By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: April 25, 2012
Beautiful Dreamers
In celebration of National Poetry Month, we’ve hand-picked ten many-splendored new books. Children are born loving poetry from the moment they form their first babbling words to when they begin to tackle more complex rhythms and tongue twisters. As they acquire language and enjoy how it rolls off their tongues, they also gain an appreciation for the beauty of creative expression. Nothing quite tops that moment when they learn to recite their first nursery rhyme. So leave a poem in your child’s pocket and help him discover the appeal of modern poetry.
By Shel Silverstein
If you’re like most of us, you may have grown up with Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, or The Giving Tree on your childhood bookshelf. Master wordsmith and doodler Shel Silverstein invented laugh-out-loud silly rhymes for us to endlessly ponder. Every Thing On It has been posthumously published as a new collection of his irreverent poems and characters drawn with his trademark squiggly offhand style. It’s a great joy to share his nonsense poems with a new generation to puzzle over and love for years to come.
Ages 8-11 | Publisher: HarperCollins | September 20, 2011
By Marilyn Singer; Illustrated by LeUyen Pham
What a winning combination Pham’s playful illustrations and Singer’s amusing verse make in this lovely poetry collection. Bouncing rhyme and pictures of active children at play ensure even the most poetry-adverse child will warm to its magical delights. As Singer’s light-handed verse concludes, “A stick is an excellent thing if you find the perfect one.” We’ve certainly found the perfect book of poetry in this one. For more on LeUyen Pham, check out our interview with her.
Ages 5-8 | Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | February 28, 2012
By Kate Coombs; Illustrated by Meilo So
In her first book of poetry, Kate Coombs takes us on a voyage under the sea.
My husband Matt pairs well with me for a number of reasons. Amongst them is our mutual inclination to collect things we love. As such, Matt has systematically been holding onto all his issues of The New Yorker ever since he got his subscription in college. Over the years these issues have piled up piled up piled up. I was a Serials Manager before I got my library degree and one of the perks of the job was getting lots of lovely magazine holders. For years these holders graced the tops of our bookshelves and even came along with us when we moved into our current apartment a year ago. Yet with the arrival of our puir wee bairn, we decided to do the unthinkable.
Yes. We ripped off all their covers.
Well, most anyway. We have the complete run of New Yorker text on CD-ROM anyway, and anything published after the CD-ROM’s release would be online anyway. Thus does the internet discourage hoarding.
In the meantime, we now are the proud owners of only three boxes worth of New Yorker covers. They’re very fun to look at. I once had the desire to wallpaper my bathroom in such covers, but that dream will have to wait (as much as I love New York apartments and all . . .). For now, it’s just fun to flip through the covers themselves and, in flipping, I discovered something. Sure, I knew that the overlap between illustrators of children’s books and illustrators of New Yorkers was frequent. I just didn’t know how frequent it was. Here then is a quickie encapsulation of some of the folks I discovered in the course of my cover removal.
Istan Banyai
Zoom and Re-Zoom continue to circulate heavily in my library, all thanks to Banyai. I had a patron the other day ask if we had anything else that was similar but aside from Barbara Lehman all I could think of was Wiesner’s Flotsam. Banyai is well known in a different way for New Yorker covers, including this controversial one. As I recall, a bit of a kerfuffle happened when it was published back in the day.
Harry Bliss
Author and illustrator of many many picture books, it’s little wonder that the Art Editor of The New Yorker, Ms. Francoise Mouly, managed to get the man to do a TOON Book (Luke on the Loose) as well. And when it comes to his covers, this is the one I always think of first.
A Stick Is An Excellent Thing
Water Sings Blue
Thank you so much for this retrospective! So lovely to see a Gary Larson cover in there, I had no idea! I’m going to have to check out more of Marcellus Hall, I love that cover.
I also love the covers by Richard McGuire, creator of books like The Orange Book and Night Becomes Day. Check out this old blog entry I wrote, http://handthumbcomics.com/?p=66 , for some of his covers!
Fascinating. I knew of some of them, but. . .
Jane
I love this article Betsy.
For about a year or so, when my son was small, he thought the magazine was about an individual guy who was The New Yorker. My boy scanned every cover looking for glimpses of the guy in a “Where’s Waldo?” sort of way and a few of those covers became favorites of his. He still has a small stack of them in his room.
Great list. Also Charles Martin, Ludwig Bemelmans, Joseph Low, James Thurber (did he illustrate a children’s book? I don’t think so. But he wrote several of my favorites), Roger Duvoisin, James Stevenson, John O’Brien, Roxie Munro, Gretchen Dow Simpson (she did an alphabet book years ago) and probably more.
Fact: our basement is completely filled with New Yorkers.
Fact: Almost all of these illustrious illustrators who also do children’s books are men. Hmm. Yet a bunch of women did covers as well.
Thanks for this – has brightened up my lunch time coffee no end!
You can add me to the list though my covers and spots came out when you were probably just a tot! Interesting post.
Love this; thanks so much for compiling.
This is great to look through; thanks! What you can’t tell from looking is that some of these illustrators were New Yorker illustrators who were approached by New-Yorker-reading editors or art directors, and others were book illustrators before they became New Yorker cover artists. I am guessing that the Sendak one is the only case of The New Yorker approaching a book illustrator.
If I may pile on with suggestions for more, you could also include Ross MacDonald and Douglas Florian. I was going to say Marisabina Russo but she said it herself, and she said it, according to the indication on the post, almost three hours after I am writing this now. How did she do that?
About that wonderful NewYorkistan picture– I don’t know how it was credited in the magazine, but it was created jointly by Maira Kalman and Rick Meyerowitz.
I wrote this for Kirkus recently—http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/childrens/seven-impossible-things-new-yorker-effect/—-and started a list of those editorial illustrators who migrated to children’s book illustration. This post is PERFECT and adds to my list (which exists for no other reason than to just….exist). Bravo to this post!
And now there is Frank Viva, whose first book is ALONG A LONG ROAD (Little, Brown).
As a long-time New Yorker reader, I adore this post. Many of these covers look so familiar to me, I remember seeing them originally, but most of them I had not known were done by children’s book illustrators. Now I need to go find their books!
I found a Viva cover that looks identical to Along a Long Road but didn’t get a chance to include it.
Jules I wondered if you’d done a New Yorker piece but neglected to check Kirkus. Consider yourself linked.
Wish I could get my hands on the covers of other artists mentioned. Didn’t know about Roxie.