illustrator of the month may 2015

Illustrator of the MonthLeo Lionni Birthday: May 5, 1910

Most of Leo Lionni’s books are easy picture books.

Find them in the E section, where they

are shelved according to the

author’s last name.

398.2 LIO

E LIO

E LIO

E LIO

Leo Lionni won Caldecott Honor Medals four times, for Alexander and the Wind-Up

Mouse, Federick, Inch by Inch and Swimmy.

Of all the questions I have been asked as an author of children’s books, the

most frequent one, without doubt, has been “How do you get your ideas?”

Most people seem to think that getting an idea is both mysterious and simple. Mysterious, because inspiration must come from a particular state of grace with which only the most gifted souls are blessed. Simple, because ideas are expected to drop into one’s mind

in words and pictures, ready to be transcribed and copied in the form of a book, complete with endpapers and cover. The word get expresses these expectations well. Yet nothing could

be further from the truth. And so, to the question “How do you get your ideas?”

I am tempted to answer, unromantic though it may sound, “Hard work.”

“You may have asked yourselves, when you saw my books: birds, worms, fish, flowers, pebbles…

what about people? Of course my books, like all fables, are about

people…My characters are humans in disguise and their little

problems and situations are human problems, human situations. The

game of identifying, of finding ourselves in the things around us is

as old as history. We understand things only in terms of ourselves and in references to ourselves.”

“Leo would quote a book that he read years ago — “When a painter paints a

tree, he becomes a tree.” What we create, he believed, we fill in with our own thoughts and feelings. That’s why even the inanimate things in his books

have human qualities — the walls, plants and stones might be humorous or stern or anything else that people

can be. But when Leo said he became a tree, he also thought that the tree became him. “Of course, I am Frederick,” he said, referring to one of my favorite

characters, Frederick the Mouse. And he was Swimmy when he became the

eye of the giant fish. All of his characters were part of his own self,

and he thought that was probably true for every children’s book author.“

- Annie Lionni, Leo’s daughter

Quotes from

• http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/02/20/leo-lionni-annie-lionni-creativity/

• http://www.randomhousekids.com/brand/leo-lionni/

• https://georgeshannon.wordpress.com/tag/leo-lionni/