Children's Classics Revisited: Contact

Children’s Classics Revisited: Innovative Illustrations into the 21st Century by educator and author Lyn Lacy is for those who admire, study and collect picture books as a unique art form. The articles showcase the first twenty years of the 21st century, which have exploded with dozens of new books with nontraditional ways to look at The Night Before Christmas, seven nursery rhymes and the Tin Man from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Other innovative illustrators continue legacies of black-and-white as in Millions of Cats and honesty about children, monsters, fantasy worlds and unique book design as in The Snowy Day, Where the Wild Things Are, Black and White and Jumanji. Eighteen Caldecott Medalists and Honor Books since 2000 also demonstrate excellence in uses of the artistic elements and picture book design.

Note from the Author

If you give your books their own room, they’ll want their own house. —Anonymous For Children’s Classics Revisited, only eight books among many children’s classics have been chosen to feature in an article . The reason for my choice is simple—these are the classics that have taken over my house. I have written a lot using my collections of illustrated editions of “The Night Before Christmas,” Mother Goose rhymes illustrated by Randolph Caldecott and the only novel included here, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Collections that have spurred even more writing are black-and-white illustrations of Wanda Gag—as in her 1929 Newbery Honor Book, Millions of Cats—and copies of all Caldecott Award-winners, including four I consider classics, Where the Wild Things Are, The Snowy Day, Black and White and Jumanji. Picture books in the 21st century owe much to these trailblazing illustrators. The impact of their legacies sets the stage for art appreciation of 21st century contributions by some of the most innovative artists creating picture books today. One article that will be presented is my choices of 21st century Caldecott Award winners and Honor Books that were based on specific criteria of artistic merit, not to do with an illustrator’s “style” or choice of medium. Instead, the illustrators chosen for this book are exceptionally adept at uses of the artistic elements (line, color, light and dark, shape, space and implied texture) as well as a picture book’s special features such as page and book design (cover, book jacket, front matter, sequential art, gutter, single last page), as described in my earlier book, Art and Design in Children’s Picture Books: An Analysis of Caldecott Award-Winning Illustrations (ALA, 1986). My gratitude to Barbara Elleman for reading and gently editing every chapter just as she did forty years ago as my editor for articles about picture books in Book Links. And many thanks to art museum curator, Ruth Grim, for graciously perusing books I slipped into her lap time and again for suggestions and re-direction. I have had the best help possible; any and all mistakes are mine alone.

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