When asked about his work, Tom Feelings says, "I am a storyteller in picture form who tries to reflect and interpret the lives and experiences of the people who gave me life.  When I am asked who I am, I say I am an African who was born in America.  Both answers connect me specifically with my past and present... therefore, I bring to my art a quality which is rooted in the culture of Africa... and expanded by the experience of being black in America."  For more than twenty years, Tom Feelings has established a tradition of award-winning books for children and young adults.  He received Caldecott honors for Mojo Means One: A Swahili Counting Book and Jambo Means Hello: A Swahili Alphabet Book, both written by Muriel Feelings, as well as a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award three times, most recently for his haunting masterpiece, The Middle Passage, a project which took twenty years to complete. A retired art professor, Mr. Feelings lives in Columbia, South Carolina.
 

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     The Middle Passage