A LASTING LEGACY
Books published after Tomie depaola's death are a gift to the author's fans — young and old, writes.
As an illustrator, it's your job to do more than just depict the author's story. You have to build in surprises for the child to discover that the parent might not immediately notice.
I've written about children's books more than four decades, so it's no surprise that by now some of my favourite authors and illustrators have shuffled off this mortal coil.
Still, losing Eric Carle in May was startling; the 91-year-old author-illustrator of such classics as The Very Hungry Caterpillar had seemed omnipresent in the field of children's literature. So had Tomie depaola, who died in March last year, after a fall. He was 85.
In the case of depaola, two posthumous volumes were released this year: an updated version of a coffee-table art book first published in 1999 and now titled The Worlds of Tomie depaola, by Barbara Elleman; and Christina's Carol, a new picture book based on a poem by Christina Rossetti. Both are published by Simon & Schuster.
Depaola was best known for Strega Nona, a folk-like tale about an elderly witch and her somewhat bumbling assistant, Big Anthony. It was published in 1975, the year my first child was born — an event that apparently qualified me, two years later, to review children's books for a local newspaper in Western Canada.
When I heard, in 1982, that depaola was scheduled to speak at the Toronto Public Library, I scraped together airfare, booked a small room at the Windsor Arms Hotel, and arranged to interview the author-illustrator in his (much larger) room at the same hotel.
We sat on his bed and talked — mostly about his then-newest picture book Francis, the Poor Man of Assisi, which was being published to coincide with the 800th anniversary of the birth of St. Francis. (Depaola, whose family had roots in Italy and Ireland, was fascinated by religious themes and the stories of saints.)
Today, some 40 years later, only one vivid memory of depaola's words has stayed with me. He's the first person who explained to me that, when illustrating picture books intended for the very young, an artist has to do more than simply reflect the author's words.
To paraphrase, since I no longer have my notes from that interview: “You're dealing with children who are being read to by an adult — children who have not yet learned to read for themselves. But as illustrator, it's your job to do more than just depict the author's story. You have to build in surprises for the child to discover that the parent might not immediately notice. The children are reading the pictures, not the words; you have to give them things to discover.”
Over the years, I have often seen the truth of what he told me. The best picture books are those that speak to both adult and child, but not necessarily at the same time or about the same thing.
A recent email interview with Laurent Linn, art director at Simon & Schuster, who created the cover of The Worlds of Tomie depaola, confirmed the importance of the artist's connection with his young audience.
“I learned much from Tomie, from our working relationship, as well as our friendship,” Linn said. “But one thing that stands out above all is his extraordinary connection to his childhood and his early discoveries of the world. More than anyone I have ever known, he truly understood the mind of a child and what it means to often be unseen by others — but to see everything yourself.
“He was always curious and very thoughtful about how he created characters and told stories for children, knowing how observant and smart they are. He felt that responsibility deeply.”
His newest picture book features a classic Christmas carol, In the Bleak Midwinter, first published as a poem in 1872. I'm sorry to say it doesn't immediately leap to mind when I think of Christmas carols, and chances are it won't boot Jingle Bells off a child's list of favourite seasonal tunes.
But depaola's colourful, stylized folk art gives Christina's Carol broad appeal and may prompt both parent and child to visit Youtube performances online. Depaola had completed four paintings — enough to fill eight pages — before he died. The remainder of the art in this 32-page book was cleverly, and seamlessly, drawn from previous publications and depaola's personal collection.
“It contains the last art he created for a book,” said Linn. “He began working on the book's art in mid-2019 and, as you can see in those first pages, created such extraordinary paintings throughout the months he was able to work on it. But tragically, he was not able to illustrate the full book.”
Because depaola “very much wanted this book in the world” and “because he loved Christmas on so many levels,” the decision was made to go ahead and publish. “I thought: What better tribute to Tomie's legacy than to make Christina's Carol a treasury of Tomie's Christmas art?” said Linn.
“In late 2018, the extremely talented editor Kristin Ostby and I spent a day with Tomie in his studio talking about this book as he worked out the pagination and what imagery he might create. He spoke of what the poem and the carol meant to him — he loved it so much and it spoke to him, which is why he wanted to create a picture book with the poem as the text.
“Those first pages of the book are very telling; entering the book in Christina's world as a writer was his way of showing how he enters a story. Coming from the world outside, filled with ideas, to the inner world of the studio and that blank page where making a new world begins.
“I remember vividly how he described his interpretation of each line of the poem and each moment, and I used what he shared with us to select the illustrations that best suited Tomie's vision of those words.”
And there, facing a nativity scene on Page 23, is the rear view of a familiar caped figure — a grandmotherly witch waving hello to the newborn Christ child.
She's a welcome sight to depaola's fans, and a reminder that while the artist might be gone, his work — and the personal connections of countless children to his books — lives on.