John Lewis Steptoe was the first prolific African-American author and illustrator of children's books. His books were written about African-American children, allowing them to identify with characters and environments that previous children's stories ignored. Steptoe was born in 1950; his parents, John Oliver and Elesteen Hill Steptoe, raised him in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York. Steptoe loved to draw as a child and later attended the Manhattan High School of Art and Design. He studied with painter Norman Lewis while working for HarYou Act, an anti-poverty program. He left high school in his final year, during which time the publishers, Harper & Rowe agreed to publish his first children's stories.

In 1969, Steptoe's first book, Stevie, was published; first in LIFE magazine, and then by Harper & Rowe. Prior to Stevie, no children's story had ever been published in a national magazine. The story was written in “black English,” and was about a young boy living in the ghetto. The American Library Association (ALA) declared it a notable children's book, and the Society of Illustrators gave Steptoe a gold medal award. Publisher's Weekly and the School Library Journal each included Stevie on their “Best Book of the Year” lists. In the following three years, Steptoe published three other children's stories with Harper & Rowe: Uptown (1970), Train Ride (1971), and Birthday (1972).

In his earliest books, Steptoe used his own experiences as the basis for his writing. Later, he turned to his children as models, and parenthood itself, as inspiration for his work. Viking Press published My Special Best Words in 1974, a story told from his daughter Bweela's perspective. In Daddy Is A Monster... Sometimes (Lippincott 1980), Steptoe used his relationship with his children as the basis for a story discussing parental mood-swings and how these emotional shifts are perceived by children. Steptoe's first novel, Marcia, published in 1975 (Viking Press), is about growing up and some of the difficult issues which face teenagers. His final book, Baby Says (1988), was written for infants and toddlers and was published by Lothrop.

Steptoe began by writing everyday-life stories, but as his career progressed, he started writing fantasy tales. He believed that the latter would encourage children to exercise their imaginations and fulfill their dreams. In 1983 he illustrated and retold a Native American legend called The Story of Jumping Mouse (Lothrop, Lee and Shepard). Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters, an adapted Zimbabwean Cinderella story, was also published by Lothrop in 1987. He spent a year researching the plant and animal life which he recreated in his illustrations for this story. An unpublished fantasy tale entitled The Prince and the Enchanted Zebra, also exemplifies this tendency towards fantasy.

Steptoe illustrated several books written by other authors. These are: All Us Come Cross the Water (1973) by Lucille Clifton, She Come Bringing Me That Little Baby Girl (1975) by Eloise Greenfield, Mother Crocodile, (1981) by Rosa Guy, and OUTside/INside Poems (1981) and All the Colors of the Race (1982) by Arnold Adoff. His early illustrations concentrated on color, then changed to black and white drawings with an emphasis on line and form, and ended with a combination of these two techniques. He received honors for many of his early books, and in 1970 a library in Brooklyn was named after him. Steptoe twice received the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration for Mother Crocodile and Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters. In 1987 he was given the Boston Globe—Horn Book Award for Illustration. Both The Story of Jumping Mouse and Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters were declared Caldecott Honor Books by the ALA. Steptoe was also honored by receiving fellowships to the MacDowell Colony (an artists' retreat in New Hampshire), on four separate occasions.

Throughout his career, Steptoe lectured at universities across the country, including Keene State College, Amherst College, and Louisiana State University, among others. He also taught a design class at the Brooklyn Museum School in 1971, and in 1976 he taught at the Eighth Annual Upper Midwest Writers' Conference at Bemidji State University in Minnesota. In 1986 he led a two week illustration seminar at Vashon High School in Missouri, however, the seminar was temporarily canceled due to teachers' disapproval over his students' time away from their regular course work. Steptoe occasionally exhibited his work at museums and other spaces, such as the Rochester Museum (1974), and the Boston Public Library (1975).

Steptoe had two children; Bweela, born in 1970, and Javaka, born in 1971, whom he raised as a single parent. Steptoe also cared for his nephew, Antoine, intermittently throughout the child's early years and Antoine lived with Steptoe during the last three years of Steptoe's life. In the fall of 1987, John Steptoe contracted AIDS. He died on August 28, 1989. Two months later, the organization “Visual AIDS” declared an AIDS awareness day in which most museums closed to protest the large number of AIDS victims in the art community. On that day, the Museum of American Illustration exhibited some of Steptoe's original illustrations.