As often quoted, many of them will find a firm place in the psyche of Americans for how they make people feel. One man who presented everyday, and at times extraordinary, circumstances continues to give us a view of his truth. Hi, I'm Norman: The Story of American Illustrator NORMAN ROCKWELL (A Paula Wiseman Book, Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers, October 1, 2019) written by Robert Burleigh with art by Wendell Minor is a personal look at this remarkable man and his love of making art with paints and brushes.Hi, I'm Norman. Norman Rockwell. Come on in.
Norman Rockwell, as an adult, invites readers into his studio. It's a welcoming place for him to concentrate on his work but this is not the first place Norman, as he tells us, made art. He has fond memories of drawing with pencil and paper on the family dining room table as his father reads aloud. The characters in the book are his subjects.
Never one to join in the more athletic activities of the boys in his neighborhood, his workspace is the sidewalk. The boys ask him to draw something and he does, taking chalk from his pocket. In grade school, one of his teachers has him draw scenes on the chalkboard regarding whatever they are studying. (Academics is not his forte, but drawing is his gift.)
When attending art school, it is challenging at times for Norman, but he is determined, improving and improving more. He takes his learned skills and paints whatever he can to earn money. (Did you know he placed
100% in gold at the top of his easel?)
He works until whatever he does cannot not be improved.
At the age of twenty-two he takes some of his work to the Saturday Evening Post. They are looking for cover illustrations. On the spot all five of Norman's illustrations are accepted. Norman eventually does more than 300 covers for the Saturday Evening Post.
Norman likes to doodle into existence his ideas for his work. Then he combines his drawings to tell a story. He uses models, even animals. (The turkey incident is tricky.)
Life through Norman's eyes is at its best, but he does not shy away from the harder aspects people, regular people, face during war or as in one of his more famous paintings of Ruby Bridges (The Problem We All Live With) walking to school guarded by four U. S. Marshalls. Norman closes his discussion with readers by returning to work on a commemorative painting of himself wrapping a Happy Birthday ribbon around the Liberty Bell.
There is an openness evident as soon as you begin this book written by Robert Burleigh. You get a very real sense of the passion Norman has for his work as we journey with him from boyhood to his becoming a skillful artist. The research done by this author comes through in every conversational sentence Norman presents to us. It's as if we are standing with him in his studio and he is painting a picture of his life through his words. When Robert Burleigh takes a five-word sentence from earlier in the book and uses it again to bring all the parts of Norman's life together, it's wonderful. Here are two passages.
I can still picture the room where the art students
worked: the gray light drifting down through the
skylights, the smudged walls, and the floors littered
with rags and hardened paint. But who cares? If you
love something, you take the bad with it too, right?
Funny, but I sometimes felt I was chasing and at the same time being
chased. Chasing my dream of becoming a great artist. But also being chased
by the fear that I wasn't good enough.
On the matching dust jacket and book case, artist Wendell Minor, in a stroke of design genius, gives us two perspectives in this single visual. Norman is looking at us as he paints the picture we see behind his right shoulder. His personality, his love of his painting, shines on the features of his face. Portions of this illustration are varnished.
To the left of the spine, on the back, we see Norman as a boy drawing with chalk on the sidewalk. Two of the other boys are seated and kneeling near him, watching closely as a lion takes shape before their eyes. A contented cat sits outside on a window ledge.
On the opening endpapers Wendell Minor features a younger Norman, standing in a field, looking directly at readers as he gently holds a frog. An older Norman, the narrator of this book, is riding his bike down the street in Stockbridge, Massachusetts where he moved in 1953 on the closing endpapers. These two images, other than those on the jacket and case, show Norman as he showed others, extraordinary in their ordinariness.
Each illustration,
rendered in watercolor, gouache, and pencil
in Wendell Minor's unmistakable style stands alone but is also an intricate part of the exquisite whole these combined visuals create in this book. On the title page a young Norman carrying a fishing pole is standing with his dog on grass and wildflowers with a circular pastoral scene behind him. On the verso and dedication pages an older Norman is shown standing in the entrance to his studio with the building and lush green grass, shrubs and trees framing him as they fill the page and a third visual.
With every page turn we see either groups of smaller illustrations, a small framed illustration, a full-page picture, or double-page visual, most in full color, but sometimes Norman as narrator is shown in black and white near another image. Every detail is finely fashioned with delicate or broader brushstrokes dictated by the elements in the illustration. Sometimes Wendell Minor has us outside looking in at Norman working or next to him in front of his easel. The use of light and shadow, as always in his work, is marvelous.
One of my many favorite illustrations is a single-page picture. It is a close-up of a window with a pigeon on the outside of the sill. Through the window we can see a young-adult Norman seated in a chair in front of his easel. He is wearing a smock, holding his palette in his left-hand and painting with a brush in his right hand. His subject is a boy, dressed in winter garb, skating across the ice and holding a hockey stick. You can plainly see the 100% at the top of his easel.
To have two great creators themselves working on this book, Hi, I'm Norman: The Story of American Illustrator NORMAN ROCKWELL, elevates this tribute of an American icon. Robert Burleigh gives us intimate insights through Norman's voice due to his research. Wendell Minor paints with the same sure knowledge through his study of Norman Rockwell. In their notes at the close of the book, their respect for Norman Rockwell is clear as is their gratitude for being able to tell his story in this title. In addition to their notes there is extensive back matter. There is a two-page continuation of facts about Norman Rockwell's life. There is a list of Rockwell's paintings rendered by Wendell Minor in order of their appearance in this book. There is an important date timeline. Five of Norman Rockwell's paintings are shown: Checkers, Freedom from Fear, Art Critic, The Problem We All Live With and Liberty Bell. There is a bibliography of books and some Norman Rockwell quotes. I highly recommend this title for your personal and professional collections.
To learn more about Robert Burleigh and Wendell Minor and their other work, please follow the links attached to their names to access their respective websites. Wendell Minor has accounts on Facebook and Twitter. (One of Wendell Minor's biggest fans is his lovely wife, Florence, who is also an author. She has an account on Instagram where you can see his work.) At the Norman Rockwell Museum website this book is showcased with interior artwork images. At the publisher's website you can view other interior images, mainly from the beginning of the book. Please take a few moments to watch this video of Wendell Minor talking about his work on this book.
Be sure to visit Kid Lit Frenzy hosted by educator Alyson Beecher to view the titles selected this week by other participants in the 2019 Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge.
No comments:
Post a Comment