Laban Carrick Hill

DJ Kool Herc

When DJ Kool Herc spuns records for his sister's sweet sixteen birthday in the South Bronx in the 1970s, he didn't know that he would invent rap and hip hop. But that's what he did. This is the amazing story of how a kid scratched and rapped his way into starting an entire new music.

Publishers Weekly:
Here’s a twofer: an expert biography of a hip hop and rap pioneer, and a not-to-be-missed picture-book debut by Taylor, a Washington, D.C.–based artist. Herc, an aspiring DJ and reluctant immigrant from Jamaica to the Bronx, was working a house party at his Sedgwick Avenue housing project when inspiration struck: he put the same record on two turntables to extend the break in a song (“when the lyrics ended and the music bumped and thumped”) and added verbal riffs drawn from Jamaican chanting and toasting. “Kool Herc’s music made everybody happy,” writes Hill (Dave the Potter). “Even street gangs wanted to dance, not fight.” Hill walks the fine line between knowledgeable reporter and passionate fan (as is clear in his vivid author’s note), and Taylor does the same, using a meticulous inkline and washes of textured earth tones to convey both a sense of observational precision and a mural-like expressionism. Whether Taylor is zooming in on Herc’s dexterous hands manipulating the turntables or pulling back for a birds-eye view of the first break dance performances, he makes readers feel like they’re present at hip-hop’s inception.

Coming in 2012 with Roaring Brook Press

Selected Works

1. Nonfiction
"Here’s a twofer: an expert biography of a hip hop and rap pioneer, and a not-to-be-missed picture-book debut by Taylor."--Publishers Weekly
"Phenomenal."–Howard Zinn "Excellent."–New York Times Book Review
“Harlem Stomp! is a wonderous new book: it celebrates a time, a place, an energy, and a people who refused to be held back and so they created a culture the entire world is still reeling from.”
--George C. Wolfe, writer, director, and producer of the Public Theater, NYC
3. Poetry
A picturebook poem describing the life of the slave potter Dave. Illustrated by Bryan Collier.
“Contemporary Poetry of New England offers a vivid portrait of a region, its colors and smells, its physical and emotional textures, and the people…. It presents a range of poets, few of whom would call themselves a “region poet,” although each has taken to heart in a private way Frost’s haunting dictum: ‘Locality gives art.’”
--from the Introduction
2. Fiction
A seventeen-year-old is plucked out of the Grande Armee to sit in place of Napoleon for a portrait of the Emperor by the artist David.
"I felt like a kid reading every word on the page! I liked the strains of "magic realism" coming through in Frida's house! Children will relate to this very much! The story is charming and reads like a thriller." –Margarita Aguilar, Assisant Curator, El Museo del Barrio
4. Middle Grade Series
These kids love extreme sports--snowboarding, skateboarding, rock climbing, wake boarding--and are ready to fight when the right to do their sport is threatened.