Sean Qualls: Hi, this is Sean Qualls and I'm the illustrator of "Before John Was a Jazz Giant". Today I'm going to tell you a bit about how I made some of the art for this book. The spread that I've chosen to talk to you about is where we see young John Coltrane for the very first time. But, before I do that, let me read for you what it says on that page.

"Before John was a jazz giant, he heard ham bones knocking in grandma's pots. Daddy strumming the ukulele and mama cranking the phonograph."

I chose this image because we see John at home with his family and I thought that this moment, in particular, would be familiar to a lot of readers. There are a lot of times when we're at home, not really doing anything in particular, but our mom might be cooking, our dad might be listening to records or CDs or the radio. Our sister or brother might be doing something. We might have a grandparent or an aunt or uncle doing something. Even though we're not really doing anything, you may be just watching everyone and listening to all the sounds around you and seeing how they blend together. Although everyone in the household is doing different things, the family's happy to be together. And for me, when I was growing up, these sort of moments were very special and magical. And hopefully they are for you too.

And this is what I try to show in this picture. John at home with his family taking everything in and absorbing all the sights and sounds around him.

I work in acrylic paint and collage. In this particular spread I wanted to show a lot of the sounds as abstract and geometrical shapes like circles and musical notes. In this image in particular, there's a combination of painting and different collage items that are in the picture. Just to create an atmosphere or feeling of what was going on in the room when John was there with his mom and his grandmother and his father taking everything in.