Kadir Nelson is one of the most accomplished, award-winning illustrators working today and is known for his stunning oil paintings depicting the African-American experience. He won the 2012 Coretta Scott King Author Award and Illustrator Honor for Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans . He received Caldecott Honors for Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad by Ellen Levine, and Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom by Carole Boston Weatherford, for which he also garnered a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award and won an NAACP Image Award; Ellington Was Not a Street by Ntozake Shange won a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award. Nelson's authorial debut, We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball , was a New York Times bestseller, a Coretta Scott King Author Award winner, and a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor book. Baby Bear was his first picture book for the very youngest readers.Kadir Nelson's paintings have been exhibited in many galleries and museums around the world, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, both in Los Angeles; the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History in Detroit; the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum in Washington, DC; the Citizen's Gallery of Yokohama, Japan; and the Studio Museum in Harlem. He is also the cover artist for Michael Jackson's posthumous album, Michael .

Kadir Nelson lives in Southern California.