Kids’ book on friendship a natural for Kansas City illustrator and buddy Taye Diggs
Award-winning Kansas City illustrator Shane Evans says he has been “friends forever” with actor Taye Diggs. So it is appropriate that their most recent collaboration — their fourth children’s book — is called “My Friend!”
When Evans and Diggs appeared on NBC’s “Today” show Jan. 5 to promote “My Friend!,” which went on sale that day, Diggs said, “It was all Shane’s brain baby.”
Evans told The Star that the kernel of the book’s idea came from when the two friends, who had met in high school in Rochester, New York, attended Syracuse University in the early 1990s. They worked together on a project about what being Black meant to them.
“Seven or eight years later, when I was working at Hallmark and was beginning to do children’s books, I decided it would be a good topic for a book,” said Evans, who moved to Kansas City when he took a job at Hallmark Cards Inc. in 1993 and has lived here since.
He finally returned to the book idea as the follow-up project to his and Diggs’ “Chocolate Me!” and “Mixed Me!”
Macmillan Publishers describes “My Friend!” as “a story about a close friend calling another out. In alternating views, two boys of color are seen waking up to the beat of Diggs’ snappy rhymes.”
Evans, 48, said that he and Diggs did the bulk of the work on “My Friend!” before COVID-19 but that the pandemic has made the message all the more appropriate.
“We actually finished our fifth book during the pandemic,” Evans said. It’s called “Why?” and could be released later this year.
Diggs is perhaps best known for “Rent,” “The Best Man” movies, “Private Practice” and “All American.”
Evans has illustrated dozens of children’s books, including “Shaq and the Beanstalk and Other Very Tall Tales” with basketball star Shaquille O’Neal in 1999. He was honored by first lady Laura Bush at the 2002 National Book Festival, and his “Underground: Finding the Light to Freedom” was among the 2012 Coretta Scott King Book Award winners honoring African American authors and illustrators of children’s and young adult books.
In 2007, Evans established Dream Studio, a workspace and gallery at 711 W. 31st St., not far from where Walt Disney created Laugh-O-Grams studio.
He explained why he has remained in Kansas City all these years.
“I think any of us could live anywhere,” he said. “Living in Kansas City gave me the chance to have a home base and move all around the world. I made a vow to go somewhere at least one time a year, and I’ve stuck to that.
“Coming from the East Coast, a lot of people thought I was crazy for going to Kansas City. I thought there were a lot of opportunities in Kansas City, and now I have family and friends there. It’s been a great base.”
This story was originally published January 11, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
