“These Hands,” written by Margaret H. Mason, was illustrated by Floyd Cooper, who has won many prestigious awards for his illustrations, including the 2009 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for The Blacker the Berry, written by Joyce Carol Thomas (Amistad), plus three previous Coretta Scott King Honors, a Da Vinci Award, and an NAACP Image Honor. He has illustrated more than 80 books. Floyd lives in Pennsylvania.
Gág used ink to draw outlines of cats and characters, as well as for shading and creating tonal qualities. She wrote: “I aim to make the illustrations for children’s books as much a work of art as anything I would send to an art exhibition. I strive to make them completely accurate in relation to the text. I try to make them warmly human, imaginative, or humourous — not coldly decorative — and to make them so clear that a 3-year-old can recognize the main object in them.”
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