This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Caldecott Medal, the prestigious award bestowed annually by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), to the “artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.” First presented in 1938, the medal is named in honor of the 19th-century English illustrator Randolph J. Caldecott and features a scene that encapsulates the humor, vitality, and charm of his ground-breaking artwork (based on 1878’s The Diverting History of John Gilpin, the image shows the title character clinging to a runaway horse as flapping geese, yapping dogs, and gaping bystanders look on).

Encompassing an eye-tempting array of artistic styles and beautifully wrought images, the books adorned with the familiar gold Caldecott seal (or silver for honor books) present a treasure trove of tales ready to be discovered and enjoyed by enthusiastic young readers. For older students, the decades-spanning assemblage offers a rich opportunity for examination and discussion, providing a glimpse at the evolution of the picture book and children’s literature in the United States, an avenue for exploring the influence of historical events and cultural trends on bookmaking, and means for tracing changes and innovations in illustrative techniques and tools.

The award’s diamond anniversary is also the perfect occasion for launching a mock Caldecott election in the classroom, an endeavor that will engage youngsters in a wide range of grade levels. In addition to providing the impetus for lively debate, such a project can improve listening skills, help students to develop the vocabulary and thought processes needed to evaluate and discuss literature and art, encourage active participation, and engender a of love of reading. Visit the ALA website for a list of medal winners and honor books. A dedicated 75th Anniversary page includes a free-to-download bookmark featuring a special commerative logo created by 2008 Caldecott medalist Brian Selznick starring characters from past winners along with clues to their identities.

Why Should Kids Have All the Fun?

Indulge your own love of picture books by perusing some lovely coffee-table compendiums that treat renowned illustrators and their work. In addition to being a pleasure to read and browse, these books can inform classroom author and literature studies and provide insight into the amazing process of creating art.

Meet the Founding Father

In Randolph Caldecott: The Man Who Could Not Stop Drawing (FSG, 2013), Leonard S. Marcus provides a vividly written portrait of the father of the modern picture book. Born in Chester, England, in 1846, the “tall, lanky, and good-looking” young man with “light brown hair that occasionally stood on end” left behind a boyhood spent sketching and wandering the countryside for a position as a bank clerk, eventually striking out for Manchester to take a similar post as “quill-driver” while testing the waters of a possible career in art.

Identifying mentors while always honing his craft, Caldecott sold numerous drawings to newspapers and magazines—now a burgeoning nationwide industry due to the invention of steam-engine-powered presses—before settling in London and making a name for himself as a book illustrator (critical acclaim and fame came with his work in 1875 on Washington Irving’s Old Christmas). When he finally turned his drawing pen to making books for children, his vivacious filled-with-motion style, irrepressible sense of humor, and innovative ideas about layout and design would forever change the genre.

Marcus’s articulate narrative incorporates keystone details and events to evoke the backdrop of Caldecott’s life—cherished pastimes, his penchant for poking fun at himself, and the invigorating spirit of change ignited by the Industrial Revolution—while pinpointing the enduring essence of his artwork. Handsome reproductions of Caldecott’s illustrations, unpublished drawings from his sketchbooks, and other works appear throughout, along with other 19th-century images that set time and place and make for easy comparison.

A Sendak Gallery

Elegant, oversized, and packed to the brim with gorgeous images, Maurice Sendak: A Celebration of the Artist and His Work (Abrams, 2013) is a delight to both browse and delve into.  Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Society of Illustrators in New York City, the book coincides with the 50th anniversary of Sendak’s game-changing Caldecott-winner, Where the Wild Things Are (Harper, 1963), as well as what would have been his 85th birthday (Sendak passed away in May of 2012). More than 200 reproductions are presented, many from private collections and never before published, representing the amazing scope and breathtaking spectrum of Sendak’s career.

In addition to studies, preliminary sketches, and variant illustrations made for well-known picture books, the volume also includes his advertising and commercial art (e.g., Bell Atlantic’s 1997 “Wild Things Are Happening” campaign), posters, storyboards for animation sequences, designs for stage productions (of his own work as well as operas and ballets), illustrations for magazines (a 1976 Rolling Stone cover showing the “Moishe” Wild Thing decked out as a Christmas tree), and more, each given context with thoughtfully written captions. Twelve essays penned by individuals with whom Sendak’s life intersected range from Leonard Marcus’s piece on Sendak’s seminal picture book trilogy to author/illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky’s reminiscence of taking Sendak’s picture book course at Yale. This stunning visual compendium is part critical exploration, part personal remembrance, and all-out tribute to a remarkable artist and his outstanding body of work.

The Power of the Doodle

Young fans of Knuffle Bunny, that beloved and beleaguered pigeon, and the “Elephant and Piggie” series (all Hyperion) know that Mo Willems is a funny guy, and in Don’t Pigeonhole Me!  (Disney, 2013), he proves that he can illicit just as many laughs from adults. For 20 years, this three-time Caldecott Honor recipient has been compiling an annual sketchbook intended to be distributed as “a calling card for clients and/or holiday card for friends.” Though the format has evolved since the stapled-together mini zine of his “starving artist” days, these booklets still serve as a “continuing experiment,” a place where Willems holds complete creative carte blanche and freedom “from any restrictions.” This cartooning crock pot has helped him cook up ideas for at least three of his picture books, including Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus (2003).

‘Don’t Pigeonhole Me! ‘(Disney)  © Mo Willems

Twenty sketchbooks are reproduced, each set in the context of Willems’s career and life with a funny introduction. Earlier editions showcase adult-pitched New Yorker-style vignettes and sequences that treat relationship woes, offer wry glimpses of city life, and present droll perceptions of art and artists. Later volumes reveal Willems’s experimentation with a longer narrative form, design elements, and storytelling rhythms, including a tale about an “unaccomplished baddie” wolf would later inspire 2005’s Leonardo, the Terrible Monster; an early—and definitely not-for-kids—version of 2012’s Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs; and a “hard reader” starring an inebriated bunny who spouts a “drunken diatribe of words that merely sound like what they mean.”The final installment collects together doodles originally drawn on the butcher block paper that adorns the Willems family dinner table (characters that may, or may not, someday appear in a picture book). Great fun to browse and unabashedly hilarious, this book also reminds readers of the importance of experimentation and taking chances, of allowing one’s self the space to daydream, and of the awesome power of the doodle.

Why Picture Books?

Compiled and edited by Marcus, Show Me a Story!: Why Picture Books Matter (Candlewick, 2012) presents conversations with 21 renowned illustrators. Whether interviewing longtime picture book mavens such as Robert McCloskey, Eric Carle, Maurice Sendak, Ashley Bryan, and Tana Hoban, or relative newcomers including Yumi Heo and Chris Raschka, philosophical thinkers like Mitsumasa Anno or humorous tale-tellers like James Marshall, Marcus focuses on teasing out the “vital thread that links an artist’s life story to the stories and images for which he or she is known.”

Why does a child grow up to become an artist? Who encouraged or mentored these individuals? What experiences inspired them? Why did they choose to make picture books? The lively interviews, each introduced with an insightful recounting of the artist’s career and important innovations, convey much about each individual’s personality as well as revealing truths about the creative process and the role picture books play in the lives of children.

The illustrators reflect on wide-ranging themes, touching upon the impact of historical and political events on one’s life, the realities of racial discrimination, milestones such as becoming a parent, the origins of their beloved characters, or the evolution of the art form. An inset of full-color reproductions showcases a selection of sketches, studies, dummies, and other pre-production work that sheds light on each artist’s illustrative process. An interesting read for anyone who loves picture books, this volume can be used to expand author studies and is s gem worth sharing with older students considering a career in the arts.

Photo by Elena Seibert.

Leonard Marcus might just be the busiest man in the world of kid lit. In June, the children’s literature historian and scholar launched a critically acclaimed exhibition at the New York Public Library (which he curated) and had a book published that celebrates the life and work of Maurice Sendak (which he edited). This summer, he will also publish his latest biography, a book on Randolph Caldecott, while his introduction for the 75^th anniversary edition of Kenneth Grahame’s The Reluctant Dragon (Holiday, 1938) comes to print. Does he ever sleep? Says Marcus, “I just love what I’m doing so I kind of can’t wait to get started in the morning.”

Over coffee in a café in New York City’s West Village, Marcus—who is as soft spoken as a kindergarten teacher trying to soothe a rowdy classroom—shared with School Library Journal some of the details of his many recent projects, some insider knowledge of children’s literature history and icons and his belief that picture books might be the solution to saving all physical books.

Marcus has curated many exhibits, but “The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter,” an exhibition at the main branch of the New York Public Library featuring nearly 250 books and artifacts, is his most ambitious undertaking to date. The New York Times calls the show, “remarkably rich,” and Monica Edinger, children’s book author, teacher, and blogger, describes it as, “wonderful—witty in design and delightful in the actual objects on display” on her blog, Educating Alice.

Working with a full-time assistant and a design team, Marcus spent a year meeting with library special collection curators, researching and selecting objects for the exhibit. He specifically wanted to avoid showing the “greatest hits of [the] New York Public Library” or a “march through history,” he explained. “Those are the two traditional ways of exhibiting children’s books,” Marcus said. “And they don’t really let people into the story. They tell people that you’ve got to follow along. I wanted this to be much more immersive and to allow people to start with what they knew, the familiar books that were their favorites for personal reasons, and then to be surprised by finding that those books belong to a much bigger story that can be sorted out and told.”

Listening to Marcus speak about the objects, elements, and scenes in the show—which include an 1826 edition of the Grimm’s fairy tales, a recording of E.B. White reading Charlotte’s Web (Harper, 1952), and a gallery that focuses on challenged books—his enthusiasm for his life’s work is palpable. He said that the invitation to curate the show was, “basically being given the keys to the kingdom of all these great collections of art, manuscripts, photographs, prints, and, of course, the children’s books.”

Marcus has a history degree from Yale and a degree in poetry from the University of Iowa Graduate Writers’ Workshop. He is as comfortable talking about Tocqueville and Whitman as he is about Margaret Wise Brown, about whom he wrote a landmark biography, Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon (Beacon Pr, 1992). And when it came to discussing the late children’s book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, Marcus was able to draw on his friendship with the famously guarded man to inform his scholarship—a source of knowledge that guided him as he edited the catalogue, Maurice Sendak: A Celebration of the Artist and His Work (Abrams, 2013), for a current exhibition of Sendak’s art for the Society of Illustrators in New York City.

Author Paul O. Zelinsky, who contributed an essay to the catalogue, told SLJ, “Leonard has always impressed me with his knack for seeing how things fit together. And with the way he follows through on his curiosity, with these fascinating books and shows as the result.” Other authors and contributors include Sendak authorities Justin G. Schiller and Dennis M. V. David, whose collection is also showcased in the exhibit and catalogue.

Marcus’s enthusiasm for research is evident in his many books and, most recently, in his introduction for The Reluctant Dragon: 75th Anniversary Edition (Holiday, 2013). The vice president and editor-in-chief of Holiday House, Mary Cash, says that “Leonard’s requests for catalogues, advertisements, and other related materials lead several of us on a delightful scavenger hunt around the office….We copied a hefty pile of letters and documents for Leonard, which he packed up and took home. Several months later we received a witty and eloquent introduction that put the book in the context of its time while making a persuasive case for its continued relevance.”

To research his biography of Randolph Caldecott, Randolph Caldecott: The Man Who Could Not Stop Drawing (Farrar, Aug. 2013), Marcus traveled to England and dug through the archives at Harvard University’s Houghton Library.

When asked about the future of picture books, Marcus drew on his many years of knowledge as well as his experience curating the “The ABC of It” to provide a ready answer about the future of print books as a whole. “I describe in the text for the show [how] the picture book and the artist book are really the laboratory in which the future of the book will be decided because these are the most experimental formats within the realm of the physical book,” he said. “And so there plenty of great ideas there to be had, from which everyone can learn.”

Picture books are always pushing limits and exploring new possibilities that are only possible with print, he says; therefore, they make a case for print books to continue to exist alongside digital.

In the immediate future, Marcus, whose research and lecture invitations have taken him to locals as far flung as Singapore, is excited to be staying put in Brooklyn, where he lives with his wife, the picture-book artist Amy Schwartz. But he’s already working on his next projects: an exhibition for the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art of the late Bernard Waber’s art and a book of interviews with graphic novel creators for Candlewick Press.

And after that? He’d like to do more exhibitions and keep staying busy doing the work he loves.

Jean Craighead George

Many wonderful authors, illustrators, and others in the world of children’s books passed away last year. Their works have enriched our lives and collections and brought joy to countless children.

School Library Journal regrets any omissions. Please add to our list in the comments section.

January 30 – Bill Wallace, 64, author of more than 30 books, including A Dog Called Kitty (Holiday House, 1980).

February 2 – Joyce Barkhouse, 98, Canadian author of the Pit Pony (Gage, 1989) and other works of historical fiction.

February 3 – John Christopher, 89, British science-fiction author, whose real name was Samuel Youd.  He’s best known for his “Tripods” trilogy (Macmillan).

February 24 – Jan Berenstain, 88, cocreator, with her husband, Stan, of some of the world’s most-beloved kids’ book characters, the Berenstain Bears.

May 4 – Maurice Sendak, 83, one of the most recognizable names in children’s literature.

May 15 – Jean Craighead George, 92, Newbery-winning author and naturalist.

May 25 – Peter D. Sieruta, 53, creator of the popular blog Collecting Children’s Books.

May 26 – Ellen Levine, 73, activist and author of the Caldecott Honor book, Henry’s Freedom Box (Scholastic, 2007).

May 26 – Leo Dillon, 79, the first African American to win the Caldecott Medal.

July 11 – Donald J. Sobol, 87, creator of the popular “Encyclopedia Brown” (T. Nelson) mystery series.

July 12 –Else Homelund Minarik, 91, creator of the “Little Bear” (Harper) series.

July 23 – Margaret Mahy, 76, New Zealand author of more than 100 books.

Josepha Sherman

July 31 – Mollie Hunter, 90, Scottish author of children’s and young adult books.

August 2 – Jean Merrill, 89, author of The Pushcart War (Scott, 1964), one of the 20th century’s best social satires for children.

August 9 – Jose Aruego, 80, illustrator of Leo the Late Bloomer (Windmill, 1971).

August 14 – Remy Charlip, 83, dancer, actor, and an award-winning author and illustrator of more than 30 children’s books.

Irving Adler

August 22 -  Nina Bawden, 87, author of the World War II novel Carrie’s War (Gollancz, 1973).

August 23 – Josepha Sherman, 65, sci-fi and fantasy author.

September 22 – Irving Adler, 99, social activist and prolific author of math and science books for children.

November 23 – Sandra McLeod Humphrey, 76, award-winning author of children’s books on character development.

Maurice Sendak

Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and a longtime Sendak friend, helped organize the invitation-only memorial service at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, which took place just two days after what would have been the author’s 84th birthday.

Speaking to the audience, Michael Di Capua, Sendak’s friend and editor, gave insight into the life of the man, the artist, and the writer who he had met almost 50 years ago.

They both shared a love of Verdi, Mahler, and Mozart. “We were kindred spirits,” says Di Capua, his voice cracking as he eulogized his friend.

Art Spiegelman, the cartoonist and author of Maus (Pantheon, 1991), also used the term “kindred spirit” to describe his relationship with Sendak. The two collaborated on a 1993 comic strip for The New Yorker called “In the Dumps,” in which Spiegelman visits Sendak at his Connecticut estate and the two talk about children and art. Speigelman says he recalls Sendak telling him, “Art, you can’t protect kids.”

Sendak’s U.K. editor, Judy Taylor Hough, who helped bring his work to England, was with Sendak when he suffered his first heart attack in 1967 at the age of 38. While recuperating, Hough gave Sendak a toy mouse that he kept on his desk until his death and which was cremated with him.

Jonathan Weinberg, a family friend of Sendak’s longtime partner Eugene Glynn, shared his personal insights and emotionally recounted how Sendak gave him support when he confided in him at the age of 19 that he was gay. On a lighter note, Weinberg recalled that Sendak had an unusual talent: he could whistle an entire operatic score. Lynn Caponera, Sendak’s longtime assistant, remembers when Sendak and Glynn moved into her Connecticut neighborhood. “They did what all city guys do when they move to the country—they put in a garden and got some dogs.”

Kushner described Sendak as a man who “believed in love,” who was “always adorable,” and who was also “shy and insecure.” During a visit to Sendak in the hospital, Kushner says he told him, “I’m going to die.” The audience laughed when Kushner explained that “for Maurice, that was like saying good morning.” The audience was treated to a reading by actress Catherine Keener of Sendak’s final yet-to-be published book, No-Nose, about a boy whose nose is stolen by his mother.

“He couldn’t disguise the earnestness behind all that grumpiness,” Gregory Maguire says, describing Sendak to SLJ. “It came out in his art and certainly in his friendship.” Maguire, who wrote Wicked (HarperCollins, 1995), shared a 35-year friendship with Sendak, and he, along with Kushner and Caldecott-winning author Brian Selznick, were at the author’s bedside the night before he died. “There was the biggest full moon that night,” Maguire recalls.

“He made me feel important,” says Caldecott-winning illustrator Paul Zelinsky. Sendak, who was Zelinsky’s instructor at Yale University in 1971, is the voice of Glove in the book trailer for Zelinsky’s new book, Z is for Moose (Greenwillow, 2012). Zelinsky says, “I was lucky and privileged to meet him and to be able to stay in touch.”