This write-up is more personal than the other ones I’ve done so far, and I hope you will excuse me gushing for several minutes about some artists I love and admire. Sofia Prokofievna (b. 1928) is a Russian illustrator, poet, playwright, and, most importantly to me, the author of many original “fairy tales” for children….
Picture This: Gyo Fujikawa
I picked up my first Gyo Fujikawa book as a teenager in a used bookstore, because the cute, gentle artwork caught my eye. Titled simply Mother Goose, it was a hefty book containing many traditional folk and nursery rhymes and an equally impressive number of illustrations. The pages alternated between delicate pen-and-ink spots and cheerful…
Picture This: The Tree House by Marije and Robert Tolman
The Tree House (first published by Lemniscaat, Belgium, in 2009) is a wordless picture book created by the father-daughter team of Marije and Ronald Tolman. It depicts a couple of bears (and many other animals) hanging out in a treehouse that starts out in the ocean and ends up on dry land. The blurb on the…