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Shane W. Evans

Shane W. Evans has illustrated many acclaimed books for children, including No More! Stories and Songs of Slave Resistance, a Parents' Choice Gold Award winner, a Child Magazine Best Book of the Year and a Horn Book Fanfare title, and Free at Last! Stories and Songs of Emancipation, an International Reading Association Teachers' Choice selection, both by Dorreen Rappaport. He is a graduate of Syracuse University School of Visual and Performing Arts and now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, with his wife, daughter, and two dogs.

From the dust jacket of Art from Her Heart
In the Author's Own Words

History, to me, is an odd amorphous construct that people tend to compartmentalize and call their own, when in fact it is our own. Th word history itself is suspect. If you break the word down, it can be read as "his story". For the sake of how I feel, let's rename it "ourstory". It's easy to forget that, while individual stories are unfolding, a parallel "ourstory" is evolving. We are all connected and the joy and pain that visits others will visit us because it is our joy and pain.

Growing up in a racially mixed family, I had the unique opportunity to sample the cultures of two distinct groups. Society may try to categorize me as African American because of my skin tone, but do I ignore who I truly am because others can't see it? Through Doreen Rappaport's efforts and words I have learned about the person I am, but more important, I have learned about the people we all are. In the case of the author-illustrator union, when one person appears European American (white) and one person appears African American (black), what we have forged is truly a telling of "ourstory"...

...In this "politically correct" world, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that we continue to be divided by boundaries of our own making. We continually fail to realize that we are all simply human. So as you read the words and gaze at the images in this "ourstory," put yourselves in the shoes of these people who fought and loved so hard, for they are all of us.

From the Artists' Note in Free at Last

To learn more visit http://www.shaneevans.com

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