Tonya Engel: My name is Tonya Engel and I am the illustrator of Because Claudette, written by Tracey Baptiste and illustrated, like I said, by myself.

My favorite part about all the projects, but especially this one, was learning about the main subject of the book, Claudette Colvin. A lot of people, including my very own mother who grew up during that very same period of time that they speak about during this book, my own mother didn't know who Claudette Colvin was. So my most exciting part about illustrating a book is doing the research and learning about these incredible characters that the authors have written about.

In my own part of the journey, I have to gather up as much information as I can, especially information more leaning towards the imagery about that subject. And then I collect all the images I can around the subject. What did the church look like that they visited during the NAACP meeting, what the lawyer, Mr. Gray's, office perhaps looked like. Other images that were more difficult to find, like what do the parents look like. I have to sometimes, if I cannot come up with that during research exact image of what those people looked like, I can use my imagination based on small descriptions that I might have found during my research. Or at the very least, just strictly my imagination, what might Claudette Colvin's parents look like.

I say the research part, the fact-finding might actually be the most difficult part. The most fun part after all of that is done is getting to my favorite part, which is the art. And after that, everything's pretty much a smooth ride because I can just go to town with all these facts that I've gathered and just play with color and movement from there and be a lot more free once I've got the facts gathered.

If I had to pick my favorite page, it would be the very first page in the book that I illustrated, which happens to be the very last page of the book. Once I found out that they really wanted me to illustrate this book, I was so excited to find out more about Claudette Colvin that I went and I found an image of her and I quickly illustrated the very last page. The one that says, "And it all happened because of Claudette." And in my excitement, I forwarded the image to the publishers to show what the style of the book might end up looking like based on that one page that I illustrated.

The really greatest lesson about Claudette Colvin is the most unassuming one. The idea of this young girl, she's only 15, this young girl could make such a huge impact on our history and hardly even be recognized for it. People probably don't even recognize her name after all of these years. But this young girl, who at 15, if she can make a difference just by causing the good kind of trouble, the standing up for her rights, for her community, if she can make waves and make such a huge difference in our history, anyone can. And I think that's the most important part about the whole domino effect of Claudette Colvin, just making one move to make a difference, changing the history that we know today.