Happy February, all! Is it, though . . . ? Or maybe you are feeling a little bit like this run over paper heart in the slush? Maybe you’re waiting, just waiting, for spring to come?
Besides spring, and my garden, I’m also eager for the release of my next picture book biography, World More Beautiful: The Life and Art of Barbara Cooney, with illustrator Becca Stadtlander. The book comes out in six months, and I thought it would be fun to feature a few behind-the-scenes looks at my research, Cooney, and her work.
Barbara Cooney’s Scratchboard
If you’re like me, you came to know Barbara Cooney for her beautifully detailed, light and color-filled illustrations in books like Ox-Cart Man, Miss Rumphius, or Roxaboxen. Those works, however, came much later in Cooney’s career.
After graduating from Smith College in 1938, Cooney studied printmaking and lithography at the Art Students’ League in New York City. This was a practical choice that not only helped Cooney strengthen her technical skills (she felt she had not learned enough through Smith’s limited studio art courses), but met the needs of the publishing world. In the 1930s and 40s, printing in full color was rare, complicated, and expensive—- the majority of illustration work was done in black and white, or an extremely limited palette. In a 1998 essay1, Cooney recalled her early career:
I presented "my soul" to intimidating art directors, visited many publishing houses. By a fluke, I eventually landed a job. “The job,” said the art director,”will be in black and white only.” My world is all color, I thought. “You will have to learn to think in black and white,” said the art director.
Cooney did learn to think in black and white, and gained a reputation for her scratchboard technique: high-contrast line work that required painstaking attention to detail and left little room for error. Here’s an example below: first the inked “key” that gives the basic shape of the mouse, and then the final illustration with more detail.
Cooney described her learning curve as such2:
My bibles were the notebooks of Hokusai3, whose lines I copied daily, as musicians practice their scales . . . Wood engraving then took my fancy. This I simulated by using black ink on scratchboard, a clay-coated board on which black ink is applied and then white lines and areas are scratched out--or scraped off--with sharp-edged tools. In many books, more than thirty five, I used this technique, and all the while I yearned to work in full color. But, no, black-and-white pictures were much cheaper to reproduce than full-color paintings, whose colors had to be separated by photography or laborious overlays, a separate plate made for each color: black, magenta, yellow, and a blue-green called 11cyan. “And besides,” said my editor, “you have no color sense.” That did hurt my feelings. I continued with the scratchboard.
Cooney’s persistence and work ethic paid off. By the time she won the Caldecott Medal for Chanticleer and the Fox in 1959, she had illustrated over forty books. But we’ll save that next stage of her career for another post.
If you’re a fan of Barbara Cooney, World More Beautiful comes out on August 13th. I hope you’ll consider pre-ordering from your local independent bookstore, or from bookshop.org:
Book News
On Wednesday, February 7th, I’ll be meeting with classes around the country to celebrate World Read Aloud Day! I can’t wait to read and talk with students in California, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, and Vermont.
Make Way: The Story of Robert McCloskey, Nancy Schön, and Some Very Famous Ducklings has been named a finalist for SCBWI’s Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction Text for Younger Readers. The winner won’t be announced until February 23rd, but I’m honored to be in the company of friends and fellow writers Elisa Boxer, Michelle Markel, Lisa Vachol Perron, and Lisa Rogers.
Make Way was also named to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Children’s Cooperative Book Center’s CCBC Choices, their best books of 2024.
Random Good Things
Fresh flowers. Seriously, it is February. Please buy yourself some.
This sheet pan pierogi dinner for cold winer nights.
This udon noodle soup for when you’re sick and/or need to use up a whole bunch of veggies.
These movies: Past Lives, and the 2020 adaptation of Emma (the teen pointed out that it felt like a very Wes Anderson Jane Austen, which cracked me up).
This beautiful article on Maurice Sendak’s home, still preserved exactly as it was.
Books I Read and Loved Recently (Adult)
Foster by Claire Keegan
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (I think Keegan is my new Sally Rooney or Elena Ferrante, meaning I will now seek out and read everything she has written and will write.)
What You Are Looking for Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama
Books I Read and Loved Recently (Picture Books)
All the Beating Hearts by Julie Fogliano and Cátia Chien
The Boo-Boos of Bluebell Elementary by Chelsea Lin Wallace and Alison Farrell
Fighting With Love: The Legacy of John Lewis by Lesa Cline-Ransome and James E. Ransome
*Please note that all books mentioned above contain affiliate links to Bookshop.org, a site that helps support local independent bookstores.
Cooney, Barbara, “The pictures.” The Horn Book Magazine, vol. 74, no. 2, Mar.-Apr. 1998, p. 190+.
Ibid.