Melissa Sweet pens colorful ode to E.B. White
E.B. White wrote at least seven drafts of the first page of “Charlotte’s Web.” Initially, the first line was about Charlotte. Then, it changed to a description of Wilbur. His next draft started with the barn. He put the book aside for a year and switched focus, beginning the book with farmer John Arable putting on his boots at midnight. Then finally, came the book’s iconic first line from daughter Fern: “Where’s Papa going with that ax?”
In Melissa Sweet’s wildly creative biography of E.B. White, the drafts are laid out, page after page, moving from scratched-out handwriting to scratched-out typewriter copy.
It’s one of many behind-thescenes processes detailed in an illustrated biography of White from Melissa Sweet, a book at least as enjoyable for grown-ups as for the children it’s written for.
Ms. Sweet will speak at 2:30 p.m. Sunday in the Carnegie Library Lecture Hall in Oakland as part of the Words & Pictures series from Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
Ms. Sweet began her career as a greeting card illustrator, illustrating her first children’s book nearly 30 years ago. Since then, she has illustrated more than 100 books, winning Caldecott Honors for her work on “A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams” and “The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus.”
In 2005, at her editor’s suggestion, she began writing books as well as illustrating them. Several years later, in her work as an
artist for a toy company, an art director suggested that she look at the work of Tony Sarg, mentioning in passing that he had also invented the balloons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. And Ms. Sweet’s first biography, “Balloons Over Broadway,” was born. She then became one of the go-to illustrators for children’s biographies, including those of artist Horace Pippin and Peter Mark Roget, who invented the thesaurus.
Living in Maine, Ms. Sweet had always had an affinity for E.B. White. “Everyone in Maine feels like, even though he grew up in New York, he’s a Maine-er at heart,” she said. And when she decided to tackle writing another biography, he was her first choice.
Ms. Sweet, who now lives in Portland, Maine, previously lived in Rockport, down the street from where White’s granddaughter’s husband owned a boatyard. She knew Martha White in passing and was able to persuade her to not only give the book the family’s blessing, but also to share heirlooms like an old scrapbook, journals and home movies.
Ms. Sweet worked on the book for about three years, extensively researched from the E.B. White Collection at Cornell University. “Some Writer!” tells the story of White’s early years as the youngest of six children, to his first published story at age 9, to his long career at The New Yorker. It also details the drama following the publication of “Stuart Little,” which was banned by some libraries over concerns of how a human could give birth to a mouse.
Ms. Sweet’s book is heavy on archival material, from photographs to newspaper clippings to notes in White’s handwriting. She contributes many of her own illustrations of scenes from his life, often set into collages she built out of wood and old cigar boxes
“When one works in collage that way, it slows you down,” she said. “It’s important to take the time it takes and not hurry, because ideas come to you as you work. In a book like this — in any book — every square inch matters.”