The Strange Poetry of Lilli Carré

Lilli Carré although only just 30 years or so old, has accomplished and produced so much already. I was first introduced to her work when stumbling upon ‘Nine Ways to Dissappear’, a beautiful and compact book published by Little Otsu that tells nine short stories in words and pictures. First drawn to the book for it’s sheer beauty and design I kept reading for the bizarreness and melancholy of the stories. They almost feel as though Carré is just making them up as she writes and draws them out. As if there was no plan, no definite set purpose to them, but that this in a way seems to be the point of them at the same time. A combination of poetry and dream seems to cloak her characters and their worlds. While I think that Carré’s illustration work is beautiful in it’s own right, I believe that the format of the book, her ‘animated drawings’ or animation is where Carré’s work is truly at home. As long as there is more than one page for Carré to work with, to show us the continuation of something she is able to bring a strange kind of poetry to life that is truly unique.

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I wrote this article for the great illustration magazine Linea Curve. I will be writing some articles for them every so often and these articles will be cross posted on their blog as well as on I Heart Picture Books. Images chosen to accompany articles may vary.

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All Images © Lilli Carré

Ezra Jack Keats

•Reproduced with permission of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation

One of the things I love the most about teaching is that it's such a great motivator to expand my own knowledge of the rich history of illustration. Every time I look at my notes for the session of my class that deals with the history of the subject, I find about ten-gazillion illustrators, printing processes or other things related that I want to know more about and pass onto my students. This time around I did a little bit of research on Ezra Jack Keats. These two sites here and here have been helpful for me; one of them being the Ezra Jack Keats foundation which also shows a photo sequence taken of a little boy.. who was the inspiration for Keat's most famous Peter Stories. I love that they put this piece of inspiration up on the site because it demonstrates so clearly and perfectly how whole entire stories can be crafted out of images.

A couple of these images are taken from a fantastic blog I just found which is all about Vintage Picture books. The blog is called "My Vintage Book Collection in Blog Form" and here is a link to it. Thanks Mallory for scanning these for us! :) 

Eric Carle

This will not the be the only Eric Carle Post. Just like with all of the greats I put it off and put it off to get the perfect idea for a post... but enough with that. I will simply start anywhere and write this short but not unimportant one here. I recently made a new picture book friend and he is wanting to create a meaningful picture book. The kind that will stay with you for longer than just the time you read it. The kind that will continue to occupy your thinking and might become a part of you eventually. 

I am almost done reading Eric Carle's fantastic autobiography (autobiography and so much more) "The Art of Eric Carle" and there is a part I have come across that I find to be really simple and graceful and most of all true on the subject of 'How to make a Picture book'.

Here are a few lines from the book:

"If a recipe on How To Make a Picture Book were possible, it would go something like this: Take thirty-two pages (most picture books are thirty two pages). Confine your story within these limitations. These limitations are of a technical nature. Your creative possibilities are endless. It helps to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Here are some very basic ingredients to a few of my books:

In The Very Hungry Caterpillar, I started with the holes - accidentally, playfully. The holes were the given. Now the caterpillar needed to be invented. 

In the Very Busy Spider, the spider was the given. Now all I needed was the raised web. 

In The Grouchy Ladybug, I wanted to deal with the concept of size. Now all I needed was an interesting story. 

To these basic ingredients the following are added: Your love for animals, big and small.
Your appreciation of Nature. 

Your father's love and his sense of passing on existing knowledge.
[sic]

You include your likes and dislikes, your view of the world, your feelings." 

Oliver Jeffers is soooooo Greaaaaat

I pitty the fooo' who hasn't watched this video yet. ;)
Watch it for an awesome glimpse into the working process of the guy behind so many amazing picture books!



I use Jeffer's book "The Great Paper Caper" in my class all the time as a fantastic example of the intricate and fun relationship between Words and Pictures at it's finest. Get inspired by Jeffers!

Tove Jansson Photos

Tove Jansson is someone I would have loved to meet. She died in 2001. Too bad! Too bad! But we will always have the Mumin Family. These Photos are from Jansson's life. Beautiful no?

Tove Jansson

I have been reading a book about Finnish author/illustrator Tove Jansson's work for the last couple of days. It is written by a man named W. Glyn Jones. (A Danish literary scholar of sorts according to the 'about the author' bit at the beginning of the book.) The Book as a whole is broken down into 16 Chapters, out of which the first one is about Tove directly, titled 'Background, Ideas, and Influences' the next 14 Chapters are all titles of Tove's Books (which the author first summarizes and then dissects and over analyses), and the last chapter, very cleverly titled ' Conclusion' serves, not surprisingly as somewhat of a conclusion.

At the beginning of the book is a short bit about my (possibly favorite author's) life and times and I realized, that I didn't know very much about her personal life at all. Then I did a bit more research and found this amazing site, which I hadn't come across before so far (I think it might be somewhat new) and was stunned by the amount of amazing photos of Jansson in her studio, her travels, and my favorite, ... of Tove Jansson on the island that she used to go to in the summer. It is so magical to see how the people you respect so much, lived, how they decorated their homes, how they dressed, how they passed their time when they were not writing and drawing... If you are looking for a thorough online story of her life I really recommend this site!

Also mentioned in this chapter is the fact that Jansson slowly moved away from writing for children after some time and started writing book for adults instead. Some of these books are 'The Summer Book', 'Sun City' and 'The Doll's House'. Here are the pages of the this first insightful chapter with highlighted parts of special interest to me for various reasons.