Part of what I'm doing with generations is that I try to express in my work pieces of my growing up years that I can look back on with great fondness - specifically, a sense of family.

There's probably more of a struggle to get material and narratives published that really speak to black culture. And that has a lot to do with the mergers and buyouts and the corporations being more in control of the purse strings. We find that the projects have to come with higher expectations rather than books that just should be published. That's disturbing because we might find fewer and fewer children's books by African Americans or with black cultural themes.

We live in a time when there is an abundance of ways we can express ourselves.

If you do the best work you can, the reward is ultimately your self-satisfaction - the sense that you have done the best you can. And then there's that piece of how others respond.

Receiving both the Coretta Scott King - Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award suggests I have succeeded, at least in terms of my own goals, in my intent to make art that moves children.

I have to believe that when I finish a project, that I will not only grow as an artist, but as a person.

All of us have places that we can go where we feel most complete.