David Johnson Leisk was born 106 years ago in an apartment at 444 East 58th Street, New York City. If you’re in New York today, you might give yourself a walking tour (aided by the subway) of where the creator of Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955) and Barnaby (1942-1952) grew up. Dave Leisk —…
Month: October 2012
Moomins!
In America, children generally do not grow up with Tove Jansson’s Moomins as part of their childhood. Why is this? In other parts of the world, the Moomins are well-known and loved. There have been several animated television series made in countries as different as Japan, Sweden, and even the Soviet Union. There’s an amusement…
Avant-Garde Children’s Books; or, What I Learned in Sweden Last Week
There are a lot of modernist children’s books, and a fair few directly influenced by the historical avant-garde — and, yes, I am sharing images, below. I learned about these books (and a great deal more) last week at Children’s Literature and the European Avant-Garde, a conference at Linköpings University, in Norrköping, Sweden. You would…