Jan Spivey Gilchrist

Jan Spivey Gilchrist is an American author, illustrator, and fine artist from Chicago, Illinois. She is most well known for her work in children's literature, especially illustrations in The Great Migration: Journey to the North, Nathaniel Talking, and My America. Her books have received numerous awards including the Coretta Scott King Medal for Illustration and the Parents' Choice Award.

Early life Jan Spivey Gilchrist was born February 15, 1949, in Chicago, Illinois, to Charles and Arthric Spivey.

During her undergraduate program, Gilchrist married Arthur Johnson on August 1, 1970. Gilchrist and Johnson divorced in August 1980. Gilchrist married Kelvin Keith Gilchrist on September 5, 1983. They had one son. Greenfield & Gilchrist published their first collaboration, the book Nathaniel Talking, in 1989. They have published 27 works together to date. Greenfield credits their productive and prolific working relationship to the mutual respect they have for each other's work and artistic processes. Gilchrist has also collaborated on two books, The Baby (1994) and Waiting for Christmas (1996) with Greenfield's daughter Monica Greenfield.

Since her first publication, Gilchrist has worked on 73 other children's books. Though she has primarily worked as an illustrator for other authors, Gilchrist has written and self-illustrated several books. Her second, Madelia, published in 1997, tells the story of a young African American girl who would rather get lost in her painting than attend her father's sermons in church.

She continues to write and illustrate children's books from her home near Chicago, Illinois. Many of the books she has worked on focus on the African-American experience over time and depict a diverse range of people, such as slaves in the United States, modern-day children participating in everyday activities, and well-known figures such as Barack Obama and Michael Jordan. Watercolor images were used in The Girl Who Buried Her Dreams in a Can, an autobiographical account of a girl's journey to education in rural Zimbabwe. and was also selected as a Reading Rainbow Book. Her work has also been recognized by the Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) at the University of Wisconsin, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and Parents' Choice. Her body of work led to her induction into the Society of Illustrators in 2001 and the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent in 1999.

List of works

Author and illustrator

Indigo and Moonlight Gold (1993) Madelia (1997) My America (2007) Obama: The Day the World Danced (2010) A Voice As Soft as a Honeybee's Flutter: Inspired by Psalm 46 (2019) You See Me, God: Inspired by Psalm 139 (2020)

Illustrator only

Children of Long Ago (by Lessie Jones Little, 1988) Nathaniel Talking (by Eloise Greenfield, 1989) Night on Neighborhood Street (by Eloise Greenfield, 1991) Lisa's Daddy & Daughter Day (by Eloise Greenfield, 1991) Daddy And I (by Eloise Greenfield, 1991) Big Friend, Little Friend (by Eloise Greenfield, 1991) I Make Music (by Eloise Greenfield, 1991) My Doll Keshia (by Eloise Greenfield, 1991) Red Dog Blue Fly: Football Poems (by Sharon Bell Mathis, 1991) Everett Anderson's Christmas Is Coming (by Lucille Clifton, 1993) First Pink Light (by Eloise Greenfield. Gilchrist illustrated the 1993 reprint but not the original 1976 edition) Aaron & Gayla's Counting Book (by Eloise Greenfield, 1993) William and the Good Old Days (by Eloise Greenfield, 1993) Aaron & Gayla's Alphabet Book (by Eloise Greenfield, 1993) The Baby (by Monica Greenfield, 1994) Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing (by James Weldon Johnson, 1995) Recycling Dump (by Andrea Butler, 1995) Sharing Danny's Dad (by Angela Shelf Medearis, 1995) Waiting for Christmas (by Monica Greenfield, 1996) For the Love of the Game: Michael Jordan and Me (by Eloise Greenfield, 1997) Singing Down the Rain (by Joy Cowley, 1997) Kia Tanisha (by Eloise Greenfield, 1997) Kia Tanisha Drives Her Car (by Eloise Greenfield, 1997) Lemonade Sun and Other Poems (by Rebecca Kai Dotlich, 1998) Easter Parade (by Eloise Greenfield, 1998) Water, Water (by Eloise Greenfield, 1999) Angels (by Eloise Greenfield, 1998) Sweet Baby Coming (by Eloise Greenfield, 2000) I Can Draw A Weeposaur and Other Dinosaurs (by Eloise Greenfield, 2001) Mimi's Tutu (by Tynia Thomassie, 2002) How They Got Over: African Americans and the Call of the Sea (by Eloise Greenfield, 2002) Honey I Love (by Eloise Greenfield. Gilchrist illustrated the 2003 edition, the original was published in 1978 as an unillustrated poem, 2003) In The Land of Words (by Eloise Greenfield, 2003) Me & Neesie (by Eloise Greenfield. Gilchrist illustrated the 30th anniversary edition in 2004 but not the original 1975 edition) A Friend From Galilee (by Dandi Daley Mackall, 2004) Christmas Soup (by Alice Faye Duncan and Phyllis Dooley, 2005) When the Horses Ride By: Children in the Times of War (by Eloise Greenfield, 2006) The Friendly Four (by Eloise Greenfield, 2006) Brothers Sisters: Family Poems (by Eloise Greenfield, 2008) Yafi's Family: An Ethiopian Boy's Journey of Love, Loss, and Adoption (by Linda Pettitt, 2010) The Great Migration (by Eloise Greenfield, 2010) Secrets of the Seven Stars: Elly's Awakening (by Kelley Powell Barcellona, 2014) My God Is Awesome (by Kyla McKenzie & Monique McKenzie, 2014) The Girl Who Buried Her Dream in a Can (by Terarai Trent, 2015) One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance (by Nikki Grimes, Cozbi A. Cabrera, R. Gregory Christie, Pat Cummings, Ebony Glenn, E. B. Lewis, and Frank Morrison, 2017) We Are Shining (by Gwendolyn Brooks, 2017) The Thumbtack Dancer (by Leslie Tyron, 2017) The Boss: Entrepreneurship for Kids (by Robert D. Blackwell Sr., 2018) Kringle's Christmas (by Savy Leiser, 2018)