Being You

Alexs Pate is the President and CEO of Innocent Technologies and creator of the Innocent Classroom, a program for K-12 educators that aims to transform American public education and end disparities by closing the relationship gap between educators and students of color. Alexs is also the author of five novels including Amistad commissioned by Steven Spielberg’s Dreamworks/SKG and based on the screenplay by David Franzoni, which became a New York Times Bestseller. Alexs’s other novels are Losing Absalom, Finding Makeba, The Multicultiboho Sideshow, and West of Rehoboth. His first children’s book, Being You, also from Capstone Editions, delivers a message of hope and self-discovery in a time of uncertainty in our world. Prior to these pursuits, Alexs has worked as a professor and teacher at Macalester College, the University of Minnesota, Naropa, and the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Creative Writing Program where he also received an M.F.A.

Soud is a freelance illustrator working in advertising, editorial, and children’s illustration. He has illustrated many books for children and young readers in his native Brazil. He won the Abril Award of Journalism for Best Illustration, and the Highly Commended Seal by FNLIJ (Brazil’s National Children’s Book and Youth Foundation). In the US, Soud illustrated Dionne Warwick’s picture book, Say A Little Prayer, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work and won a Mom’s Choice Awards Gold Medal.http://painted-words.com/portfolio/soud-3/