Ashley Bryan, a celebrated children’s author whose joyous, vividly illustrated picture books pulsed with the rhythms of modern poetry, African folk tales and Black American spirituals, died in Sugar Land, Tex., outside Houston.

He had congestive heart failure, said H. Nichols B. Clark, the founding director of the Ashley Bryan Center in Islesford, Maine, where Mr. Bryan lived year-round before joining his niece in Texas about three years ago.