From: lhendr at unm.edu <lhendr>
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 11:15:56 -0700 (MST)

The discussion of the curriculum uses of Snowflake Bentley reminds me of another children's book about another unusual person, also self?ucated, who studied small things that most of us take for granted, and that is Margaret Anderson's "Children of Summer: Henri Fabre's Insects," published by FSG in 1997. Fabre, who like Bentley seldom left his own backyard,
"spent his whole life discovering the secrets of the insect world." His lifespan overlapped with Bentley's. He was born in Saint-Leon in southern France in 1823 and died in 1915.

However, I'm hoping someone with some expertise in woodcuts will comment more on Azarian's combination of woodcuts and watercolors, and perhaps make some links to other books that we should be looking at to gain a better understanding of the technique and the way Azarian has used it. Betsy Bowen's illustrations for Nancy Van Laan's retelling of Shingebiss
(1997, Houghton Mifflin), is one book I have on hand to compare. The effects here are very different, and the technique is also different, with each color created with a different woodblock and additional details added with colored pencil. The illustrator's note tells the details about the process, in which five runs were made for each picture, and the printing was done on a letterpress. Since both books feature snow, it is also interesting to compare the very different appearance of the snow created by the different techniques.

Linnea

Linnea Hendrickson Albuquerque, New Mexico Children's Literature: A Guide to the Criticism (1987) at: http://www.unm.edu/~lhendr Lhendr at unm.edu
Received on Sat 06 Feb 1999 12:15:56 PM CST