Two Peas in Different Pods

In researching this coming week's Featured Author, Leonard Weisgard, I came across this comment in his Caldecott acceptance speech:

Books at school were upsetting to me. Those frightening black and blue worlds, where everything was outlined in black and indiscriminately filled in with one color. There were blue cows and blue pigs and blue chickens and blue barns and blue people beneath a sky filled with blue sunshine and blue trees on blue grass. On the next page the world would suddenly have turned orange. An orange child in an orange world carrying an orange basket filled with orange juice, up an orange hill under an orange sky.

Susan Jeffers had a completely different take on exactly the same situation:

. . . The books were illustrated with beautiful, small ink drawings. These black-and-white illustrations sometimes had a spot of color - maybe blue or orange - that was it.

Looking back now, I realize I did not miss the bigger color pictures we now have in books. Those small, spare illustrations left my imagination free to create. This ability came into good use when, as a teen, I struggled to stay awake through the Reverend Stoneton's sermons. High in the choir loft, I would tell myself stories, creating in my imagination all the pictures that were not included in My Book House.

They both then went on to create beautiful illustrations for a new generation of children, who wouldn't have to put up so often with blue and orange pictures.

Susan Jeffers books in print.

Leonard Weisgard books in print.

Leonard Wiesgard Samples

Susan Jeffers Samples