Here Comes the Band

Three starred reviews!

From Ezra Jack Keats Award and Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe New Talent Award winner Shadra Strickland comes a dazzling picture book about a young child who watches in awe as an HBCU band takes the field and works its magic.

The game is tied at seven.
A hush falls over the stands.
Get up and stand up, everybody!
Here comes the band!

Everyone has their favorite part of a football game, but at a historically Black college or university, halftime is game time when the band takes the field in this glorious celebration of the tradition and pageantry of an HBCU band.

Shadra Strickland studied, design, writing, and illustration at Syracuse University, then went on to complete her MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She won the Ezra Jack Keats Award and the John Steptoe Award for New Talent, presented by the Coretta Scott King Book Awards Committee in 2009 for her work on her first picture book, Bird, written by Zetta Elliott. Strickland co-illustrated Our Children Can Soar by Michelle Cook, winner of a 2010 NAACP Image Award. She teaches illustration at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. Visit her online at ShadraStrickland.com.

John Holyfield is a renowned fine artist and illustrator of numerous books for young readers, including Belle, the Last Mule at Gee’s Bend by Calvin Alexander Ramsey and Bettye Stroud; Meet Miss Fancy by Irene Latham; Mahalia Jackson: Walking with Kings and Queens by Nina Noland; and The Hallelujah Flight by Phil Bildner. John lives in Virginia. Visit him online at HolyfieldStudio.com.