Floyd Cooper (1956–2021) won many prestigious awards for his illustrations, including the 2009 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for The Blacker the Berry, written by Joyce Carol Thomas (Amistad), and three previous Coretta Scott King Honors, a Da Vinci Award, and an NAACP Image Honor. Throughout his over thirty-year career, Floyd illustrated more than ninety books, including Unspeakable by Carol Boston Weatherford (Lerner), Meet Danitra Brown by Nikki Grimes (HarperCollins), Ben and the Emancipation Proclamation by Pat Sherman (Eerdmans), and Mississippi Morning by Ruth Vander Zee (Eerdmans). Floyd lived in Pennsylvania until his death in 2021.