I love my job. I get to spend whole days in the children's section of the book store and call it research. I also get to celebrate birthdays of people I've never met. We recently marked Maurice Sendak's 80th birthday, and the 45h birthday of his most paramount child, Max from Where the Wild Things Are. So I took the chance to reacquaint myself with some of Sendak's impressive body of work, and to meet Brundibar, his modern photograph book, written by Tony Kushner and based on a Czech opera of the same name.
Whether illustrating person else's words or his own texts, Sendak could never be accused of taking the easy route to publication. His books are complicated, deeply emotional stories, with subtexts that often illuminate the dark side of human nature. In an interview appearing in the November/December 2003 issue of The Horn Book Magazine, Sendak says "...we can get away with things in children's books that nobody in the adult world ever can because the assumption is that the audience is too innocent to pick it up. And in truth they're the only audience that does pick it up."
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It's comments like this that show Sendak's deep respect for his audience, as well as the photograph book as an art form. In the same interview, Sendak talks about how he chooses subjects he feels passionately about, or those that resonate with him on a basic emotional level. These are not cute bedtime stories, but books that report his soul. Some cut too close to the bone--when he was working on outside Over There he had a breakdown and stepped away from the project for six months. And though he is revered as one of the most influential artists in the history of children's photograph books, Sendak doesn't think of himself as a genius. "I have no brilliant conceptual gift for drawing or any of course exceptional gift for writing," he told The Horn Book. "My talent is knowing how to make a photograph book. Knowing how to pace it, knowing how to time it. The drawing and the writing are good, but if my whole work counted on that I wouldn't have made it very far."
It inspired me to round up some of my other beloved author/illustrators. I'm no artist, and so I retort to photograph books not from a technical aspect but with my gut. Here are three author/illustrators whose work, to me, embodies the pure emotion and wide-eyed wonder of childhood.
* Peggy Rathmann: Rathmann's illustrations always say more than her texts. Packed with tiny, delightful details and secondary characters acting out stories all their own, her books mesmerize even nonreaders. Her latest photograph book, The Day the Babies Crawled Away, is stunning. The story is told by a mum recalling the day her young son saved all the babies when they crawled away during a town fair (the parents were busy at the pie-eating contest). The illustrations are black silhouettes against a technicolor sky. Though we can't see the characters' faces we always know who's who: the boy hero wears a fireman's helmet, the babies are marvelous by bows, bonnets and topknots. A butterfly starts the baby parade away from the fair and is soon joined by a caterpillar, a frog, a bat and a bird. The same butterfly lands on Mom's hair at the end of the day as the tired hero falls asleep in her arms. Rathmann makes clever use of every page in the book, beginning the story on the! endpapers and building straight through the title page and dedication. Take a close look at the last photograph to see how one baby relives her adventure.
* Ezra Jack Keats: Keats' classic, deceptively easy photograph books resonate with the daily experiences that define childhood. In analyzing The Snowy Day, my lack of artistic sense became apparent. At first glance, I understanding the illustrations were bold shapes cut from separate types of paper glued on top of each other. But closer inspection shows edges of colors bleeding together and lines that aren't quite filled in, as if they were painted with watercolors and a large brush. Faces were drawn with pencil or charcoal; snowflakes appear stenciled over tissue paper. In any case, the consequent is childlike, wet and a limited messy, just like playing outside after a big snowstorm. My son especially likes the spread of Peter in his red snowsuit manufacture tracks straight through unmarred snow, first with his toes pointing out, then with his toes pointing in. After studying the book, Matthew said, "I can make pictures like that." We bought separate types of paper and Matthew proceeded to originate artwork modeled after Keats. In my opinion, any book so accessible that a child can make it his own is a winner.
* Chris Van Allsburg: Van Allsburg's books have a magical, otherworldly element that often takes my breath away. He is a supremely skilled artist, incorporating design, balance, color and texture in a way that gives the sense of stepping right into the picture. In one spread from The Polar Express, the reader is positioned above Santa's sleigh as he flies over thousands of elves crowded into the North Pole's city center. I almost get dizzy every time I see it. The Polar Express is a very personal story about a boy going for a ride on a magic train that takes him, along with hundreds of other kids, to the North Pole to meet Santa. Van Allsburg's somber palette, the easy nature of the text, the depiction of the North Pole as a city of tall structure past a desert of ice, and the poignant first-person narration all help the story to feel true. Put aside those cutesy Santa stories--here's the real thing.
I urge you to spend a day in the book store or library looking those books that make music for you. By studying their rhythms, you'll learn how to make your own stories sing.
Writing Tips - Learn From Great Children's Book Writers & Illustrators
