A Poem for Dudley Randall: Poet and Publisher of the Black Arts Movement
ISBN: 978-1-4197-5435-7; Publication date: September 15, 2026; Abrams
Here's the publisher link for the book too.
Description:
Thankfully, I understand poetry better now, and I love it. Today, I primarily make my living as a poet. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wake up each morning to write sonnets. And I can’t recall ever writing a haiku. “Onomatopoeia” and “alliteration” are fairly new terms to me—and please don’t ask me to define them. Given all that, you may wonder how I can consider myself a poet. The reason is that I am a full-time writer and illustrator of picture books for children.
When I first wrote A POEM FOR DUDLEY RANDALL, I used straightforward prose. As usual, I struggled with sentence structure and paragraph formation. I fretted over how to make my words sound poetic. Those first drafts were pallid, to say the least. Then I wrote the story as a poem—and it came alive!
Description:
The only picture book biography of Dudley Randall—a poet, publisher, and leader of the Black Arts movement of the 1960s from award-winning author Don Tate and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award Honoree and New York Times bestselling illustrator Laura Freeman.
Dudley Randall’s first published poem appeared in the Detroit Free Press when he was only 13 years old. He continued to write, and as he grew older, he realized that his voice could be powerful.
When calls for equal rights were growing louder during the civil rights movement, Randall wrote the “Ballad of Birmingham” in response to an incident of senseless violence against a Black community in Alabama—and suddenly, the world was paying attention to his words.
But Randall knew that most publishing companies were ignoring Black writers. In 1965, he founded the groundbreaking Broadside Press to give a platform to Black creatives like Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, and Sonia Sanchez, as well as his own work. Randall and his fellow writers used their literary voices to express pride in Black history and culture.
Integrated throughout the story as well as the back matter, Randall’s most famous poems help bring the story alive. Back matter also includes more information about the famous figures and historical movements discussed in the narrative.
Here's what Don has to say about being a poet and writing this biographical picture book about poet and publisher Dudley Randall:
As a child, I didn’t understand poetry and saw poets as highbrow, artsy-fartsy types who spoke in florid language and convoluted metaphors. Their symbolic and ambiguous language flew clean over my literal-minded brain. As a kid, I found poetry frustrating. Poems seemed mysterious, hard to understand, and weird.
When I first wrote A POEM FOR DUDLEY RANDALL, I used straightforward prose. As usual, I struggled with sentence structure and paragraph formation. I fretted over how to make my words sound poetic. Those first drafts were pallid, to say the least. Then I wrote the story as a poem—and it came alive!
Picture books marry evocative words and images. They tell big stories in a compact space. They distill emotions and experiences to their core. Poetry is the heart of a picture book. Dudley Randall often described poetry as an efficient, concentrated form of language, one in which he could say in a few lines what might take pages of prose. I finally understood these concepts while researching and writing Randall’s biography.
Unlike me, Randall discovered the power of poetry as a child. He wrote his first poem at age 3 and published one at age 13. He studied influential poets and poetic forms, marking up his poems with scansion. Randall became a poet and a publisher of other poets' work during the Black Arts and Civil Rights Movements, making their work more accessible. I look forward to introducing the story of Dudley Randall to children who may not consider themselves poets today but will after reading A POEM FOR DUDLEY RANDALL: POET AND PUBLISHER OF THE BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT (Abrams, Sept. 15, 2026).
About the author:
About the author:
Don Tate is an award-winning author and illustrator of numerous critically acclaimed books for children. His accolades include two Ezra Jack Keats Awards and an honor, the Carter G. Woodson Book Award, two Christopher Awards, a Lee & Low New Voices Honor, and a Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List selection, among many others. A native of Des Moines, Iowa, Tate currently resides in Austin, Texas, with his wife and son. Laura Freeman is a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award Honoree. Her work has been recognized with an NAACP Image Award, reached The New York Times bestseller list, and has been honored by the Society of Illustrators, and the Georgia Center for the Book. She has illustrated more than 30 children’s books, and her editorial images are frequently seen in The New York Times and other periodicals. Originally from New York City, Freeman now lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Congratulations, Don and Laura!
