I had the pleasure of hearing picture book author and illustrator Pat Cummings speak at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art on Saturday. In her series of books, Talking with Artists, she asks creators for pictures of  drawings or sculptures they did as children, as well as the work that brought them fame, so that children can see one starts ( Read more... )

Last night, Peter and I attended the opening of a show highlighting the work of Ezra Jack Keats at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Claudia Nahson, who curated the show which was first shown at the Jewish Museum in New York, spoke about Ezra Jack Keats’s (1916-1983) history. We learned that he had a rough time growing up as small, ( Read more... )

A student reporting on Goodnight Moon mentioned a professor who obsessed about circles, and her paper only encouraged me with all the O’s in that title, which are pronounced with a circular-shaped mouth. Bven the letters on the cover slant as if they long to be a circle. My student mentioned the circles made by books read on laps, with a grownup’s ( Read more... )

Gleaming portraits juxtaposed with action scenes and framed pencil sketches made the walls seem alive at the opening of We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.  We left for the auditorium to hear Kadir Nelson, who came from Los Angeles to speak earlier that day to some very excited second ( Read more... )

What a weekend at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, and I didn’t even get to half the events! But I’m glad to have had a chance to hear Horn Book editors Roger Sutton and Martha Parravano talk a bit about their book, which just came out in paperback. A Family of Readers: The Book Lover’s Guide to Children’s and Young Adult Literature is a ( Read more... )

On Saturday Peter and I enjoyed the opening reception of Growing Every Which Way But Up: The Children’s Book Art of Jules Feiffer at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Jules Feiffer was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons, which ran in the Village Voice for 42 years. He also wrote plays and screenplays before illustrating a novel ( Read more... )

I wish I could have gotten to more of the event-packed Brattleboro Literary Festival last weekend, but I enjoyed two talks in the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center on a lovely Sunday in Vermont.

Salley Mavor showed us the first picture book she made when she was eight (her mother, an artist and art teacher, saved her work), with scraps of fabric ( Read more... )

I was excited before Picture Book week, in the MFA class I teach at Simmons College at the Carle. 
Of course I’d been equally enthusiastic approaching Folk Tales, Novels for Middle Grade Readers, and Poetry, and know I’ll be just as excited before the genres we focus on during weeks ahead. But with a wealth of picture books they might read, I’m not ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

The grinning young woman in the cockpit of a cherry red plane, the dash of the title on the cover, convey the spirit of this book. Amelia Earhart is fascinating, but the early twentieth century saw many more female pilots, and I’m glad to see Elinor Smith featured in a picture book.


( Read more... )