by Sybilla Avery Cook ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 13, 2016
Access to family archives and new material provides the basis for a worthy history of little-known artists.
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A biography focuses on two prolific and award-winning 20th-century illustrators.
In this work, Cook (Walking Portland, Oregon, 2013) explores the lives and work of Elmer and Berta Hader, artists who produced dozens of picture books, including the winner of the 1949 Caldecott Medal. The volume follows the Haders from their first meeting in 1915 San Francisco (Berta stored Elmer’s painting equipment so he would not have to carry it up Telegraph Hill every day) to Greenwich Village, where they married after Elmer’s return from war, to the idiosyncratic stone house they designed and built themselves in a bucolic Hudson River village. The Haders were part of the writer-artist communities in both San Francisco and New York, and authors Rose Wilder Lane and Katherine Anne Porter were among the frequent weekend guests at their home. Cook also follows the evolution of the Haders’ careers, which became closely entwined after their marriage, as they moved from magazine illustration to children’s books, eventually creating their own in addition to illustrating the words of other authors. The biography examines their work within the broader context of the growing interest in children’s publishing in the first half of the 20th century as well as the impact of the consolidation and mergers in the industry in the 1960s and ’70s. Thanks to Cook’s examination of family archives and a trove of items discovered by a later owner of the stone house, the book is full of insights into the Haders’ blend of bohemian artistry and Depression-era thrift. (After finding a spider in a window, “the Haders fed him flies, thought the web a work of art and said spiders bring good fortune and Elwell brought them luck.”) Although the work restricts itself largely to summaries of the Haders’ books, rather than offering literary or artistic criticism or an analysis of their contemporary relevance, it is still a valuable contribution to the history of children’s literature as well as an enjoyable and well-researched story about two artists devoted to their work, their friends, and each other.
Access to family archives and new material provides the basis for a worthy history of little-known artists.Pub Date: June 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-934961-05-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Concordia University Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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