Artist!

I went to a talk by Caldecott-Medal illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky at Tacoma Public Library last week. What a cool guy.

I apologize for not telling you about this beforehand in the blog, but the good news is you still have a few days to see the exhibit of his art at the Main Library in Tacoma. The show goes through May 14 and it's worth a visit.

Zelinsky is super talented and versatile. The paintings for "Rapunzel," his Caldecott Award book, look like they were done by an old master. For the popular pop-up book "Wheels on the Bus" and its follow-up "Knick-Knack Paddywhack!" his style is brighter and livelier.

For another cool book, "Doodler Doodling," by Rita Golden Gelman, Zelinsky "doodled" most of the characters, then scanned them and put them together using his computer.

At first glance, Zelinsky looks like he could be a mild-manner high school history teacher with his suit, spectacles and receding hairline. Once he took the microphone, he was hilarious and had the rapt attention of everyone in the audience, from age 4 on to adults.

He talked about why he chooses different styles for different books. "Every story has its own feelings." Using a program on his laptop, he drew pictures on the spot to illustrate. Obviously, the dude on the left would be in a different sort of book than the pretty girl on the right.

He showed pictures and talked a lot about "Awful Ogre's Awful Day," a book of poems by Jack Prelutsky that Zelinsky illustrated. For that book, he called up another famous illustrator, Lane Smith, to ask him advice on creating a "yucky" texture for the ogre's skin. He wanted a look like "old food that turned bad and started to rot." He showed pictures from medieval manuscripts that contained little monstrous figures called "grotesques." He said: "I thought Awful Ogre should have a grotesque." He does - a different one on every page.

"Rapunzel" was a long, arduous illustration project. Each painting was done using many thin layers of watercolor to re-create the old feeling. On another "Rapunzel" note, he said: "My daughters were not really interested in my work, but they were interested in their cat. So I thought if I put their cat in, they'd get interested." It worked beautifully; the girls pestered him daily to see the drawings, he said.

He talked about deciding on a follow-up to "Wheels on the Bus," then figured out how to make the "old man" so that when he played paddywhack on parts of his protagonist's body, the kid wouldn't get pummeled. He decided to use 10 tiny men, each humorously representing a different occupation. His laptop drawings to illustrate his "process" had the audience, especially the kids, chortling.

"Paddywhack" is a "pop-up book." So Zelinsky had to be in close contact with a talented paper engineer. Among many astounding features in the book: One of the little men runs from left to right, every time. Think about it. How does he get back? Zelinsky showed an inside view of that page. A piece of paper hides his return to the left. Zelinsky said the paper engineer Andrew Baron, is also well known as a repairer of antique clocks and watches.

I haven't decided yet on all the authors for my "An Author a Day" classes for Summer at Seabury. But after hearing Zelinsky, I think he might be one of them. We could make pop-ups! I've done that before with kids and it's great fun.

I hope some of you get a chance to see his work at the library. Check out Zelinsky's Web site, too. It has some fun features, including animations he did related to one of his newest books: "The Shivers in the Fridge."

(A warning: Don't let kids navigate to the animations using the You Tube link. Links/promos to other inappropriate YouTube videos show up on the page. You can link directly to the animations on his site. Addendum: I e-mailed Mr. Z and got a very fast response. He's going to try to change his tags, or contact YouTube. An update: Mr. Zelinsky changed his You Tube tags; it took him a couple of tries. He even e-mailed me with updates. But now the links are harmless!!)

Let me know if you're interested in hearing about author talks in advance (Here or in the Thursday packet). I will post them, if some of you will go!

Talk to you soon

It's raining; it's pouring.

And I've got a suggestion for a family activity that will brighten your day: A visit to the most famous caterpillar in the world. (I checked; twice as many Google hits as Lewis Carroll's.)

The Tacoma Art Museum is hosting a wonderful exhibit - The Art of Eric Carle - through Jan. 21.

I went to the exhibit Tuesday, and also got to hear the creator of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" in person on Oct. 22 during the museum's "Conversation with Eric Carle." Ladybugs teacher Susan Ennaro was there, too, with her daughter, a teacher at Tacoma's Bryant Elementary School.

The exhibit is a delight and so was the 77-year-old author.

The museum has hung the work low in deference to its young visitors. Museum director Stephanie Stebich said the museum has booked about 170 school visits during the exhibit, almost twice as many as during an entire normal year.

Carle began his art career in advertising. He said during his talk that he views each of his illustrations as "a small poster." Standing in front of his work, that comes across vividly. Each picture is complete in itself. His colors are rich and the compositions are wonderful. You can also understand his tissue paper collage process even more clearly than in the books.

My favorite was a pelican illustration from "Animals, Animals," a book of poetry.

Carle's first book on his own was "1,2,3 to the Zoo." When he first submitted it to his editor, she pointed out to him that it was nice, but just a counting book, he needed to add something special. He put a small train at the bottom of each page; as pages turn, each car on the train has one more zoo animal than the one before it.

From then on, all of Carle's books have something special: the holes in "Hungry Caterpillar," the raised web in "The Very Busy Spider," the squeak of a rubber duck in his latest: "10 Little Rubber Ducks."

The rubber duck story is based on true events. At 2 p.m. on Dec. 2, the art museum hosts this event: A special presentation by Seattle oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer. In 1992, a shipment of 29,000 rubber bathtub toys, including ducks, frogs, and turtles, fell overboard from a container ship into the waters off the coast of Alaska, inspiring Eric Carle to write 10 Little Rubber Ducks. Ebbesmeyer studies ocean currents by tracking the migration of random junk and has maintained a website and recently published a paper documenting the migration of the toy ducks for over 14 years.

Incidentally, that ship was bound for Tacoma.

A few last things from Carle's talk:

He said he's been criticized (especially in his native Germany) for portraying only secure childhoods in his work. But that's intentional, he says. "I want to make children feel safe."

His favorite color is yellow, he answered, in response to a question from a child. He didn't have a favorite, but he's become most fond of yellow because it is the most difficult to work with. You can add another color to red or blue and they remain red and blue, but if you add another color to yellow, it's not yellow anymore.

All those who got to ask questions were children.

What does he like to do? Besides work on his books, he likes to garden and read. And he's too fond of honey and chocolate, he said.

Favorite of his books? "Do You Want to Be My Friend?" Because friendship is so important to children.

The question that made him pause (and got the biggest laugh from the audience)?: A very tiny child asked, "What is the very quiet cricket's name?"

He finally answered: "Why it's Quiet Cricket, I suppose."

If you go, you can also spend time in the library upstairs reading Carle's books, or in the art room next to it doing projects. There's also a cool exhibit of work by Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson. Children will enjoy this exhibit, too. Her work is full of color, sparkles and buttons. She's also illustrated some children's books. We have "Elijah's Angel" in Seabury's Library.

Let me know if you go! Talk to you soon.

(I've added a link to Eric Carle's Web site at right. There's lots of good stuff there, including videos.)