Maybe you've seen the posters around your local library or neighborhood and thought, "Who created that artwork?"

The Free Library of Philadelphia is thrilled that award-winning illustrator Ekua Holmes is our 2018 Summer of Wonder artist!

She is a fine artist, curator, and illustrator of multiple children’s books, who currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts. We love her use of collage artwork, vibrant colors, and striking, evocative portraiture. She is also a rising star in the world of children's literature.

Voice of Freedom, Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement, illustrated by Ms. Holmes and written by Carole Boson Weatherford, won a Caldecott Honor, a Robert F. Sibert Honor, the Flora Stieglitz Strauss Award from Bank Street College and was a Boston Globe-Horn Book Nonfiction Honor Book.

She is also the illustrator of Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets by Kwame Alexander, which won the 2018 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award. And we are so looking forward to seeing her upcoming picture book, The Stuff of Stars, written by Marion Dane Bauer, will be published in September 2019.

You might also recognizer her Google Doodle for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in 2015,

To find out more about Ekua Holmes, check out her website.

Be sure to join us for a special storytime with Ekua in Rittenhouse Square Park on June 11 at 6:00 p.m. Ekua will share her books and lead children in a hands-on collage project. Meet us at the goat statue!