tal in Brooklyn, New York. He was the oldest of
four children, having two brothers, Freddie and
Charles, and one sister, Marcia. They grew up in a
small one-family home in the Bedford-Stuyvesant
section of Brooklyn. As a youth he attended grade
school at P.S. 309 and later went to Art and Design
High School. From an early age, John, affection-
ately called John Lewis by his family, displayed a
strong independence of spirit and strength of char-
acter. Like most other boys in his neighborhood, he
spent time playing sports and getting into mischief,
but he was also quite sensitive to his surroundings.
Sitting in his bedroom watching how light made
different shapes and patterns on the walls was just
as important to him as roughhousing.
While receiving his formal art training at the
High School of Art and Design in Manhattan and
participating in the Haryou Act arts program in
Harlem, John embarked on his professional ar-
tistic career at age 16 when he won a contest by
submitting a children’s book. Although John de-
veloped a love for books early on in life, he was
saddened by the absence of stories about and for
black children. When his contest entry was pub-
lished in Life magazine in 1969, it received national
attention as “a new kind of book for black chil-
dren” and brought him attention for being one of
the pioneers this genre. One of the Haryou Act arts
program teachers introduced Steptoe to an editor
at Lothroop Lee and Shepard, which published the
story as Stevie in book form. Steptoe was 19 at the
time. Stevie is about the love/hate relationship be-
tween the main character, Robie, and a little boy
named Steve his mother is babysitting.
To publish “Stevie” in a mainstream magazine
like Life was a tremendous accomplishment for a
16-year-old, and the timing of Steptoe’s achieve-
ment also became a catalyst for reshaping the
landscape of children’s books. Steptoe’s books
created an avenue for black artists and writers as
well as for other ethnic and cultural groups to de-
cide how they would be represented by the main-
stream publishing world and received by their
reading audience. Steptoe was a pioneer in other
ways. In Stevie he proudly used authentic Bed-
ford-Stuyvesant slang instead of “proper” English.
In My Special Best Words he unabashedly revealed
the private parts of the main characters Bweela
and Javaka while Bweela potty trains Javaka. In
Marcia he broached the then unspeakable subject
of teenage pregnancy.
In his 20-year career, Steptoe published 16
books, 11 of which he wrote and illustrated: Ste-
vie (1969), Uptown (1970), Train Ride (1971),
Birth day (1972), My Special Best Words (1974),
Marcia (1976), Daddy Is a Monster... Sometimes
(1980), Jeffrey Bear Cleans Up His Act (1983), The
Story of Jumping Mouse: A Native American Legend
(1984), Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters (1987), and
Baby Says (1988). In addition he illustrated five
stories: All Us Come Cross the Water (1973), She
Come Bringing Me That Little Baby (1974), Mother
Crocodile (1981), Outside/Inside Poems (1981), and
All the Colors of the Race (1982). These works re-
flect Steptoe’s evolving style as an artist and color-
ist (the influence of his Haryou Act art teacher, the
African-American oil painter Norman Lewis), his
interest in the relationship between light and dark,
and his realism.
However, Steptoe’s childhood memories were
the inspiration for many of his early books. His
first book, Stevie (1969), was based on his expe-
rience of having to babysit his younger brother,
Charles. Uptown (1970) was based on the day he
and his friends sneaked off and went to 125th
street in Harlem. Marcia, a young adult novel, is
based on the teenage pregnancy of his younger sis-
ter. These themes of family and community were
always instrumental to Steptoe’s creative process.
In fact, Steptoe often used people in his neighbor-
hood and members of his family as models for
his work. In Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughter (1987),
Steptoe used his mother for the queen mother, his
nephew Antoine as the little boy in the forest, and
his daughter Bweela as the model for both sisters.
Javaka, the main character in Birthday (1972), is
named after Steptoe’s son.
Steptoe received numerous citations and
awards for his work, including the Child Study
Association Book of the Year (1969), the School
Library Journal Best Books award (1969), the So-
ciety of Illustrators Gold Medal (1970), the NewSteptoe, John Lewis 481