Insights on a Fellowship

Glastonbury, Conn., English teacher David Polochanin was recently awarded the James Marshall Fellowship, as he pursues to write young adult literature as part of a yearlong sabbatical. During his research, he will write an occasional series of blog posts, based on his observations and insights relating to the contents of the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection at the University of Connecticut. Polochanin’s work has been widely published in major newspapers in New England, including The Boston Globe, Providence Journal, and Hartford Courant. His education writing has appeared in Education Week and Middle Ground, and his poetry has been included in an anthology by Native West Press, and will be published in the prose poetry journal Sentence.

Archives & Special Collections stacks

Photo in Archives & Special Collections stacks @ David Polochanin 2013

 Blog Post 1: On Production

Combing through the archives of this collection has been fascinating, and an extraordinary opportunity. Since my days as a reporting intern for the Boston Globe nearly 20 years ago, I’ve been interested in authors’ behind-the-scenes writing process – perhaps because the art of creation is typically so mysterious. After all, when authors are interviewed by admirers, one of the first questions they are asked is, “How did you write this?” or “Where did the idea come from?”

I am not so much interested in where ideas come from, but I am intrigued with the process of writing itself.

In a way, I am learning that it is not so complicated.

While I have examined only a fraction of what the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection holds, I am struck by the sheer production of some of these authors, the volume of work they have created, and that, it would seem, an author’s ability and determination to produce such large amounts of work are major factors leading to publication, success, accolades, fame. This drive ultimately distinguishes a recreational writer, I think, from writers who earn a living by writing, particularly as a creative writer, for adults and children alike.

Their success is not reliant upon talent, alone.

It takes tenacity to produce. I am reminded of an interview I read recently with Newbery Medal winning author Kate DiCamillo, posted on the website ReadingRockets.org. She said, “I’ve been in so many writing workshops, writing classes, and to the right of me and to the left of me, there’s always somebody much more talented than I am. And what I figured out is they’re not willing to go through the rejection, which is enormous, and then the compromise that comes with editing your work. I decided a long time ago that I didn’t have to be talented. I just had to be persistent, and that that was something that I could control — the persistence. I’ve always been kind of persistent.”

Again and again in author interviews, this is a common refrain. In order to publish your work, one must work hard. Sounds simple. But the determination involved when there are dozens of things vying for our time, is remarkable. It means casting these distractions – the Internet, TV, the laundry, the long shower – aside to sit somewhere and write for extended periods of time. In today’s society, a place where patience is underrated, this kind of discipline is increasingly difficult.

So when I look through boxes of drafts, notes, and manuscripts by such celebrated children’s authors as Eleanor Estes and Ruth Krauss, whose works are well represented in the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection, seeing the sheer amount of their work stacked in box after box on the shelves in the back room, you begin to get a sense of why these are noteworthy writers and why their work is housed in a university archive.

Writing is a way of life. And you can tell that many of the writers here have dedicated their lives to the craft, to creating stories, poetry, or nonfiction. They have been prolific producers. It’s not unlike any other line of work that requires intense focus and discipline in order to rise to the top of a profession. The best physicians are often board-certified, keep up with current research, and teach young doctors in training; the best NBA players spend hours beyond their usual practice and game time to practice three-pointers and free throws and watch video of their games.

‘Consuming’ is the right word to describe this sort of dedication.

In his book The Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell theorizes that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at a craft, including reaching the highest levels of achievement in business, technology, sports, and music. I’d argue the same goes for writing. Over 10 years, that’s 1,000 hours a year, or 83 hours a month, 19 hours a week, or about three hours a day. Of course, this is provided that you write every day.

Poring through this collection’s files and folders and the sheer volume of production included here makes it clear, at least in my mind: the more a writer produces, the more likely they are to get published, and the more likely one is to eventually publish work of enduring value. Kate DiCamillo has it right: First comes a stubborn persistence, then comes talent.

Katie Davis exhibit

The Katie Davis exhibit in the Dodd Research Center Gallery will be coming down on February 22, 2013, in the early morning.  So if you haven’t seen it yet, you’ll want to come in soon.  It’s a wonderful exhibit documenting Katie’s creative process.  And, trust me, is she ever creative.

Tomie dePaola featured in latest Kearsarge magazine

One of our favorite NCLC donors, Tomie dePaola, is the cover guy for the winter 2012/2013 Kearsarge magazine, with a great article inside written by John Walters accompanied by lovely photography by Tom McNeill.  Now 78 years old, Tomie has published something like 250 books.  His newest book, The birds of Bethlehem, is a retelling of the Nativity story from a bird’s perspective.  John Walters interviewed Tomie about his life and love of reading and art, his teaching career, and his outlook on the many awards he has received.  His favorite, Walters reports, is that his hometown of Meriden, Connecticut, named its children’s library after him.

The Angel for Tomie’s 2012 Christmas card is a re-imagining” of one of his designs for a hand-screened greeting card business in Vermont in the late 1950’s.  Tomie has changed the background, added color and lettering, and reports, “It’s an interesting thing to take an image that is fifty-plus years old and re-visiting it.”

Tomie’s house is full of ornaments he has designed himself, in addition to a large collection of folk art from around the world.  And, Walters reports, “plenty of poinsettias.”

Katie Davis exhibit opens at the Dodd Center

The Katie Davis exhibit is up and running in the Dodd Center Gallery.  Original materials from the Davis Papers for her books The Curse of Addy McMahon, Party Animals, Mabel the Tooth Fairy, Who Hoots and Who Hops are featured as well as books and some great “Scared Guy” items.  The exhibit runs from October 29, 2012 to February 22, 2013.  There will be a reception and gallery talk by Katie on Saturday, Nov. 10, from 2-4 in the Dodd Center.  Her books will be for sale at the Book Fair.  For more information to go bookfair.uconn.edu.

Katie Davis exhibit, Dodd Center Gallery

Katie Davis exhibit, Northeast Children’s Literature Collection

Tomie dePaola receives Society of Illustrators’ Lifetime Achievement Award

Congratulations, Tomie!  According to the Society’s home page, “The Lifetime Achievement Awards were established in 2005 by past chairs of The Original Art. Nominees must be judged to have a body of work that documents an innovative and pioneering contribution to the field of children’s book illustration, and final selection is made by artists whose work has been juried into the previous year’s show. ”

Oliver Button is a Sissy (pg. 5)

From an early age, Tomie and his parents knew he would be an artist. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York where he studied Art. His Master of Fine Arts degree was received from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California. He has also been awarded three honorary Doctorate degrees from separate Universities and Colleges.

Tomie’s career as a professional artist and designer, former teacher of art, children’s author and illustrator is expansive. He has designed greeting cards, posters, magazine and catalogue covers, record album covers, and theater costumes and sets. He has illustrated over two hundred books, and written over seventy. Tomie has won numerous awards, including the prestigious American Library Association’s Caldecott Honor Award for Strega Nona (1976), the University of Minnesota’s Kerlan Award (1981), the Catholic Library Association’s Regina Medal (1983), and the Smithsonian Institution’s Smithson Medal (1990).

Tomie dePaola

Tomie’s books have been published world-wide in fifteen different languages and he has over five million copies in print. Many of his books are largely autobiographical such as Nana Upstairs, Nana Downstairs, Tom, and The Art Lesson. Tomie currently resides in New Hampshire.

The Tomie dePaola Collection contains artwork, sketch books and paintings from the beginning of his career, as well as many different editions from each book he wrote or illustrated, including foreign editions. Some of the languages represented are Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, French Canadian, German, Afrikaans, and even Zulu. Original illustrations from books, as well as paintings and other art work spanning from his childhood years are included. The Collection also contains marketing items from his books, such as towels, porcelain jewelry containers, music boxes, paper goods (wrapping paper, cups & plates), quilts from schools, and a large selection of Christmas tree ornaments designed by Tomie for the Marshall Fields Christmas trees in Chicago.

Little Tomie

Well done, Tomie!

–Terri J. Goldich, Curator

 

 

New book on Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson out!

Dr. Philip Nel’s newest work, Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss:  How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature, has been published by the University Press of Mississippi.  This book is the culmination of years of work to bring to light the lives and times of the man who created Harold and the purple crayon and the woman who, with Maurice Sendak, created A Hole is to dig.  Over the course of their marriage and collaborations, they created over 75 books and influenced some of the best in the business, including Chris van Allsburg who thanked Harold and his purple crayon in his Caldecott acceptance speech in 1981.  Nel points out that while Krauss and Johnson were “never quite household names…Their circle of friends and acquaintances included some of the  important cultural figures of the twentieth century” (pg.7) .   This impeccably researched work which literally took Nel a decade to write, is arranged in 28 chapters, with extensive notes, bibliography, index and illustrations, some reprinted from published works and some from the three dozen archives he visited including the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection.  In his epilogue, Nel writes, “Crockett Johnson shows us that a crayon can create a world, while Ruth Krauss demonstrates that dreams can be as large as a giant orange carrot.  Whenever children and grown-ups seek books that invite them to think and to imagine, they need look no further than Johnson and Krauss.  There, they will find a very special house, where holes are to dig, walls are a canvas, and people are artists, drawing paths that take them anywhere they want to go” (pg. 275).

Congratulations, Dr. Nel, on an exceptional work of scholarship.

Philip Nel, Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss (Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 2012).  ISBN 978-1-61703-624-8.  EBook 978-1-61703-625-5.

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Paul Galdone greeting card illustrations donated to NCLC

Ms. A. Siegel of Illinois has donated four illustrations for greeting cards created in the 1960s by Paul Galdone. Galdone was born in 1907 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary and immigrated to the United States in 1921. He studied art at the Art Student’s League and New York School for Industrial Design. After serving in World War II in the U.S. Army, Engineers, the author and illustrator of children’s books worked as a bus boy, electrician’s helper, and fur dryer, in addition to four years in the art department at Doubleday (NY). His work was awarded runner-up for the Caldecott Medal (Eve Titus, Anatole, 1957 and Anatole and the Cat, 1958) and was selected by the American Library Association for its Notable Books program (The Little Red Hen, Winter Danger, and Flaming Arrows). He died of a heart attack on 7 November 1986, in Nyack, NY.

 

Webster-Doyle Papers hold key to ending bullying

Established in 2004, the Terrence Webster-Doyle Papers contain materials having to do with bullying prevention, conflict management, peace studies, emotional response, and how psychological conditioning prevents peace and creates conflict, individually and globally.  Influenced by Jiddu Krishnamurti in 1968, Webster-Doyle began to teach classes at Sonoma State University in the search for understanding the cause, nature, and structure of conditioning.  Webster-Doyle also studied the work of Dr. David Bohm, a physicist who studies the relationship between thought and reality; A. S. Neil, the founder of the Summerhill School, an intentional community in England; and Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World which explored the nature and effect of negative conditioning.

Webster-Doyle is a sixth Dan in Take-Nami-do karate, and utilizes his extensive martial arts experience as a focus for the exploration of the nature of conflict and its ramifications for the individual, schools, society and the world.  With his wife Jean, they founded the Atrium Society and its subgroups, Martial Arts for Peace, Youth Peace Literacy Project, and Education for Peace (http://martialartsforpeace.com/index-2.html).  His published works usually contain not only a main work but also guides for students, teachers, martial arts instructors, and parents, with worksheets, group and individual activities, with tools to chart progress in conflict resolution.

Webster-Doyle’s books, archives, and audiovisual materials are held by the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection.  His books are also on permanent display at the International Museum of Peace and Solidarity in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, the Commonwealth of Independent States and at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Japan.

–Terri J. Goldich, Curator, Northeast Children’s Literature Collection

Claudia Rueda wins Nati Per Leggere Award

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Claudia Rueda

Claudia Rueda, a former Billie M. Levy Travel Grant recipient, reports some very good news:

The Italian edition of my book NO (published in English by Groundwood) has been the recipient of this year’s Nati Per Leggere (Born to Read) Award!!! This award aims to support the best editorial production for preschoolers in Italy and to recognize the creativity and commitment to the Born to Read project.

The national programme “Nati per Leggere” is meant to inspire an early interest in books and reading. The project is supported by the Italian Library Association (AIB), the association of pediatricians (ACP) and the child health centre (Centro per la Salute del Bambino, CSB).

Here’s the link to their site http://www.natiperleggere.it/index.php?id=174

Congratulations, Claudia!

NCLC remembers Maurice Sendak

My favorite memory of Mr. Sendak comes from a dinner at Dean Emeritus Dr. David Woods’ house.  Dean Woods had invited a few folks over following Sendak’s visit to UConn to deliver the inaugural Robert Gray Memorial Lecture.  Another of the guests was Etienne Delessert, also a well-known children’s illustrator from western Connecticut.  They discussed politics.

ImageThe NCLC holds original Sendak illustrations from the book he did with Ruth Krauss in 1952, A hole is to dig.  It was one of his first major books arranged by Ursula Nordstrom.  The NCLC also hold a few illustrations for Somebody else’s nut tree by Krauss, published in 1958.

What a wonderful, scary, brilliant man.

–Terri J. Goldich, Curator

Natalie Babbitt Interviewed on NPR

Natalie Babbitt was interviewed yesterday by NPR host Rachel Martin to talk about Natalie’s new book “The Moon over High Street” published by Michael diCapua Books. Hear the interview and read the transcript at http://www.npr.org/2012/03/18/148858044/the-moon-childrens-book-tackles-lifelong-themes?sc=emaf.

Malka Penn Children’s Book Collection on Human Rights

In 2005, Michele Palmer of Storrs, Connecticut, established the Malka Penn Children’s Book Collection on Human Rights as part of the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.  The picture books, young adult novels and non-fiction works address issues such as the Holocaust, racism, prejudice, war and conflict.  The works below were  published in 2010 or were made available in the U.S. for the first time in 2010.Ms. Palmer, who has written several children’s books under the pseudonym Malka Penn, is also a volunteer for the Windham Textile and History Museum.

 

Chapman, Fern, Is It Night or Day? (New York : Farrar Straus Giroux, 2010).

Ellis, Deborah, No Safe Place. (Toronto : Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, 2010).

Engle, Margarita, The Firefly Letters: A Suffragette’s Journey to Cuba.  (New York : Henry Holt and Co., 2010).

Jablonski, Carla, Resistance: Book 1 (New York : First Second, 2010).

Kittinger, Jo, Rosa’s Bus.  (Honesdale, Pa. : Calkins Creek, ©2010).

Lottridge, Celia, Home is Beyond the Mountains. (Toronto : Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, 2010).

Molnar, Haya, Under A Red Sky: Memoir of a Childhood in Communist Romania. (New York : Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2010).

Nelson, S.D., Black Elk’s Vision. (New York : Abrams Books for Young Readers, ©2010).

Pinkney, Andrea, Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down.  (New York : Little, Brown, ©2010).

Ramsey, Calvin, Ruth and the Green Book. (Minneapolis, MN : Carolrhoda Books, ©2010).

Reynolds, Aaron, Back of the Bus. (New York : Philomel Books, ©2010).

Robinson, Anthony, Hamzat’s Journey: A Refugee Diary. (London, England : Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 2010, ©2009).

Shimko, Bonnie, The Private Thoughts of Amelia E. Rye. (New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010).

Slade, Suzanne, Climbing Lincoln’s Steps. (Chicago, Ill. : Albert Whitman, ©2010).

Stanley, Diane, Saving Sky. (New York : Harper, ©2010).

Warner, Jody, Viola Desmond Won’t Be Budged. (Toronto : Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, 2010).