I think Moses is certainly the most emotional. The illustrations have the most emotion out of every book that I think I’ve done. I mean, I did one called Henry’s Freedom Box, about Henry Box Brown. That’s very emotional, but I think Moses is even more so because most of the illustrations are very dark and moody, because Harriet Tubman did most of her traveling at night.
That meant that most of the illustrations had to be dark. I was a little bit worried about that because it’s a children’s book. And not that you can make or would make the topic of slavery cheerful because it was anything but that. I had to keep my audience in mind, but I also had to be truthful when it came to representing Harriet Tubman and her plight. So I was trying to find a middle ground where I wasn’t sugar-coating Harriet’s journey. So hopefully I did that.