Vashti Harrison and Farrin Jacobs. Photo: Elyse Marshall.

Vashti Harrison cares. She cares about what she says and how she says it. She cares about words on the page — what they communicate and where they are placed. She cares about color and texture and how they help tell a story. She cares about her characters. She cares about her readers. She cares about kids feeling seen. Nothing in her Caldecott Medal–winning Big is an accident, from the slightly worn type on the cover to the girl’s hair pressing dangerously close to the edge of the page. (Dangerously, that is, for anyone whose job is ensuring a book is printed properly.)

When thinking about how to write a profile that could do Vashti justice, I realized I had a blueprint, and she had created it. For her debut children’s book, Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History, Vashti and I spent hours talking about which Black women to include, reading about the lives of so many who saw the world in a new way or were The First to do something. Over the course of three books, we worked on more than a hundred profiles of bold, visionary, and exceptional people, and Vashti is all of those things. So, in the style of her Little Leaders;­ Little Dreamers: Visionary Women Around the World; and Little Legends: Exceptional Men in Black History books, I present Vashti Harrison, a Bio.

Born in Onley, Virginia, Vashti Harrison could often be found in the corner reading. And — perhaps something she got from her father, a retired watchmaker who was always tinkering — she was always creating. Curiosity was a trait they shared. As he took things apart to figure out how they worked, Vashti drew and made sculptures and could turn anything into an art project.

A photographer friend of the family was the first artist Vashti knew. He gave her the first real painting tools she owned. Still, being an artist wasn’t something she understood as a life she could pursue.

In high school, she joined the forensics team with the hope of competing in prose or extemporaneous speaking. But Mrs. Carla Savage-Wells, a teacher who made a lasting impact on many young lives, steered her toward the “children’s storytelling” category. Vashti, a very serious ninth grader, resisted at first, but by her senior year, she had placed in the category’s state competition.

Vashti might not have recognized herself as an artist or storyteller yet, but others clearly did.

She continued to draw and paint but realized later that in those years she wasn’t truly creating — she was replicating what she saw in books, movies, and magazines, places where she didn’t see herself. It wasn’t until she took experimental film classes at the University of Virginia that she understood how to approach storytelling as an artist and how to use images to create meaning. Her parents suggested she go to law school next, but they could see it wasn’t what she wanted, and they supported her decision to instead get an MFA in film/video from California Institute of the Arts.

Vashti later returned to Onley, while she figured out her next move: she wanted to create books for children that made them feel seen. In 2016, she joined the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), and as with all her choices, she was intentional: she made it a goal to draw every day. She eventually got an opportunity to submit an illustration to a competition, and it won! That piece led to her first offer to illustrate a children’s book, and at an SCBWI conference later that year, she met the woman who would become her agent.

Not long after, Vashti began a project for Black History Month: she planned to illustrate one Black woman every day, write a brief bio about her, and post the pairing to Instagram. Within days, her posts went viral, and what had started as a personal project became the first book she would both illustrate and write. LITTLE LEADERS: BOLD WOMEN IN BLACK HISTORY was published in 2017 and immediately hit bestseller lists. It was a book she created for her younger self and so that Black girls could see themselves in stories and learn about all the things they could be or do.

In the years that followed, Vashti received a Coretta Scott King Honor for her illustrations in SULWE by Lupita Nyong’o. But BIG was the first fictional picture book she both wrote and illustrated. It was a challenging, deeply personal project that made people see and understand, and feel seen and understood. And then it became The First in other important ways: it was the first picture book to be shortlisted for a National Book Award, and when it won the Caldecott Medal, Vashti became the first Black woman to receive that prize.

About one of her artistic influences, Augusta Savage, Vashti once said, “She was a natural teacher, and she believed that her struggles were paving the way for more and better artists and that her legacy could live on in their success. I love that. I wish I could thank her.” With her work, Vashti has not only thanked Savage, but also ensured that future Black artists will feel the same way about Vashti Harrison.

We are lucky that Vashti had zero interest in law school.

* * *

When I first saw the sketch dummy for Big, I got the feeling, the one editors describe when a project hits that way. The steal-your-breath moment is obviously the double gatefold, and my heart began to race once I realized how Vashti was using the physical form of the book to tell the story. But for me, it was the image of the girl with her back to readers that kept drawing my eye (see page 28). I wanted to climb inside the spread and give her a hug. It wasn’t until much later that I learned this image was the genesis of the entire project. Vashti had drawn a girl in that pose, and then decided to explore how the girl got there, and how she gets out.

And so, she created a book about the girl making space for herself in the world, one that will comfort and guide others. And this book led to Vashti becoming the first Black woman to receive a Caldecott Medal, making space for herself in the world, and for others.

As Vashti has said, the girl in Big is not her, but it is her story.

* * *

When you get a bill in the mail, you see an envelope. When you eat part of a green apple and put it core-side down, you see a half-eaten apple. When you finish your takeout, you see another piece of flimsy plastic to recycle. Vashti Harrison sees, in order: patterned paper on the inside of the envelope that makes for a ­runway-worthy skirt on a cut-paper woman; Mike Wazowski from Monsters, Inc. (once you take a picture of the apple and draw an eye on top of it); and material for homemade Shrinky Dinks.

Vashti has said that you don’t need talent to draw — you only need to practice. I very much beg to differ. What is “talent” as it relates to illustration if not seeing things in a way others don’t? And turning what you see into art? (Obviously practice helps too. I once met Vashti for coffee, and she was carrying a model hand because she was trying to get better at drawing hands.) Her father told me she’s always been this way, always seeing what others don’t and always creating. But when I asked him to tell me one thing he’d want people to know about Vashti, his response was: that she is caring.

It’s a good word that encompasses who Vashti is as both a person and an artist. The world of children’s books — everyone who makes them and everyone who reads them — is lucky that she cares so much.

From the July/August 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Special Issue: ALA Awards. For more speeches, profiles, and articles, click the tag ALA 2024.

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