Chris Ware's cover for Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children's Literature

Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: Chris Ware’s cover

Graphic genius Chris Ware designed the cover for my Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature (due this September from the University Press of Mississippi). The front cover is above.  The full, wrap-around cover is below. Click on it for a larger image.  Trust me:

The Beau Hunks Sextette, Manhattan Minuet (art by Chris Ware)

Children’s Literature + Music = Great Album Covers

Many children’s writers and illustrators have created covers for albums. Below, we’ll look at a dozen or so of these artists. As is ever the case with any art posted on this website, the artwork belongs to the artists. Visit their websites! Buy prints! Buy their books! (I’ve included websites for each artist.) Enjoy! Saul

Harold mural at Ben Franklin School, Norwalk, Connecticut. Photo by Jackie Curtis.

Harold and the School Mural

Harold takes his purple crayon to the walls of the Ben Franklin School, on Flax Hill, in Norwalk, Connecticut. The school houses the Head Start program. I’m told that the mural was painted by employees of Pepperidge Farm. The photos are all courtesy of Jackie Curtis, a friend of Ruth and Dave – a.k.a. Ruth

Mock Caldecott 2011: Manhattan, Kansas Edition

With thanks to the Children’s and Adolescent Literature Community (ChALC) for organizing the event and the Manhattan Public Library for hosting it, we held aMock Caldecott at this afternoon.  Of course, we weren’t able to get all of the books we wanted to look at – so, there are certainly Caldecott candidates we didn’t get to review.  Here are the top

The President's Speech (1944): cover, illustrated by Hugo Gellert

Artists for FDR

To support President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1944 re-election campaign, Syd Hoff, Crockett Johnson, Lynd Ward, Hugo Gellert, William Gropper, and fourteen other artists illustrated this booklet. The text is FDR’s speech made before the Teamsters Union on September 23rd, 1944 – also known as the “Fala speech,” since it features his dog, Fala. Here is

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

The problem with a blurb from Neil Gaiman on a cover is that, invoking Gaiman, it inevitably diminishes the book by comparison.  This is not the book’s fault.  Gaiman is one of our most gifted contemporary writers.  Catherynne M. Valente may not be, but I wouldn’t even be thinking about the comparison if Gaiman’s endorsement

The exquisite corpse will drink the new cappuccino

Half-way through the “Surrealism: The Poetry of Dreams” exhibit at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) here in Brisbane, museum-goers encounter this: A clever riff on the Surrealist game that exploits the mysteries of accidental juxtapositions, this mid-exhibit bar also offered a welcome rest to travel-weary visitors (such as your humble narrator, who visited the