Thanks to everyone who added to our list of wonderful illustrators! Anyone can enjoy pictures, but it takes a bold one to take up Art as a career, and an even more dedicated one to produce amazingly detailed pictures. Here’s the combined list: {Unfortunately, not all of them are with us anymore ...} · Alison Jay: http://www.childrensillustrators.com/ajay/· Anthony Browne: http://www.childrenslaureate.org.uk/previous-laureates/anthony-browne/· Axel Scheffler: http://clubs-kids.scholastic.co.uk/authors/1477· Barbara Cooney: (An article she wrote in 1998) http://www.hbook.com/magazine/articles/1998/mar98_cooney.asp· Chris Van Allsburg: http://www.chrisvanallsburg.com/home.html· Crockett Johnson: http://www.k-state.edu/english/nelp/purple/· Grahame Oakley: http://www.grahamoakley.co.uk/page2.html · Guy Parker-Rees: http://guyparkerrees.com/· Helen Cooper: http://www.wormworks.com/helenpages/hchome.htm· James Mayhew: http://james-mayhew-author-illustrator.blogspot.com/· Maurice Sendak: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/maurice-sendak/about-maurice-sendak/701/· Nicola Bayley: http://www.nicolabayley.com/· Oliver Jeffers: http://www.oliverjeffers.com/· Penny Dale: http://www.pennydale.co.uk/· Quentin Blake: http://www.quentinblake.com/ · Raymond Briggs: (the official Snowman website) http://www.thesnowman.co.uk/· Robert McCloskey: (an interview transcript) http://www.hbook.com/history/radio/mccloskey.asp· Shirley Hughes: (the official Alfie website) http://alfiebooks.co.uk/· William Steig: http://us.macmillan.com/author/williamsteigAll art requires courage. ~ Anne Tucker
A painter, a poet, A writer, a reader, A musician, a dancer, An actor, a thinker … To these people, Art flows in each breath. I don’t mean the abstract kind of Art. I mean the Everyday kind, that is, works containing the details they pick up, the scents and stench, the chirps and growls, the beats of the heart when they make Art, and the trust they must hold in their instincts as artists. I like Art that can make me breathe a bit easier (Wondrous Art, and not Angst-filled Art). In appreciation for all the Colours, Brightness, Comfort and Wit these artists have brought me, I shall do what I can to help spread word about them and their works around by leaving an 'I like your Art' comment on their blogs or sending them fan emails. (Or simply, by introducing their works and books to young children and have them pass the love on.) Won't you please join me?
 An illustrator tells the other half of the story in a picture book. Whenever we talk about children’s picture books, most of us would dive straight into how funny or moving the stories are.
Stories are very important. (No dispute over this. Wouldn’t have gone into writing if I did.)
But in picture books, so is Art.
What A Young Child Enjoys
A picture book reader is most often a young child, whose vocabulary and reading ability are limited. Hence writers use shorter sentences with the right academic level of vocabulary for that reading age-group to express a scene or an emotion in its clearest form. A young child can only handle so much in reading.
But he/she will not have the same trouble with enjoying pictures. Word descriptions can now by conveyed through details in the artwork. And the child reader will get what the author is trying to say.
{Story + Art} is a tag-team that wields Power and Magic and conveys Humour/Grace and Depth in a book.
A Birdy Example on Art Details
Take this line for example:
“Birds are hopping on my big rain tree.”
The picture on this page would tell us what sort of birds they are: yellow canaries, sparrows, or ravens? Why are they hopping around? Are they looking for something? Playing catch? Ducking from raindrops? And more importantly, the picture would show us who and where the narrator is: A girl peering out her window? Is she alone? Is she lonely or enjoying the morning scene quietly? Is she sick ~ is that why she’s looking out the window instead of getting dressed for school like her sister is? Or is the narrator a stray cat eyeing the birds from below the tree? Aah, the story’s tone immediately flips!
In a picture storybook, words tell half of the story. Art tells the other.
(Unless it’s a wordless picture book, in which the entire story is told through pictures only. Yep, these precious babes do exist.)
My Salute Begins
I’m honoured and excited to be currently working with a young, local illustrator. This is our first project together and I love how it’s coming along. I see how complex yet gratifying her job (and mine, in writing) is and hope to introduce her to you all when our book is out before the end of the year.
This post is only the beginning of my salute to wonderful, dedicated artists I’ve worked with or whose pictures I’ve enjoyed tremendously. I may love writing to nuts, but I, too, like many children, pore over the illustrations in a book before I smile, contented, and return to the words to find out more about the story.
In our next blog post, I shall share more about my favourite illustrators of the big picture book rain tree. I might have mentioned some of them already in previous posts, but so what? People who are amazing at doing what they love are worth mentioning twice, or more!
Help Me Share More
Are there illustrators whose art you (or your child) love? Tell me about them so we can share more with our readers here!
My list of great illustrators includes: (in no particular order, for I love them all)
· James Mayhew
· Alison Jay
· Barbara Cooney
· Helen Cooper
· Chris Van Allsburg
Come add to it!
Ever since last week’s post, I’ve been digging around looking for books with more low-profile animal protagonists. Those who aren’t bears, dogs, cats, rats, pigs, horses and so on. Not that these hog the limelight (sorry, piggies), but they do appear in picture books so much more often than, say, a possum, or a crow, or an octopus. Today we’ll be celebrating animals who are the lesser-heard ofs, the less typicals, the underdogs in children’s books! (Sure, fish and hippo characters aren't that unfamiliar in children's books. But in comparison to bears and dogs, they really haven't been heard enough ...) So here they are, these wonderful creatures who’ve widened a child’s literary world through their hooting, honking, cawing, and underwater silence: * Fish
In My Pond Sara Gillingham & Lorena Siminovich A Fish Out of Water Helen Palmer & P. D. Eastman Sea Monster's First Day Kate Messner & Andy Rash *Hippos
Hippos Go Berserk Sandra Boynton Belly Button Book Sandra Boynton * Owl
In My Tree Sara Gillingham & Lorena Siminovich Sam and the Firefly P. D. Eastman * Possum
Possum Magic Mem Fox & Julie Vivas * Bug
Because a Little Bug Went Ka-Choo! Rosetta Stone & Michael Frith * Snail
Are You a Snail? (Backyard Books) Judy Allen The Biggest House in the World Leo Lionni * Octopus
Tickly Octopus Ruth Galloway * Crow
Crow Leo TimmersChildren’s literature would have slid to one end of the see-saw if writers hadn’t written about these animals, too. So, hooray, writers of the lesser-heard ofs!
*Books are available at our libraries or Amazon. Click on the authors or illustrators' names to learn more about these clever creators!
Peter Rabbit, Winnie-the-Pooh, Marley, Little Nutbrown Hare, Arthur, Olivia … and the hundreds of cats and dogs and mice and ducks and foxes and bears and horses who have made their way into picture books – these animal characters either live with children and the parents and go on their reckless adventures from there, OR are the children in the stories (i.e. the animal characters go to school, love peanut butter jelly sandwiches, play pranks on their cousins etc.).
So what is it about animal protagonists that young children love?
Could it be that animals have more fun?
Are their antics funnier? Their dangers of crossing the road, or getting eaten by the ogre or their ferocious predators more harrowing?
In Helen Cooper’s Pumpkin Soup series, Cat, Squirrel and Duck (yep, they don’t have names, but they have all the quirks) live in a small white cabin. They cook pumpkin soup for dinner. Sometimes they take a bus to town to buy a pipkin of pepper and salt with which to season their soup. Sometimes they quarrel, and once, Duck left home in a feathery huff. In their world, there are police-dogs, and kangaroos and giraffes and pigs and hens making up the townsfolk like the sweet shop owner, or the pizzeria owner … and so on.
Young readers catch on fast with this kind of made-up world because their imagination is gracious enough to accept the possibility of that kind of world existing.
Besides, who wouldn’t love to live in a town like that?
(In other books, child protagonists sing about the dear friendships they have with their pets. That’s another special kind of ‘animal’ books that children love to read, too, though I suspect these are slightly older readers.)
Stories with animals in them are a great addition to our bookshelves. These endearing creatures have reached out to all of us through books, seeped their juicy tales into our childhood ripening in imagination, and marked our memories with their paw prints.
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I’ve heard from educators that young children learn behavioral traits from characters they read in books, and that animal characters are the most wonderful models.
Horse characters were my favourite when I was a child. These days, I look out for cats in my reading selection. Then elephants.
What about you and/or your child? Do you pick a particular animal’s story to read?
{Next week, I’ll dig deeper and see what other animals or bugs are featured as protagonists in books. Snails, maybe? Or meerkats? Or octopuses?}
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