Where do I come from? I come from Columbus, Ohio. I grew up in the Mount Vernon/Long Street area, a historically Black neighborhood. I’m from Elijah Pierce. Queen Brooks. Aminah Robinson. From Nigerian parents, my family, my friends, from a vibrant village of aunties and uncles. From composition notebooks, church hymns, art pens. Like the little boy in I’m From, written by Gary R. Gray, Jr., I come from somewhere.

That joy, that love, that deep, enduring pride is what drew me to Gary’s words. Gary grew up in Preston, Nova Scotia, one of the oldest and largest historically Black communities in Canada. How beautiful is it that we grew up in different countries, surrounded by different people and cultures, and yet our song has the same refrain.

Illustrators and authors customarily work separately from each other, and so while I pored over the history of Preston, Nova Scotia, and Gary’s childhood photos, we never talked directly until the book was finished. This I understand and at times prefer. However, I wondered to myself as I considered how to illustrate Gary’s story — why must the words and images remain divided on the page in their respective spaces? In I’m From, I decided to use Gary’s powerful words as an illustrative tool. I used words to illustrate the images and illustrations to depict the words.

I crafted a handwritten type with multiple glyphs so instead of using typed text, the narrator could speak directly to the reader in his own words. I drafted spreads like the bedroom and family scenes in pairs so the images could be in dialogue with each other. On the page, the type is personified, from the bus driver’s graffitied “SIT DOWN” to the scantron bubbles in “loooong school days.” All throughout I’m From, words are a powerful force. They overwhelm the page and the boy when the other students ask where he is from. Yet, it’s also words that raise him into a bright starry sky by the end of the book.

Like the narrator and Gary, my community continually lifts me up, but there are times when the heavy words of others weigh me down. I feel this now. I’m lost and unsure. I wonder why I try, why I create art at all.

But I know this feeling will not, cannot last forever. Art cannot be silent. Collage is a medium of pride, of passion, of declaration. The goal of illustration is to communicate, and to do so one must be bold, bright, and outspoken.

So thank you to the Horn Book and the Boston Globe for honoring a story dear to my heart. Thank you to Gary for trusting me with your life and your words. Thank you to Donna Bray for championing this book, Dana Fritts for challenging me artistically, and Steve Malk for your infectious positivity the whole journey through. And of course, thank you to my family, my friends, my neighborhood, and my wonderful readers.

When I feel lost like now, I’m grateful that I have a community that reminds me that “I’m from dreams… hopes, ambitions, lionlike traditions.”

Yes, “I come from somewhere.”

[Read Horn Book reviews of the 2024 BGHB Picture Book winners.]

From the January/February 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. For more on the 2024 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, click on the tag BGHB24. Read more from The Horn Book by and about Oge Mora.