Loyalty can't wait to welcome Tracey Baptiste and Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich for African Icons: Ten People Who Shaped History! This event is free to attend and will be held digitally via Crowdcast. Click here to register for the event. You can also order a copy of African Icons from our website to be automatically added to the registration list, and there will be an option to snag the book during the event.

“In African Icons, Baptiste engages in the hard work of unveiling the myths about the African continent to young readers . . . This is a great beginner’s guide to pre-colonial Africa.”
—Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist

Meet ten real-life kings, queens, inventors, scholars, and visionaries who lived in Africa thousands of years ago and changed the world.

Black history began long ago with the many cultures and people of the African continent.

Through portraits of ten heroic figures, author Tracey Baptiste takes readers on a journey across Africa to meet some of the great leaders and thinkers whose vision built a continent and shaped the world.

Illustrator Hillary D. Wilson’s brilliant portraits accompany each profile, along with vivid, information-filled landscapes, maps, and graphics for readers to pore over and return to again and again.

Tracey Baptiste lived in Trinidad until she was fifteen; she grew up on jumbie stories and fairy tales. She is a New York Times bestselling author of Minecraft: The Crash, and a former teacher who works as a writer and editor. Visit her online at traceybaptiste.com and on Twitter: @TraceyBaptiste.

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich is the author of several children’s books, including Operation Sisterhood, 8th Grade Superzero, Two Naomis, co-authored with Audrey Vernick, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and it sequel, Naomis Too, It Doesn't Take A Genius, Above and Beyond: NASA's Journey to Tomorrow, Saving Earth: The Climate Crisis and The Fight for Our Future, as well as the picture books Someday Is Now, and Mae Makes A Way. She is a member of the Brown Bookshelf, and editor of the We Need Diverse Books anthology The Hero Next Door.  Olugbemisola lives with her family in New York City where she writes, makes things, and needs to get more sleep. Find her on IG: @olugbemisolarhudayperkovich. Web site: olugbemisolabooks.com

Please note Loyalty has a zero tolerance policy for harassment or intimidation of any kind during this virtual event.

Tracey Baptiste and Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich for AFRICAN ICONS