Black Boy, Black Boy, what do you see?

I see a bright future ahead of me!

A melodic mantra with a powerful message: Black boys can be a doctor, a judge, the president . . . anything they want to be!

Each page depicts a boy looking into the future, seeing his grown-up self, and admiring the greatness reflected back at him. This book is created to teach Black boys there are no barriers—if you can dream it, you can be it!

This book is for Black boys so they see themselves as the heroes of the story.

This book is for Black boys so the repetitive patterns help them learn to read.

This book is for Black boys so it will become a subconscious mantra—the things you say to kids become what they think. And Black boys can be anything!

Crown Shepherd is an emerging fiction, picture book, and comic book writer. Her writing is a result of her surroundings and upbringing. She has always been deeply rooted in literature and writing, but it wasn't until she found more writers that look like her that her writing soared. Those writers allowed her to dream and create by her own standards, and from a point of view of a Black protagonist. As someone from an underrepresented community, Crown knows what it means to have representation feed your creativity. The stories she wants to share are aimed at giving a voice to the voiceless.

Mychal Batson is a multidisciplinary artist and entrepreneur from St. Paul, Minnesota who has scribbled on pages and drawn in margins since he was old enough to hold a pencil. After graduating from Augsburg College with a degree in creative writing, he taught himself design and illustration. Mychal believes Black art and education is incredibly important, and that inspiring future artists and dreamers to create entirely new worlds using their imagination is a revolutionary act.

"Black Boy, Black Boy unleashes the world of infinite possibilities for Black boys. Through the book, they are empowered to discover the leader within and unleash their imagination for the future. They are reminded of the power, as Lorraine Hansberry described, of being 'young, gifted and black.'"—Dr. Artika Tyner, founding director of the Center on Race, Leadership, and Social Justice, University of St. Thomas