A Caldecott Celebration: Six Artists Share Their Paths to the Caldecott Medal

Booklist

A beautifully made book.

Horn Book Magazin

The text is remarkable...A fresh, inviting examination of an established process and ritual.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Filled with witty anecdotes and pithy observations, Marcus's (Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom) approach to examining the works of six Caldecott Medalists will be of as much interest to adults as to picture book readers. He has chosen one book from each decade, "so that viewed together, the six offer an informal cross section through time of the American picture book": Robert McCloskey's Make Way for Ducklings, Marcia Brown's Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper, Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, William Steig's Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Chris Van Allsburg's Jumanji and David Wiesner's Tuesday. With a generous sprinkling of the artists' own words and sometimes those of his or her editor, Marcus chronicles the inspiration behind these works, the creative process, the artists' reactions to winning the prestigious award and its effect on their careers. He fills the volume with the kinds of details children relish: McCloskey once shared his Greenwich Village digs with 16 ducks and Steig does black-and-white drawings first, then fills in each color one by one throughout the book. Encouraging readers to see each picture book through the artist's eyes, Marcus shows Brown's compositional studies, explains how Van Allsburg chose from which perspective to view the coiled python in the living room and how Sendak decided "that the illustrations leading up to the rumpus would get larger and larger, as Max's emotions pushed out the words." He traces the evolution of the illustrations for Tuesday from Wiesner's first quick sketches, when the idea occurred to him on a jet plane. With Marcus's sure hand guiding this tour, readers will find cause for celebration. All ages. (Oct.)

Children's Literature - Mary Quattlebaum

When changeable weather makes your kid antsy, you might try an art project or hand her a copy of A Caldecott Celebration. Well-known historian and critic Leonard Marcus takes a fascinating look at six artists who won the most prestigious honor for children's book illustration. The book includes information and visuals on the artists' process, and it is enlightening (as well as heartening for young artists) to see how a work can evolve from a few doodles to admirable art. Here are Marcia Brown, Maurice Sendak, William Steig, and Chris Van Allsburg; and because Marcus features an illustrator for each of six decades, readers can see how technology and styles change, from Robert McCloskey, 1942 winner for Make Way for Ducklings, to David Wiesner, 1992 winner for Tuesday.