{"id":4883,"date":"2019-05-26T00:01:35","date_gmt":"2019-05-26T06:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=4883"},"modified":"2020-07-13T14:45:58","modified_gmt":"2020-07-13T20:45:58","slug":"7-imps-7-kicks-640-featuring-nicole-tadgell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=4883","title":{"rendered":"7-Imp\u2019s 7 Kicks #639: Featuring Nicole Tadgell"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“With a sling, Dede shot supper until even the prairie dogs grew scarce.”<\/em>
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\nIllustrator Nicole Tadgell<\/a><\/strong> visits 7-Imp today to share some art and process images from A. LaFaye’s<\/a><\/strong> Follow Me Down to Nicodemus Town<\/a><\/strong><\/em> (Albert Whitman, January 2019). It’s the story of a 19th-century African American family who saves money in order to leave the sharecropping life and secure land in Kansas. After they’re finally to able leave and stake a homestead claim in the town of Nicodemus, they create a home for themselves in the bank of the Solomon River; they survive a hard winter; they meet their Ni-u-kon-ska (Osage) neighbors, who bring them food; and young Dede, the narrator, gets a job shining shoes at the St. Francis Hotel. In the end, they have established a “home where they could tell stories, use the stars to guide them, and make plans for the things to come.” <\/p>\n

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Appended to the story is more context about the so-called Exodusters, the African Americans who joined the land rush to states like Oklahoma and Kansas in the 1870s, as well as a note about how members of the Osage Nation were forced to sell their lands and relocate. (The author notes that she bases the family’s neighbor on “one of the few members of the nation who were able to remain on the Osage Diminished Reservation.”) As the Kirkus<\/em> review notes: “The closing note acknowledges the displacement of the Ni-u-kon-ska people \u2014 another opportunity for exploration. That the many all-black settlements on the prairie have been whitewashed out of U.S. history makes this book an important one.” The Booklist<\/em> review notes something similar, describing it as an “appealing picture book exploring a part of pioneer history that deserves to be more widely known.” <\/p>\n

Tadgell renders the illustrations on a soft, sunny, hopeful palette. Here are some early sketches and final pieces of art she sent along. I thank her for sharing. …
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Early rough tablet sketches<\/em>
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More rough sketches<\/em>
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Completed drawings<\/em>
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Painting in progress<\/em>
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Cover sketch<\/em>
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Cover tests<\/em>
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Opening spread (sans text): “The <\/em> whoo-eeeh-follow-me holler of the six o’clock train rumbled right into Dede’s dreams. She rode across a prairie so wide even the angels couldn’t see the end of it. Her family had a plan.
They would own a place in that open land.”<\/em>
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“In Kansas, they found a wheat-worthy prairie, and joining a group of fellow settlers, they took the final trek to Nicodemus together. Working day by day,
they dug themselves a home in the bank of the Solomon River.
Dede was the first to use the door she helped her papa hang.”<\/em>
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“… That’s how the Pattons met Shanka Sabe of the Children of the Middle Waters.
The white folks call them the Osage, but they say they’re the <\/em>Ni-U-Kan-Ska.”
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\nHere is a timelapse video of Nicole at work …
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