Suzanne Slade: Hello. My name is Suzanne Slade and I'm the author of Exquisite: The Poetry and Life of Gwendolyn Brooks.

Cozbi Cabrera: Hello, my name is Cozbi A. Cabrera and I'm the illustrator of Exquisite: The Poetry and Life of Gwendolyn Brooks.

Suzanne Slade: Gwendolyn Brooks is from my hometown of Chicago and I've admired her poetry for many years. She began writing poetry when she was only seven and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. So, several years ago, I noticed that there were no picture books about Gwendolyn, and I decided we needed to fix that. So I started writing one.

Cozbi Cabrera: This is Cozbi. I knew of Gwendolyn Brooks from when I was a little girl and was familiar with quite a bit of her poetry, but I just felt that this was an amazing opportunity to give homage to her life and contribution, and to learn a little bit more about her through some research.

Suzanne Slade: During my research for this book, I found an interesting quote by Gwendolyn in Ebony Magazine. And in the quote, she shared how she loved to sit on her back porch and watch clouds overhead and "dream about the future, which was going to be ecstatically exquisite, like those clouds." So there, in Gwendolyn's own words, I had the title, Exquisite, and I had a theme for the book, clouds, which shows up in the text and also in Cozbi's beautiful illustrations.

Cozbi Cabrera: When you're illustrating a book, you really do get to live with every aspect of the message. And this was a reoccurring theme. This notion of her looking out into the sky and envisioning a future that she said would be exquisite. And so I found myself essentially looking up into the sky every single day, no matter where I was. And of course the texture and the color and all of that would change depending on the moment or what time of day.

Suzanne Slade: This is Suzanne. And I'm going to read a short excerpt from the book, Exquisite:

Inspired, she created unique poems about the nonstop busyness, the hard-luck grittiness, of life in her South Side Chicago neighborhood -- Bronzeville -- where businesses boomed on 47th Street, where hardworking families didn't have enough to eat, where people jumped and jived to a new jazzy beat, and Gwendolyn kept polishing her words until they sparkled like silvery summer clouds.

Cozbi Cabrera: This is Cozbi. I'm reading a first-time published poem written by Gwendolyn Brooks at the age of fifteen, from Exquisite: The Poetry and Life of Gwendolyn Brooks:

Clouds.

Oh, when I look into the sky / And see those quiet clouds, / Now all arrayed in fleecy white, / Now dressed in colored shrouds,

It seems I cannot draw my eye / From that rich, heaven-land / And drinking in the wise expanse, / I filled with rapture stand.

Unheedful of my transfixed state, / They float serenely by, / Those stately clouds / Calm sentries of the sky.

How can I fear to leave the earth / When heaven holds this glow! / Cloud-colored happiness and peace / Await me there, I know.