Kelly Starling Lyons writes children's books about African-American characters. But if color is all you see in her stories, you're missing a lot. Though grounded in African-American history, Kelly's stories are really intimate portraits of family relationships at some of life's key turning points.
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Kelly Starling Lyons writes children's books about African-American characters. But if color is all you see in her stories, you're missing a lot. Though grounded in African-American history, Kelly's stories are really intimate portraits of family relationships at some of life's key turning points.
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Narrator Eileen Heyes: Kelly Starling Lyons writes children’s books about African-American characters. But if color is all you see in her stories, you’re missing a lot.
Kelly Starling Lyons: The kind of books that I write, they’re often grounded in African-American history, but they all celebrate family relationships. And I want to be sure that people understand that my books are for everyone. And as I talk about African-American history, I also talk about the relationship between kids and their elders, and children and their siblings and children and their friends.
Narrator: She has a knack for looking at those familiar relationships in eye-opening ways. Take, for example, the picture book she’s got coming out in fall of 2012.
Kelly: And that’s called “Teacakes for Tosh.” That was inspired by my relationship with my grandmother. I made Tosh a boy in the story, but it’s really very...
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Intro and Outro
INTRO:Kelly Starling Lyons looked at the Million Man March through the eyes of a little girl on her daddy's shoulders, in her picture book "One Million Men and Me." So it's not surprising that the author's two new picture books also look at family relationships in ways you might not expect.
OUTRO:Kelly Starling Lyons lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.
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