The Flatiron Building & a walk in Central Park…

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I enjoyed visiting students at Brookside Elementary school in Yorktown Heights, NY last week and students at Chamberlin Elementary in  South Burlington, Vermont yesterday.

When talking about publishing, I describe my publisher’s building as the one that looks like a giant piece of cake.

I later discovered that someone in Yorktown Heights was thinking of a round cake and thought of the “Lipstick” building.

The librarian in Vermont brought in a wonderful cake decorated with  BOB…the rooster from my book. The cake was a rectangle. She delivered little pieces to all of the students who came to my presentation. The pieces of cake were square.

This is a picture of the building where I go to visit my editor. It is a triangle.
I think The Flatiron Building is one of the coolest buildings in New York City.
I can proudly say that I finally got to stand in the nose and look down 5th ave.

Cool.

I also spent time in the city in late April. I missed my tulips in Vermont,
but the ones in Central Park were lovely….and I made a friend…tcp

May Christmas!

What is the first thing one does after spending months working on the final art for a picture book? After turning in the art to the publisher?…

….traveling from here to there…spending time with editor…art director…school children…bookstores…librarians……and sprinkling family in-between?

I don’t know what other illustrators do.

I come home to Vermont…smell the lilacs before they disappear
and take down the Christmas decorations.

At least I will after I finish designing the cover for my book.
I am thinking maybe June for the decorations?

(No those flowers are not lilacs, they are jacob’s ladder….the lilacs are already on their way out….but the peonies are beginning to bud!…tcp)

For Maurice

Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye;
Four-and-twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie!

When the pie was opened
The birds began to sing;
Was not that a dainty dish
To set before the king?

The above illustration is from my book Sing a Song of Sixpence
published by Dial Books in 1985

The dedication in this book…”For M. and J.”
…for Maurice Sendak and Jane Bierhorst, my teachers and in my mind…the King and Queen of picture books. My challenge to myself was to create a book from the poem that Randolph Caldecott, the “Father of Picture Books” illustrated in 1880.

Every book that I make, I return to the lessons learned from these two talented and generous people.

This is my birthday wild thing from Maurice that hangs in my studio.

Maurice…You are on my wall…on my shelves…in my heart…thank you…tcp

Spring Bonnets & Edward Lear!

Spring is here! So is Poetry Month. I pulled out my “Bird Bonnet” to celebrate and to honor my favorite poet…Edward Lear.

There  was a Young Lady whose bonnet
Came untied when the birds sate upon it;
But she said, “I don’t care!  all the birds in the air
Are welcome to sit on my bonnet!”

Limerick by Edward Lear…

…Just one of many!  Visit your library and find more…or make up your own!
Make every month Poetry Month!…tcp