Here’s a new picture book review of an oldie that I used to read to my son called “Dancing in the Wings” written by Debbie Allen and illustrated by Kadir Nelson.
What is this? I have been working as a picture book illustrator/ writer since 2013 officially and I’ve been reading picture books since I became a young dad in 2004. In that time I’ve read nearly 700 picture books. Some trash, some ok, but with these videos I’m sharing my favorites! Watch all of them here. My last book is Fresh Juice.
What’s this? This inspiration board is one of the ways I stay inspired and sane through all of life’s trials, and tribulations, work, etc. I’ve been making inspiration boards full of films, books, music, events, people, artists, movements, and more for over a decade. Do you have an inspiration board? Please share in the comments. Who am I? My name is Rob Liu-Trujillo and I’m an artist working in kid lit, public art, and other disciplines. Go to my website, or follow me on IG or YouTube. You can also cop my first art book here.
Hey fam, my organization the Social Justice Children’s Book Fair got a $5k grant and will be fundraising over the next 30 days to match it dollar for dollar. If you’re unfamiliar with the fair I invite you to check out….
Here are some photos taken by photographer Mark Rea from the 2025 fair. Wanna see more? Check out this Facebook page or our website.
Short Mission:Bruh, make a kids book fair that champions social justice kid lit. Also, champion Bipoc, Queer, Immigrant, and Social Justice creators and kid focused orgs.
Longer Mission & Vision: Our mission is to promote social justice through the power of children’s books. We support independent children’s book creators to conceive, develop, distribute, and champion social justice-themed children’s books. We do this through our signature event, the annual Social Justice Children’s Book Fair, and other ongoing projects and initiatives.
We envision a world where children’s book creators have the ability to conceive, develop, distribute, and champion a diversity of social justice-centered stories that need to be told as they look to reach all children, families, teachers, librarians, and book lovers.
My Why: I believe there are some amazing stories about culture, class, race, gender, identity, politics, history, etc that need to be shared with a wider audience and I get to help facilitate that as one of many organizers of this fair. I believe in representation, being able to see yourself in literature early, and I believe in literacy for liberation and fun.
Accomplishments:
2 years of co-curating Youth Lit Day for Bay Area Book Festival
Over 2k attendees
Thousands of kids books donated to Bay Area students
Last Spring I began working with 826 Valencia to illustrate a book cover for the De Marillac Academy, a middle school in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. And I have a history with this organization as I read there when I was just beginning to work in kid lit and I took my son and his class on a field trip there over 12 years ago.
The thing I remember back then was that the folks who started the org had a sense of duty and wonder. Duty in that they were taking it seriously; the charge to encourage literacy and creative writing. And wonder, in that their organization was housed in a pirate ship! Imagine pirate jokes and 4th graders telling you that they are “published”.
And they still have that dedication as this book is one of several published anthologies of creative writing by middle school students. Here’s the synopsis:
“In these vibrant poems, students in grades 6-8th from De Marillac Academy explore their own potential and the comfort of the things they hold dear. They find refuge in the bounces of a basketball and uncover a quiet hero in a cherished eyelash curler. In these pages you’ll find heartfelt declarations of love to their beds and a tenderness towards the quiet world their headphones offer. Students imagine life through the delicate wings of a butterfly, the sharp mind of a beloved teacher, and even providing hope as a lawyer. No matter who holds the narrative today, in the future they are building, these students assert one thing is for sure, they’ll be the ones.
Here’s a bit of process art from the making of the cover.
Shout out to Amanda Boesen and Lucy Goseline-Ratliff who assisted me in narrowing down and refining the sketch until it was right.
You can see the line work here and the color directions. Ultimately it ended up being a combination of colors. The uniforms for the actual students are red and grey though so thats what we ended up using.
And heres the final cover illustration! My fav poem from the book was called “lies” and I loved all the pieces about their video games, favorite foods, etc.
About the organization that does this work and commissioned this art:
826 Valencia equips students with writing skills to create change.
We are a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting under-resourced students ages six to eighteen with their creative and expository writing skills and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.
Our services are structured around the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with individualized attention and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success.
And with chapters in:
Boston
Chicago
Washington DC
Los Angeles
Michigan
Minneapolis
New Orleans
NYC
and the founding chapter San Francisco(Bay Areaaaaaa) they are taking the task to the next level.
Dig this? Check out this book cover I did for Robert Alexander’s book “He Hit Me First” OR the cover of Libros Solidarios written by Luz Yadira Herrera and Carla España.
I can’t recall how I came across Ed Motta, but he is my favorite Soul singer from the country of Brazil! check out his work, he plays, sings, and writes.
What is this? This series is called “Stuff I’ve been listening to” and this is my place to share music that I listen to while I work, process, decompress, and live life. Some of it is new, some old. But I’m always listening. I share in the hopes that you will find something that inspires you. Please share with a fellow music lover. My name is Rob and I’m an artist and author from the Bay Area.
I think I heard about Brazilian Funk through an article from Afro Punk about their multiple day parties and found this banger through that search. It slaps. The slang is thick tho if you don’t speak Brazilian Portuguese.
Found this through Madlib! He had a mix from Brazil and had so many great cuts on there, but this is the one that stuck out the most and I’ve played this song 100s of times. Marcos Valle is still collaborating w/ folks!
This is a record my sons mother gave me almost 25 years ago. I immediately fell in love with this song though there are several with heart wrenching themes. Highly recommend it!
Man, this song. I was introduced to Jorge Ben through my sons mom. She was a huge fan and so I started to listen, internalize a few of the songs and this is one of my favorites.
For Brazilians, I know this is a bunch of old stuff sprinkled with a few current records. But, these are songs I love. There are some other artists I’ve listened to like Emicida, Anitta, Nego do Borel, and DJ Renan De Penha
This is an awesome story about collective action, kid power, and class set in Venezuela. Used to read this to my son when he was little 🙂
What is this? I have been working as a picture book illustrator/ writer since 2013 officially and I’ve been reading picture books since I became a young dad in 2004. In that time I’ve read nearly 700 picture books. Some trash, some ok, but with these videos I’m sharing my favorites! Watch all of them here. My last book is Fresh Juice.
Dig this? Check out my recommendation for Viva’s Voice
For the young fathers ESPECIALLY. Key point here is reading with them. It won’t stick unless you read with them.
Text:
Young Parent tip: If u want your kids to keep their reading game up during the summer, try making a trip to the library 2x a month to get bks for them you’ll read w/them and bks they like. Puzzles, comics, fotos, picture bks, etc count. -Signed a former young dad.
Dig this? Check out this film about Parenthood by Kevin Hart, Or this short film about the children of Black Panther Party members (The Panther Cubs).
Hey, here are a few photos from my visit to Renegade Craft Fair in Los Angeles. I was booth mates with Queenie from Dear Mello who sells plush bunnies Go check her out. Her and her husband were super sweet and this photo was taken by her hubby James Giovanni Pan.
This year was the first time in a while that I shared a booth so I worked on my booth a bit before I took off and coordinated w/ my booth mate.
Once the time came I got my stuff ready, packed up the whip, and headed to LA.
I got down there to this wide open field at LA Historic Park outdoors and lugged my stuff up to my spot with countless other artisans, lots of working class folks trying to earn a living.
Craft shows are work. You make the work, the art, you produce original or reprinted or manufactured versions of your work. You carry it to the venue and you set it up in a way that shows off your stuff and hopefully invites folks to become a fan, and ultimately buy this work.
I got to my booth where Queenie was beginning to arrive and we got to work.
Folks started to file in, some just passerbys and many loyal followers of Renegade Craft Fair which I’ve attended or participated in up in the Bay and Seattle. The show went pretty good for a spring show, I’d hoped to make more but I keep tweaking my set u, trying out different events and cities. The event was well organized and promoted for sure.
While I was there my friend and author Danielle Davis came by and snapped some cool photos of me. Thank you Danielle! I also met Tori Drew it who was cranking out drawings, Story artist Anson Jew, artsy couple Aishwarya Chandramohan & Brandon Liu, jewelry maker Aracheli Studio. That’s it for this show. After all was said and done I got some ice cream around the UCLA campus and headed back to the Bay.
Got damn, I just crossed the 2000 number mark on Etsy. To celebrate here’s a discount code (GREATEST7) for 15% off anything in the shop that will be valid until May 22nd. Hella appreciate the support whether you’ve bought something from my shop once or 3 times.
History: I’ve sold on We Buy Black, My own wordpress site (new store coming), Faire, and a few other sites here and there. But My Etsy has been the most consistent for the past decade. I remember the first time at a class at Parsons in NYC a rep from the company came to a class . I think Trey Hoyumpat’s class (2008). He broke it down, I started a shop but didn’t think much about it. I sold zines, handmade light switch covers, original art with affirmations on it, and that was it from 2008-2014.
Fast forward to 2016, I’d been sending out my postcards to art directors in the kid lit world since 2008 and after getting little to no response I launched my own kickstarter for Furqan’s First Flat Top and then distributed the book myself. That book and those that followed it reignited my imagination. I began to sell prints from the book and decided to go beyond those and illustrate kids of color relating to literacy, identity, and self respect. That really started to kick things off, it felt like it was serving a need for folks and myself, it inspired me, and it was affordable.
Although I’d sold original art before this lead to a series of events as a seller. Local events like the Malcolm X Jazz Fest, then later my first large events like the SF Etsy Emporium where the focus was on the artists, nothing else. Here’s a photo of my first time selling at Malcolm X Jazz Fest with authors Jill Guerra and Gualikuya Mariposa fka Melissa Reyes. And then at a holiday market in Richmond with my wife.
This was my set up at the 2024 West Coast Craft Fair, my how things have changed. Anyways, this is just a short walk down memory lane. I plan to release a pdf on how I got to 2000 sales. In the meantime….
Viva’s Voice is a sweet book about family, courage, protest, and labor! Def worth checking out. Ive definitely read this to my youngest child.
What is this? I have been working as a picture book illustrator/ writer since 2013 officially and I’ve been reading picture books since I became a young dad in 2004. In that time I’ve read nearly 700 picture books. Some trash, some ok, but with these videos I’m sharing my favorites! Watch all of them here. My last book is Fresh Juice.
