loved that the were “made like him” (His words.) He truly loved the books that featured Black Boy. So, I went in search of more books like that, only to find none really existed.
One night after reading all the book I could find featuring Black Boys, Tiny asked for one more story.
That one more story was the beginning of Black Boy.
Whenever I babysat or hung out with my nephews, I riffed on the childhood classic, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? In the midst of a conversation or even out of the blue, I’d stop and ask playfully, “Black boy, black boy, what do you see . . . ?”
It was a question and a challenge thrown down to the boys in my life.
Look into your future, I said, what do you want to be when you grow up? More importantly, what steps will you take to make that happen?
Only 7 percent of children’s books show characters of color, and only 2 percent of those books are made for black boys.
And there’s a big reason that needs to change.
As children approach 3rd grade—typically 8 or 9 years old—if they’ve failed to meet basic reading and writing standards, they’re often deemed “at-risk.” This means they’re often subject to “zero tolerance” discipline models—especially if those children are black, indigenous, or brown boys. It also means they’re included in the statistics the government tracks to determine how many beds they assume they’ll need in prisons.
This is the big thing I want my book to change in the world—I want to encourage little black boys like my nephews to read! Reading is the most fundamental tool that people have. If you can read, you can learn! If you can learn, you can grow. If you grow, you can be anything!
