PICTURING A DREAM
Illustrator creates images for King’s famous speech
It was the speech that spoke to the heart of a nation torn by racism and the socio-economic divide, igniting the civil rights movement as few other public addresses had done before. And this year marks the 50th anniversary of that event — Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech delivered on Aug. 28, 1963, in Washington, D.C.
While schools and office buildings are closed to celebrate Martin Luther King Day on Jan. 21, Caldecott Award-winning illustrator and author Kadir Nelson hopes children will find the meaning of the day in his just-published picture book, “I Have a Dream” (Random House, $18.99), which includes highlights of the speech accompanied by Nelson’s oil painting illustrations. The hardcover book also features the complete text of the speech and an audio CD of King delivering the speech at the 1963 event.
Kadir’s artistry is featured in numerous other children’s books, including “Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans,” “Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led her People to Freedom”and “We Are the Ship: the Story of Negro League Baseball,” and is also on display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the U.S. Capitol and on U.S. postage stamps. His study of Michael Jackson’s life was featured on the pop star’s last album.
How did the book “I Have a Dream” get its start?
I didn’t seek it out; I was asked to do it by the publishers. A book had been done several years ago using a collaboration of several artists. This time they wanted to do it in a different way — with one voice — and they asked if I’d be interested. I’m at point where I’m not illustrating the words of other storytellers and authors,
Do you remember the first time you heard or read the speech? And how did you decide on the excerpts that you ultimately illustrated?
I memorized it in fifth grade, where my first assignment was to deliver this speech. Working on this book, I looked at it again, and it’s a very long speech, so I chose the most famous parts of it along with the publishers. We chose [passages] that would resonate most with children, parts that were a little more abstract, perhaps, that weren’t so tied to the ’60s as those would be a little harder for kids to digest.
When you begin the creative process of the illustrations, how do you work through that?
I do sketches first. They’re fairly loose but give me a good idea of what I would imagine them to be. Then I do quite a bit of research. This time I went to Washington, D.C., to the mall, and walked along the edge of the reflecting pool all the way up to where he delivered his speech. I visited the [King] memorial to get a sense of time
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