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In one month, The Carle Museum of Picture Book art will hold its annual Carle Honors, awarding four people/entities who have made significant contributions to the art form.
Also that evening, September 26th, final bids will be accepted on original artwork by picture book masters. Today, The Carle Honors are pleased to announce the artists whose work will be auctioned this year.
The auction will go live on Friday, August 30th and you can register to bid here.
For the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to ask the Carle Honorees a question about picture books. My question this year is…
“Picture books exude a certain kind of magic. How would you describe that magic?”
Melissa Sweet
2019 Carle Honors Artist
In a picture book, the magic begins as a swift and surprising connection to the art and design of a book, and later the words.
Often I dissect a book from cover to flaps to endpapers and everything in between, in order to figure out the decisions that make it compelling.
But in thinking about magic, I also think of magicians. One thing that makes a magic trick awe-inspiring is the set-up, which takes practice, timing and repetition, and drawing in the audience.
Then a myriad of decisions so that every word, every movement, points to witnessing something extraordinary.
Creating a picture book also requires minute decisions by a cast of dozens. The words, images, and design come together to create something wholly new.
Often there’s a moment when a book seems to have a mind of its own. And when the final book feels effortless and like something we’ve never seen before, it seems…like magic.
REFORMA
The National Association to Promote Library & Information Services to Latinos & the Spanish Speaking
represented by Kenny Garcia, President
2019 Carle Honors Angel
‘Picture books allow readers to imagine a world or a future that the reader exists in and thrives. It opens up new possibilities, words, and worlds full of love, hope, expressions, and emotions that affirms the reader’s life. This magical spark empowers children to imagine and create a better world for themselves and their communities. Multicultural picture books can be such a transformative experience for all of us, but for children of color, the ability to see and read picture books by illustrators of color can nurture the idea that they can also have a future career in writing and illustrating books, and continue the magic for future generations.
Chihiro Art Museum
represented by Takeshi Matsumoto
2019 Carle Honors Bridge
statement by Yuko Takesako
Executive Director of the Chihiro Iwasaki Memorial Foundation
Chief Curator of the Chihiro Art Museum (Tokyo & Azumino)
When children open the cover of a children’s book, a special kind of magic bubbles up. It gives a glimpse of a world yet unseen, enables the reader to experience something never done before, or brings back a memory of an event long forgotten.
The magic of picture books especially has a great impact on children of different nationalities or languages, or on babies who still cannot read, or at times on children who are not so adept at communicating with others. The visual magic cast on a young child once he or she opens a picture book is so powerful that memories of the book may suddenly come alive when the book is placed firmly in their hands—once again after a forgotten period of 10, 30, or even 50 years.
In this fashion, the yearning, understanding, and sympathy found through experiencing a different world helps to create another sort of magic which is respect and love for people of different cultures and the world they live in.
Such is the magic that exudes from picture books—something all too precious and special.
David Saylor
VP, Creative Director, Trade Publishing
Publisher, Graphix
Scholastic Inc.
2019 Carle Honors Mentor
What I love most about picture books is how the words and artwork blend to create an enhanced and perfect entity: the book itself. Their heightened interaction is the alchemy that every picture book hopes to achieve, that moment where words spark a thought and the pictures expand the narrative spaces between and around the words and sentences. For that reason, my favorite picture books are fully alive with emotion and artistry.
I’ve often wondered why picture books that were read to me as a child have stayed so vivid in my memory. I don’t think it’s simply that my young mind was eager to discover the wider world. I think it may also be that hearing my mother and father read aloud to me was my first experience of artistic communication. Those moments—the warmth of a lap, the sounds of words, the lively pictures on the page—brought to life a moment where a writer and an artist spoke directly to me, to my innermost self. I felt suddenly more alive, more aware, more full of life than I had felt just a moment before.
There’s a beautiful scene in the play Wit, by Margaret Edson. The main character is Dr. Vivian Bearing, an English professor, dying from ovarian cancer. Her mentor, an older professor, visits and tries to comfort her by reading aloud. Then her mentor does something extraordinary: she lays next to her in bed and reads a picture book that she had intended for her grandson. The books is Margaret Wise Brown’s The Runaway Bunny, and it’s one of the most beautiful and touching moments I’ve seen in any play. In her final moments of life, when Dr. Bearing’s ebbing life has been paired down to the elemental, only a picture book could express the right feeling with such simplicity and depth.
Thank you, Honorees, and congratulations!
Blog readers, I hope you’ll visit the Carle Honors Auction, attend the Honors gala, or donate to The Carle Museum for all they do to celebrate picture books. Just visit carlemuseum.org.
You can celebrate, too, if you’re the winner of Eric Carle’s THE ARTIST WHO PAINTED A BLUE HORSE. Simply share this blog post and comment that you’ve done so…and you’ll be entered into the random drawing to win a copy. A winner will be selected next week.
Good luck!
In one month, The Carle Museum of Picture Book art will hold its annual Carle Honors, awarding four people/entities who have made significant contributions to the art form.
Also that evening, September 27th, final bids are accepted on original artwork by picture book masters. The auction goes live on August 31, and you can browse and bid here: https://501auctions.com/carlehonors2018.
If you could ask the Carle Honorees one question, what might it be? My question is here—
“Why are picture books an art form to enjoy not only in childhood, but through every age, every stage of life?”
—and the answers are diverse and delightful, just like picture books themselves.
Paul O. Zelinsky
2018 Carle Honors Artist
“Why are pictures an art form to be enjoyed by people of all ages? Well, that has to be a function of what picture books exist in the world to be enjoyed. Some, aimed at children in a pedantic and condescending way, are no fun at all for adults, and might be appreciated by only the most deluded or idiosyncratic child. But the world has come to contain an increasingly large number of picture books created by genuine artists, addressing the full extent of their humanity. These books may not look the same through the eyes of a four-year-old as they do to an adult of ninety-five (even putting aside questions of cataracts), but they somehow charm and enrich the thoughts and the vision of both. Picture books can be appreciated by people of all ages because there are picture books that deserve this kind of appreciation. One of the best ways to prove this is to visit The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art!”
Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop
2018 Carle Honors Mentor
“Picture books are indeed an art form, and enjoyment of art is not limited by age. With their unique combination of interdependent visual and verbal art, picture books speak to readers and viewers on a fundamental level. In addition to their aesthetic appeal, their thematic content often evokes universal emotions and experiences. Picture books also offer opportunities for older students to examine and learn about artistic styles, media, and technique. Picture book texts, in their conciseness, are often poetic, and can evoke the same kinds of responses as poetry. And because many literary genres come in picture book format, picture books can be a rich source of information as well as entertainment. Like other art forms, picture books are never outgrown.”
Dona Ann McAdams
(and Lynn Caponera),
representing The Sendak Fellowship & Workshop
2018 Carle Honors Angel
“I never assume a picture book is just for children. When a picture book works it marries images and words in a way few other mediums can. Each time we revisit an old beloved picture book we discover something new within its covers and new within ourselves.”
Elena Pasoli
The Bologna Children’s Book Fair
2018 Carle Honors Bridge
“The language of illustration is borderless not only in terms of cultural and geographical heritages, but more and more often also in terms of the age of the readers. Who could describe ‘The Arrival’ by Shaun Tan as simply a children’s book? This is the same for most of the wordless books which have been sharply growing in production and sales in the last few years all over the world. Illustrations speak clearly to everybody; they tell stories and leave people free of traveling across pages and thoughts; they are powerful and add emotions to the words; they can engage the readers’ memories as well as accompany them to discover new worlds.”
Andrea Davis Pinkney
Children’s Book Author, Editor &
2018 Carle Honors Presenter
“Come, little one. Climb onto my wings. Nestle, settle, celebrate. My feathered pages take you to places only the clouds can touch. Up, up! Here we go, soaring through words and pictures that fill you with my unforgettable flutter. Do you see the view from where my colors paint themselves into your quietest places, into the deep-down knowing that brings you comfort, giggles, wonder, discovery?
“Listen to my wisp of words spinning stories that will someday become your heart’s memories. Yes, child, I am a picture book. Our journeys—yours and mine, together—will last your whole life. This is what we picture books do—we lift you. We let you rise to skies filled with wonder. This, the awakening of your soul, starts from the day our wings hug your imagination. From there, we beckon you higher. Child, young or old, I am a picture book. No matter your age, stage, time or place, I give you the power to fly!”
Thank you, Honorees, The Carle Museum…and picture books!
What question would you ask the Honorees? Please tell us in the comments…
Tonight the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art will present the winners of its prestigious Carle Honors. One recipient is selected in each of four categories: Artist, Angel, Mentor and Bridge.
I asked the honorees to answer one important question about the state of our craft and business, and I hope to elicit more responses from attendees this evening.
Children’s literature has experienced a renaissance of sorts in the last few years (as if people are rediscovering an art form that never faded away). What in particular makes picture books more relevant today than ever before?
Ed Young, Artist
Shadows dancing on cave walls by the crackling fire pit where an oral story is told under a starry sky….
Fast forward to a lone finger sliding make believe pages on a tiny screen where words and pictures are viewed in silence in pre-ordered sequences.
Yes, progress indeed has been made in the secured comfort of a home where everything is convenient and predictable. But at what price? Meanwhile, the heart is lost.
I came to America to learn making shelters for physical people, unwittingly ending by creating sanctuaries for impoverished inner ones.
Paper picture books are tiny lights in an increasingly dark and dehumanizing world of robots. Institutions like the free libraries and Eric Carle Museum provide refuge to keep those lights alive and thriving.
They keep us connected.
Dr. John Y. Cole, Angel
Historian, Library of Congress
The versatile and vibrant picture book has become an increasingly important part of the basic fabric of the Library of Congress annual National Book Festival. Since the first festival on September 8, 2001, dozens of picture book authors and illustrators have spoken directly to audiences, young and old; Eric Carle himself was featured in 2002 in one of the two pavilions for children and young adults. In 2004 children’s illustrator Floyd Cooper designed the cover of the festival’s printed program, inaugurating a tradition of featuring a well-known artist each year. A “Picture Book” pavilion in 2014 highlighted 11 writers and illustrators; in 2015 the number climbed to 16. Roz Chast was the featured artist at the 2017 festival; another popular favorite was graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang, who also has served as the Library’s National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature for the past two years.
Bank Street Writers Lab, Mentor
Represented by Dr. Cynthia Weill, Director of the Center for Children’s Literature
My sense is that there are several reasons for the rebirth of children’s books and their relevance in the world.
Parents have realized that a picture book cannot be replaced with an e-book device. Young children need and want tactile experiences. They want to feel the pages of a book. They want to carry them. Young children may gnaw on a board book. It isn’t quite the same experience with a tablet.
Secondly, publishers are becoming more attuned to diverse writers and the point of views and experiences they can share. This helps more children to see themselves in the pages of a book and ultimately to want to read.
Thirdly, parents and educators are also more aware that children must be exposed to someone else’s experiences to grow. There is more encouragement to read books outside of one’s own reality.
Finally, publishers are now able to offer more timely subject matter on issues such as refugees, protest and the environment. These books help parents and teachers help children make sense of the world at a time when it is very necessary.
The fourth honoree is Anthea Bell in the Bridge Category, for translating foreign children’s books into English. She will be represented at the Awards this evening by her son, Oliver Kamm.
To learn more about The Carle Honors, please visit The Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.
Bid TODAY on original art to benefit the museum. Find treasures by Sandra Boynton, Mo Willems, Laurie Keller, Mike Curato and many more celebrated illustrators at 501auctions.com.
Bidding ends tonight at the awards but absentee bids are accepted via the 501auctions website!
Writing for Kids (While Raising Them) 