Creating Children’s Books: Collaboration and Change
A Symposium in Honor of William Steig and Atha Tehon

http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/childrensbooks_symposium.html

Creating Children’s Books: Collaboration and Change honors the contributions of William Steig and Atha Tehon to the world of children’s literature during late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries.

The symposium will explore the creation of children’s books from both the writer/illustrator and designer/publisher perspectives, looking at the role of collaboration in the process and considering the future of children’s books from various perspectives, including that of diversity.

Atha Tehon worked closely with the renowned editor and publisher Phyllis Fogelman, both of whom championed the work of African-American and Native American authors and illustrators, among others. The symposium is sponsored by the Muriel Pfaelzer Bodek Fund for Library Public Events of the University of Pennsylvania Libraries with additional funding from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.

The symposium takes place in conjunction with two fall exhibitions in the University of Pennsylvania Libraries:

As the Ink Flows: Works from the Pen of William Steig explores the life and career of the artist, cartoonist, and children’s book author/illustrator William Steig. The exhibition highlights materials from the recent gift of over 2,500 original drawings, notebooks and scrapbooks, correspondence, books, posters, and other materials made by Jeanne Steig, his widow, to the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, supplemented with loans from his family.

The School of Atha: Collaboration in the Making of Children’s Books celebrates the life and work of Atha Tehon, children’s book designer and longstanding Art Director for Dial Books for Young Readers.

For questions and queries, contact Lynne Farrington, Curator of Printed Books, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts (lynne@upenn.edu; 215-746-5828).
Free and open to the public (please show photo ID at entrance)

Class of 1978 Pavilion, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts
Van Pelt Dietrich Library Center, sixth floor
3420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6206