Hugged by the Night: Illustrator Karabo Poppy with the book authored by Harold Green. Screengrab from Instagram video/ karabo_poppy
Acclaimed artist Karabo Poppy (Moletsane) is known as an illustrator, graphic designer and street artist who's collaborated with major brands like Nike and KFC.
Now she's ventured into the world of children's literature for the first time, bringing to life a picture book by spoken word poet Harold Green III.
Hugged by the Night is described as a reassuring lullaby for bedtime fears and an affirmation of the beauty and power of black identity.
What drew her to the project was that she'd never quite done anything like this before, Poppy says.
"If you look at my work and my style, you wouldn't think I'd be the first choice for a children's book illustrator, because my content is very bold and edgy, and children's books tend to be a lot softer."
"I thought, here I get this opportunity to make a children's book like none other, and then that book is also written for people who look like me and grew up like me."
Poppy was immediately drawn to the project when she was sent a recording of Green reading the poem which became the book. Indepenedent publisher Chronicle Books approached her she says because he's not a conventional children's book writer and they wanted to go with an unconventional illustrator.
"It felt like that 'Lion King moment' where everything just connects", she says.
Given a lot of creative freedom with the brief, the illustrator had the opportunity to herself determine what the night of the title would look like.
"There's a curiosity - is night a person, a place, a time of day? It feels to me like night encompasses all three... and it aims to soothe all of the misconceptions of night-time. There's the symbolism of identity as well, the match between night and black identity."
The illustrator says she's the smallest in her "family of giants".
Hugging is something she associates with her female relatives, so "I just saw night as this giant that would be providing the soothing and then imprinting the pride in heritage."
In an Instagram reel, Poppy relates how a particular story her father told her about the night and the role in it of the colour purple, informed her palette throughout the book:
