Claudia Rueda, Lesley University

On June 18, 2009, Claudia Rueda will present the results of her research in the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection. Ms. Rueda is the second recipient of a Billie M. Levy Travel/Research Grant for 2009 and will give a presentation entitled “How Picturebooks work: the dynamics between visual and verbal narratives in modern picturebooks.”  A native of Colombia, Ms. Rueda is the author and illustrator of nine picture books and has illustrated five others. After attending law school and art school in Colombia, she moved to the U.S. in 1997 to study illustration at the University of California at Berkeley.  Ms. Rueda has won multiple awards for her work and is currently in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University. Ms. Rueda will talk about the development of the dynamics between words and images in traditional picture books and how the interaction in modern works can generate new meanings and interpretations to involve the reader’s imagination.