On My Block: Stories and Paintings by Fifteen Artists

Fifteen fine artists portray, in words and pictures, the places and spaces most special to them.

Is there a corner of your block that you love to explore? A room in your house that holds a special memory? A piece of your home country that you particularly miss? A faraway place you’ve only heard about from an elder family member that excites your imagination?

Children’s Book Press asked fifteen gifted fine artists to portray, in words and pictures, the places and spaces most special to them, and On My Block is the remarkable result. The places these visual artists have chosen to represent are moving, funny, and unexpected. Readers will soar from the rooftops of South Brooklyn to the adobe-colored desert of Taos Pueblo, from a basement in San Francisco’s Japantown to a Mississippi Gulf Coast porch. A garden in Mexico overflows with blossoms while another in Tehran hums with the purring of thirty-two cats, and an empty lot in a bustling Havana neighborhood is transformed into a country farm.

On My Block is a celebration of community, an homage to neighborhoods across the world, and an exploration of past and present. The fifteen gorgeous paintings and stories ask you to ponder the places that comprise your world. What’s on your block, down your street, in another country, that makes up who you are?

Contributors:

Kim Cogan
Maya Christina Gonzalez
Yasmin Hernandez
Felicia Hoshina
Sara Kahn
Conan Low
Joseph Pearson
Elaine Pedlar
Ann Phong
Jose Ramirez
Tonel
Jonathan Warm Day