As a child, Benny Andrews drew “hot suns and red clay and little wood-frame houses that stretched as far as he could see. He drew Black people working in the fields.” When he grew up and moved to Chicago for art school, Andrews drew jazz artists in the clubs he visited, and janitors at the school he attended. After moving to New York City, he drew people in Harlem, “the happiness and sadness that he saw.” Throughout his career, his art was inspired by the people and scenes of his childhood and by those in his life in the present tense, including the burgeoning protests of the civil rights movement. A lovely, graceful picture book has a trim size suggestive of the elongated figures in Andrews’s paintings, which illustrate this admiring, informative narrative about the artist-activist that opens with a vignette describing his work with children displaced by Hurricane Katrina. An author’s note observes that Andrews work included “teaching both inside and outside the classroom.” (Ages 6–9)

Benny Andrews loved to draw. He drew his nine brothers and sisters, and his parents. He drew the red earth of the fields where they all worked, the hot sun that beat down, and the rows and rows of crops. As Benny hauled buckets of water, he made pictures in his head. And he dreamed of a better life--something beyond the segregation, the backbreaking labor, and the limited opportunities of his world. Benny's dreams took him far from the rural Georgia of his childhood. He became one of the most important African American painters of the twentieth century, and he opened doors for other artists of color. His story will inspire budding young artists to work hard and follow their dreams.