Christopher Myers (Illustrator) believes that "Illustrating children's books is a trip. SO many peope are starving for images. I think we are learning how important images are, how much they do. In a black and white 8x10 my gradfather, Herbert Dean, stares at my grandmother, a slys mile on his face. He was a storyteller. His thick, dark, calloused hands told stories. My father tells stories. I tell stories. I'm fascinated with work, what work is, who does work, how much our identities are wrapped up in what we do with our hands. Shoeshine boy, ditchdigger, painter. My grandfather laughed at my father's hands because they were too soft. Still I think he was proud of the fact that my father didn't have to work with his back. This is progress. My father is always working on something which he would ask me to research, mostly African-American and labor history. For example, my uncle worked in the coal mines of West Virginia. There was an accident. He would have died in the mine shaft had not a woman come by and heard his cries for help. She stayed with him for three days in the mine shaft until he got better. She sang to him and worked root medicine on his open wounds (spider webs as antiseptic). Later she became my aunt. My folks collect old pictures, antiques they call them. They finger through auctions and flea markets and buy little histories. Other people's memories that get left behind. I grew up breathing the dust of stuff others had left behind. Paging through our dusty files, looking for reflections of me. All these photos - images - are important to me. They have taught me things, taken me places. No matter how these images are trasmitted in the future we must acknowledge how much work we are doing as image makers. Trying to feed the famine."

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