CANR
WORK TITLE:
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: www.susanjeffers-art.com
CITY: Westchester County
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COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: SATA 331
childrensmarketing.com at Hyperion Books for Children
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born October 7, 1942, in NJ; died February 22, 2020; married Steven Cook (a conservation officer); children: Ali.
EDUCATION:Graduated from Pratt Institute, 1964.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author and illustrator. Worked in art departments of three publishing houses, New York, NY, beginning c. 1964; freelance designer, beginning 1968; owner, with author/illustrator Rosemary Wells, of design studio, beginning c. 1968; Wiltwyck School for Boys, instructor in art. Exhibitions: Work exhibited at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; National Women’s Museum of Art, Washington, DC; Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA; and American Institute of Graphic Arts and Society of Illustrators “Original Art” exhibits.
AWARDS:Caldecott Honor Award, American Library Association, 1974, and Golden Apple Award, Biennale of Illustrations Bratislava, 1975, both for Three Jovial Huntsmen; Citations of Merit, Society of Illustrators, for both Thumbelina and Hansel and Gretel; awards from Biennale of Illustrations Bratislava, for Thumbelina and Hiawatha; Golden Kite Award, Society of Children’s Book Writers, 1988, for Forest of Dreams; citations from Association of Booksellers, Children’s Book Council, Child Study Association, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and American Library Association; recognition from periodicals such as American Bookseller, Redbook, Booklist, School Library Journal, Parents’ Choice, and Horn Book.
WRITINGS
Black Beauty is available as a book and cassette by Random House; several of her fairy tales have been retold by Amy Ehrlich.
SIDELIGHTS
Susan Jeffers was an award-winning author and artist who was best known for making poetry and folklore accessible to young children. Called “an unusually gifted illustrator” by New York Times Book Review critic Harold C.K. Rice, Jeffers was often commended for her draftsmanship and sense of color and design. With dozens of books to her credit, she found great satisfaction in her work. “I realize now that I have always done the same things,” she remarked on the Hyperion Books for Children website. “When I was small my best moments were spent drawing pictures, reading stories with my parents, playing with friends, and experiencing nature’s perfection. This has not changed.”
Specializing in outdoor landscapes populated by both humans and animals, Jeffers created most of her work using the cross-hatch method, an intricate process that involves the intersecting of parallel lines. “I make thousands of little lines to describe form,” she noted on her home page. “This looks hard, but it is actually the easiest part and is very relaxing.” Jeffers then washed her detailed artwork in soft, deep colors that define and intensify her sketches. Her drawings, often extending across two pages, frequently appeared in adaptations of classic fairy tales, Mother Goose rhymes, and poetry. Although she had adapted a few tales herself, including her 1974 Caldecott Honor Book Three Jovial Huntsmen, Jeffers primarily illustrated the works of others.
Jeffers discovered art at an early age. “My career as an artist began in a tiny school in Oakland, New Jersey, when I was chosen to paint a history mural,” she recalled in Bookbird. “I suspect that I was selected as much for my ability to keep poster paint from running—no mean feat—as for my drawing talent. Yet, I was on my way.” Jeffers’ mother became her motivator and guide, teaching her how to mix colors as well as how to add dimension and detail to her work. Most importantly, the woman inspired in her daughter an enthusiasm for the craft, which helped propel Jeffers toward art studies at New York’s Pratt Institute.
After graduating in 1964, Jeffers worked at several New York City publishing houses, where she repaired type and designed book jackets. As she found herself drawn to children’s books, she became increasingly eager to create one of her own. Jeffers began freelancing as a designer and in 1968 began the illustrations for a children’s book by Joseph Jacobs titled The Buried Moon. Her next project, Three Jovial Huntsmen, was a bit harder to realize. A self-illustrated title, it underwent two complete rewrites before being published. The first version, rejected for printing, prompted Jeffers to accept a position teaching art at the Wiltwyck School for Boys. but the urge to rework the book never left. Finally, three years after its inception, Three Jovial Huntsmen was published and garnered not only a Caldecott Honor award, but also the first Golden Apple Award to be won by an American illustrator.
Early Works
Adapted from a Mother Goose rhyme, Three Jovial Huntsmen follows a trio of bumbling English hunters roaming the woods in search of game. The lighthearted story focuses on the hunters’ foolishness: although readers will spot the half-hidden forest animals—including opossums, raccoons, and squirrels—the title characters find nothing but a pincushion, a house, and a boat. Drawing praise from reviewers were Jeffers’ shadowy woodland scenes, which caused a Horn Book contributor to proclaim that the book’s “main attraction lies in [its] physical beauty.” Jeffers’ pallette of reds, blues, yellows, and blacks is “masterfully blended and differentiated,” concluded the reviewer.
Among the works Jeffers has illustrated for other authors are an edition of Joseph Mohr’s Silent Night and a version of Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty. The former is an adaptation of the famous German Christmas hymn honoring the night Jesus Christ was born. Jeffers’ “opening scenes are breathtaking in scope,” observed a Publishers Weekly reviewer of Silent Night . The artist colors the twilight sky in deep violets and blues, then uses a combination of light and shadows to illuminate Jesus’s birthplace—a stable—and the joyous angels, shepherds, wise men, and kings who visit. Jeffers’ “vision of this favorite carol is … respectful and majestic,” concluded Elizabeth M. Simmons in her School Library Journal appraisal.
In Black Beauty, Robin McKinley’s adaptation of Sewell’s classic tale of a horse’s life, the illustrator captures the distinct personality of each horse through her close attention to such details as muscles, veins, eyes, and body movements. Jeffers’ “animals are handsome and symmetrical,” wrote a reviewer for Booklist, while School Library Journal contributor Kathleen Brachmann deemed Black Beauty “intensely yet sensitively wrought.”
Other well-received illustration projects include Jeffers’ work for Reeve Lindbergh’s Midnight Farm and Rosemary Wells’ Forest of Dreams, the latter a winner of the Golden Kite award. Written in verse, The Midnight Farm rejoices in outdoor life as it follows a mother and child through a nighttime tour of the farm. Here Jeffers offers a peaceful, reassuring portrait of darkness, sketching a variety of domestic and wild animals during their evening activities: a raccoon family preparing for sleep, sheep crowding together for warmth, mice gathering and storing seeds. One scene attracted particular attention from a Booklist contributor, who noted that “the serene presence of deer at a pond is captured with inimitable grace.”
Forest of Dreams also celebrates nature and life, portraying the pleasure a young girl experiences while watching winter turn into spring. Jeffers opens with frosty scenes of snow-covered apple trees, ice-caked marshes, and furry wolves and ermine. By the story’s end, the scenery has evolved into a green meadow harboring wild flowers, butterflies, field mice, and blossom-filled apple trees. “Nine glorious double-page paintings illustrate the promise of spring and new beginnings,” commented Ruth M. McConnell in her School Library Journal review of Wells’ story, the critic adding that “the peaceful, exuberant mood [the book] evokes is refreshing.”
Throughout her career Jeffers has illustrated numerous retellings of classic works, including Hans Christian Andersen’s Thumbelina and Wild Swans, Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Hiawatha. She even achieved best-seller status in illustrating the 1991 publication Brother Eagle, Sister Sky!: The Words of Chief Seattle. Jeffers has also adapted and illustrated The Nutcracker, a child-friendly version of E.T.A. Hoffman’s 1816 tale “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” which has also been adapted as a popular ballet. “Jeffers’ lush watercolors closely match what children might see on the stage,” Jennifer Mattson noted in reviewing The Nutcracker in Booklist.
Jeffers has also teamed with Wells to produce Rachel Field’s Hitty: Her First Hundred Years. Field’s original novel built a loyal following and won the 1930 Newbery Award. Because of the book’s classic status, some reviewers questioned the collaborators’ decision to change Hitty’s character and extend the memoirs of the antique-shop doll up to the present day. As Ilene Cooper wrote in Booklist, while “purists will object to the changes, … there is no doubt that Jeffers and Wells have produced a genuinely beautiful book. Jeffers is at the top of her game [in Rachel Field’s Hitty], offering pictures that are delightful in their detail and charming in their execution.”
Jeffers has also provided the artwork for Love Songs of the Little Bear, a collection of unpublished poems by Margaret Wise Brown, author of the classic bedtime story Goodnight Moon. In the New York Times Book Review, Karla Kuskin observed that when Jeffers’ illustrations capture the understated emotions of the verses, “they are just right: a mother and cub enter a house made interesting by its odd angles; winter is summed up by fine snow falling on tugboats that steam through gray water past snowy hills.”
K Is for Kitten, an alphabet book written by Niki Leopold, centers on Miss Rosie, a cuddly feline rescued from an alley by a young girl. According to a Kirkus Reviews critic, Jeffers’ “delicately detailed gouache and colored-ink illustrations beguile readers with the full force of Miss Rosie’s considerable charm,” and Kathy Broderick, writing in Booklist, complimented the “fresh and appealing” artwork. Blueberries for the Queen, a work by John Paterson and Katherine Paterson, is based on an actual event from John’s childhood. During the summer of 1942, a Massachusetts lad named William, who often imagines himself as a brave knight, delivers a basket of fruit to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, who has been forced from her homeland by the events of World War II. Reviewing the tale in School Library Journal, Carol Ann Wilson remarked that “Jeffers’s watercolor-and-ink illustrations perfectly juxtapose scenes of domestic reality with the boy’s wistful daydreams of knights and heroic quests.”
Later Works
In My Pony, a semi-autobiographical work, Jeffers presents the story of a young girl whose dreams of owning a horse are dashed by her parents. To lift her spirits, the child creates a magical silver pony by using her imagination and her artistic skills. “Pastel hues dominate the pleasing palette of Jeffers’s artwork, which moves easily between homespun real scenes of the 1950s and incandescent dream sequences,” a Publishers Weekly reviewer asserted. Inspired by Marguerite Henry’s Misty of Chincoteague, Jeffers also completed the self-illustrated picture book My Chincoteague Pony. The work follows the efforts of Julie, a horse-crazy youngster, to purchase an animal at auction on Pony Penning Day. The author’s “affecting tale is gently expressed by the softly limned, pastel-colored illustrations,” Anita L. Burkam remarked in Horn Book.
Jeffers and Wells introduce a popular new series with McDuff Moves In. McDuff, a lovable West Highland terrier, comes on the scene as he escapes from a dogcatcher and searches for a home, which he finally finds with Fred and Lucy. Written for a three-to-six-year-old audience, the other books in the series take up McDuff’s problems and adventures, like getting lost while chasing a rabbit and dealing with a new baby in the house. “Jeffers’s ability to express a thousand words and emotions with a pair of flattened dog ears,” wrote Elizabeth S. Watson in Horn Book, “gives McDuff life and character, and the illustrations combine her realistic depictions of flora and fauna with a sleekly forties setting.”
In McDuff Goes to School the energetic terrier must attend obedience classes after he upsets his new canine companion’s French owners. “Jeffers’s art perfectly complements Wells’s simple text and captures an earlier era,” Mary Elam observed in School Library Journal. A near-disastrous outing on the Fourth of July is the subject of McDuff Saves the Day. Here, according to a Kirkus Reviews critic, “Jeffers provides her usual polished, supportive illustrations that capture McDuff’s sly attitude down to the last whisker.” The unflappable pooch battles a greedy cat for possession of a turkey treat in McDuff’s Wild Romp, a book in which “Jeffers’ varying perspectives and occasional multipanel views put children right in the center of the action,” as Shelle Rosenfeld noted in Booklist.
(open new)In early 2020, Jeffers died after a brief illness at the age of seventy-seven. Several of Jeffers’ colleagues offered their thoughts and memories of her in an obituary in Publishers Weekly. Former editor Barbara Lalicki recalled that “the way Susan strove for excellence made working with her an adventure.” Lalicki stated: “An excellent painter as well as an author-illustrator, she was an outstandingly generous person, always ready to help aspiring artists.” Former designer and art director Martha Rago called Jeffers “a joy to collaborate with and to know as a friend.” Rago asserted that Jeffers “approached her job, and most things, with exacting care and thoughtfulness. She created sensitive illustrations of animals and the natural world…. She could draw anything, really, and her mastery of painting shows skill and a degree of control few can achieve.”(close new)
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Children’s Literature Review, Volume 30, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1993.
Silvey, Anita, editor, Children’s Books and Their Creators, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1995.
PERIODICALS
Bookbird, March 1, 1977, profile of Jeffers, pp. 59-61.
Booklist, December 1, 1986, review of Black Beauty, p. 580; September 1, 1987, review of The Midnight Farm, pp. 65-66; April 1, 1997, review of McDuff Moves In, p. 1331; June 1, 1997, review of McDuff Comes Home, p. 1723; September 15, 1997, review of McDuff and the Baby, p. 243; December 1, 1998, review of McDuff’s New Friend, p. 673; November 15, 1999, Ilene Cooper, review of Rachel Field’s Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, p. 638; October 1, 2001, Connie Fletcher, review of McDuff Goes to School, p. 330; July, 2002, Shelle Rosenfeld, review of McDuff Saves the Day, p. 1861; September 15, 2002, Kathy Broderick, review of K Is for Kitten, p. 237; November 1, 2003, Kay Weisman, review of My Pony, p. 501; July, 2004, Carolyn Phelan, review of Blueberries for the Queen, p. 1849; June 1, 2005, Shelle Rosenfeld, review of McDuff’s Wild Romp, p. 1826; September 15, 2007, Jennifer Mattson, review of The Nutcracker, p. 68; April 15, 2008, Carolyn Phelan, review of My Chincoteague Pony, p. 50.
Horn Book, February 1, 1974, review of Three Jovial Huntsmen, pp. 37-38; July 1, 1997, Elizabeth S. Watson, review of McDuff Comes Home, p. 446; January 1, 1998, review of McDuff and the Baby, p. 65; January 1, 2000, review of Rachel Field’s Hitty, p. 107; July 1, 2008, Anita L. Burkam, review of My Chincoteague Pony, p. 434.
Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2001, review of McDuff Goes to School, p. 1222; May 15, 2002, review of McDuff Saves the Day, p. 743; July 15, 2002, review of K Is for Kitten, p. 1036; May 15, 2004, Blueberries for the Queen, p. 496; May 15, 2008, review of My Chincoteague Pony.
New York Times Book Review, November 11, 1979, Harold C.K. Rice, review of If Wishes Were Horses and Other Rhymes, p. 66; May 20, 2001, Karla Kuskin, review of Love Songs of the Little Bear, p. 19.
Publishers Weekly, October 26, 1984, review of Silent Night, p. 104; September 16, 2002, review of K Is for Kitten, p. 67; September 22, 2003, review of My Pony, p. 101; May 31, 2004, review of Blueberries for the Queen, p. 74; October 22, 2007, review of The Nutcracker, p. 52; June 2, 2008, review of My Chincoteague Pony, p. 45.
School Library Journal, December 1, 1986, Kathleen Brachmann, review of Black Beauty, pp. 108-09; October 1, 1984, Elizabeth M. Simmons, review of Silent Night, p. 174; November 1, 1988, Ruth M. McConnell, review of Forest of Dreams, p. 98; December 1, 2001, Mary Elam, review of McDuff Goes to School, p. 114; August 1, 2002, Maryann H. Owen, review of McDuff Saves the Day, p. 172; September 1, 2002, Marlene Gawron, review of K Is for Kitten, p. 215; November 1, 2002, Donna Cardon, review of My Pony, p. 102; July 1, 2004, Carol Ann Wilson, review of Blueberries for the Queen, p. 84; April 1, 2005, Bina Williams, review of McDuff’s Wild Romp, p. 115; June 1, 2008, Carol Schene, review of My Chincoteague Pony, p. 106.
ONLINE
Hyperion Books for Children website, http://www.hyperionbooksforchildren.com/ (May 10, 2009), profile of Jeffers.
Susan Jeffers website, http:// www.susanjeffers-art.com (May 10, 2009).
Writing and Illustrating, https://kathytemean.wordpress.com/ (January 8, 2011), “Illustrator Saturday–Susan Jeffers.”
OBITUARIES
Publishers Weekly, January 28, 2020, Shannon Maughan, “Obituary: Susan Jeffers.”
Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators website, https://www.scbwi.org/ (April 14, 2020), author profile.
Obituary: Susan Jeffers
By Shannon Maughan | Jan 28, 2020
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Susan Jeffers.
Susan Jeffers, a Caldecott Honor winner and New York Times bestselling illustrator, died on January 22 after a brief illness. She was 77.
Jeffers was born on October 7, 1942 in New Jersey and grew up there, noting in a 1977 interview with Bookbird that her art career had its humble beginnings in “a tiny school in Oakland, N.J., when I was chosen to paint a history mural with the usual Egyptians harvesting in muddy tempera fields.” She additionally credits her artistic and “very kind” mother with teaching her about perspective and how to mix paint, skills that encouraged her to later choose Pratt Institute for her art education.
Jeffers graduated from Pratt in 1964 and worked in the children’s art departments of three different publishing houses, including Macmillan, doing everything from repairing type and pasting up illustrations to designing books and jackets. But her work on other illustrators’ books further fueled her passion to create a book of her own. With that goal in mind, she shifted into freelance work so she could focus on her own projects. Around that same time, in 1968, Jeffers began an art studio with fellow illustrator Rosemary Wells, where they largely did book and jacket design.
Jeffers’s first book, published in 1967, “was not a success on any level,” she recalled in a 2013 interview with website Equitrekking. Next came The Buried Moon by Joseph Jacobs, published by Bradbury Press in 1969, which “did not make any money either,” she told Equitrekking. But, in the meantime, Jeffers had begun work on adapting and illustrating Three Jovial Huntsmen, based on a Mother Goose rhyme, also for Bradbury. However, once she finished the illustrations, she and her publisher made the joint decision not to go to press, as the work wasn’t strong enough. Jeffers then took a break from her own illustration and accepted a job as an art teacher.
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Luckily, Bradbury phoned her about a year later, asking if she might want to take another run at Three Jovial Huntsmen. The resulting book was released in 1973 and earned her a 1974 Caldecott Honor and also won the Golden Apple Award, Biennale of Illustrations Bratislava in 1975. Jeffers went on to create more than 47 books for children, including Brother Eagle, Sister Sky! The Words of Chief Seattle by Chief Seattle, illustrated by Jeffers (Dial, 1991), and a number of collaborations with Wells. The pair teamed up for Lassie Come-Home (Holt, 1995); Rachel Field’s Hitty: Her First Hundred Years (S&S, 1999), and their series about McDuff the dog, published by Hyperion between 1997 and 2005.
Jeffers had a great love for horses, which she was able to depict frequently in her illustrations, most pointedly in the picture book My Pony (Hyperion, 2003), My Chincoteague Pony (HarperCollins, 2008) and Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, adapted by Robin McKinley (Random House, 1986). She also enjoyed painting landscapes in her spare time and often took art classes, calling those pursuits her busman’s holiday.
Longtime collaborator and close friend Wells offered these words of tribute: “Susan Jeffers was a marvelous painter of wildlife, animals, and flora. She could look at something and draw it. I never could. She taught me over and over how to let something enter your eyes, then run down your arm into your fingers and your pencil. She taught me how to compose a jacket image. I tried to convey to Susan the art of telling a story in pictures. We worked together, always trying to compensate for the other’s weaknesses and to amplify the other’s strength. It worked so well. We shared many a book and 45 years of friendship. Susan’s legacy is her wonderful library from Hitty to McDuff and many more. All of them have been in the hands of thousands of children and they have benefited. What a terrific life!”
Barbara Lalicki, who retired in 2013 as senior v-p and editorial director at HarperCollins Children’s Books, and currently teaches picture book courses at the Pratt Institute, worked closely with Jeffers, and she shared this remembrance: “The way Susan strove for excellence made working with her an adventure. For instance, after going to the Lincoln Center bookshop to see what caught our eyes, she created the stunning jacket for The Nutcracker. Susan wanted her books to create a shared experience for parents and children. An excellent painter as well as an author-illustrator, she was an outstandingly generous person, always ready to help aspiring artists.”
Martha Rago, executive creative director at Random House Children’s Books, was Jeffers’s designer and art director at Henry Holt and later at HarperCollins. Rago recalled Jeffers as a “a joy to collaborate with and to know as a friend. Having been a designer herself, she was appreciative and respectful of what I could bring to the equation and I was happy to meet her high standards. Beyond our bookmaking we would chat about gardening, her love of horses, a current art exhibit, or her latest personal project. Susan approached her job, and most things, with exacting care and thoughtfulness. She created sensitive illustrations of animals and the natural world, as in Lassie Come-Home, and also nuanced portraiture, like the exquisite cover of The Nutcracker (Harper, 2007). She could draw anything, really, and her mastery of painting shows skill and a degree of control few can achieve. Yet she always raised the bar, a lifelong student, challenging herself to improve and study from people she admired. It was she who I admired."
Susan Jeffers is the illustrator of such distinguished picture books as Three Jovial Huntsmen, a Caldecott Honor book; Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening; and the ABBY Award-winning Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, which was also a New York Times besteller. She lives in New York state.
Susan Jeffers is a New York Times bestselling artist who has won the ABBY Award from the American Booksellers Association and a Caldecott Honor from the American Library Association. Her work has been exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Norman Rockwell Museum. Her books have sold millions of copies and have been published around the world. She lives in Westchester County, New York. Visit her online at www.susanjeffersart.com.
Susan Jeffers, renowned illustrator of 47 books for children, one of which, Three Jovial Huntsmen (Bradbury), received Caldecott Honors in 1974, died on January 22. She was 77. A 1968 graduate of Pratt Art Institute, her early years found her working in the art departments of various children’s book publishers. After honing her skills designing books and their jackets, she tried her hand at illustrating books on her own. Among her best known titles were the 1991 collaboration with author Chief Seattle on Brother Eagle, Sister Sky! The Words of Chief Seattle (Dial) and Rosemary Wells on the popular 1999 publication Rachel Field’s Hitty: Her First Hundred Years (S&S) as well as their later series about McDuff the dog, published by Hyperion between 1997 and 2005.
A member of the SCBWI and a past speaker at SCBWI conferences, we join the wider children’s book community in mourning her loss.
Illustrator Saturday – Susan Jeffers
While browing through some of my picture books doing research for this blog, I came across The Wild Swan, illustrated by Susan Jeffers. The book reminded me of how much I love her illustrations, so I contacted Susan to see if she would like to be featured on Illustrator Saturday. I am very pleased that she said, “Yes.”
Here is Susan Jeffers, some of her gorgeous artwork and a description of how she worked to make illustrations in The Nutcracker.
For me, the most difficult part of making a picture book, is finding and choosing the story that I would like to illustrate. Illustrating a book takes me a very long time, usually a year. In the case of The Nutcracker, it took three years. So I want to be sure I am going to love the story for a long time. I have to remain enchanted by the characters and deeply moved by the point of the story from the beginning. This is a big demand.
After I have chosen the story, the process seems to go along in the same way for every book. I make a dummy out of heavy paper…a piece for every page in the book. I divide the words in the story to flow from one page to the next. Then most times I will draw my favorite scene in the whole book. This is a scene that comes directly out of thin air. This scene has all that I love most about the story. In The Nutcracker it is the scene where Marie and the prince have just left the house and snowflakes come swirling at them. What I love is the combination of fantasy and reality, taking the dancers and making them into snow and lifting them into the air. In the actual ballet the music and the beauty of the dance transport the audience to dreamland. I wanted the book to have the same feeling.
After I have a rough dummy of sketches, I find models for my characters. In The Nutcracker I needed a girl of about eleven with charm and effervescence. My editor, Barbara Lalicki, knew the perfect person: Meghan Morkal Williams.
I invited Meghan and her mother to my house to take photographs. I also asked my daughter Ali and her husband, Chad, to help. I had already taken a few photos of Ali and Chad dancing and saying good-bye for the party scene. Chad is a fine photographer and I am a very nervous one, sure I will forget to load the camera and make unfortunate mistakes. So in addition to playing the Prince, Chad also took the bulk of the photos.
Ali, having danced in The Nutcracker ballet for many years, was perfect to play the roles opposite Meghan/Marie.She was the Nutcracker and took turns playing the Prince with Chad, and also managed Emiko, the ferret, to evoke the wonderful expression for Meghan that we needed for Marie.
Then, having done the photo research and gathered stacks of references for the time period costumes and architecture, I begin drawing. After the initial thumbnail, I perfect the drawing in pencil and then apply a waterproof black ink on top of the pencil. I still refer to the photo of Meghan at this point because I find that over time my eye improves and I get a better drawing.
After the ink dries, I start the color, a brilliant water-based paint called gouache applied in layers. Notice that the teddy bear has disappeared and the horsemen have gotten larger. One never stops editing. I work back and forth with the black line and color until I think it is done.
Hope you enjoyed visiting with Susan. If you would like to see more visit www.susanjeffers-art.com
Talk tomorrow,
Kathy
Engelbreit, Mary MARY ENGELBREIT'S NUTCRACKER Harper/HarperCollins (Children's Picture Books) $17.99 11, 1 ISBN: 978-0-06-088579-3
Engelbreit extends her collection of traditional children's stories with this retelling of the Christmas classic, which blends well with the artist's signature style of highly ornamented illustrations bursting with bows, candies and fantasy flowers.
In this interpretation, Marie is a little girl of the 1920s, with blond bobbed hair and a cozy life in the suburbs with her well-to-do family. Wealthy Uncle Drosselmeyer, a kindly toymaker, arrives at the family Christmas party bearing toy soldiers for little brother Fritz and a pair of dolls and the fateful Nutcracker for Marie. The story unfolds in traditional fashion, with fierce battles between mice and soldiers, the Nutcracker's transformation and Marie's journey to Toyland with the Prince. They meet dancers and the Sugar Plum Fairy and view the Prince's gingerbread castle before returning to Marie's home. The budding romance between Marie and the Prince is a sweet foreshadowing of her adult life, and the conclusion shows them ruling over Toyland together. Each illustration is filled with details, borders and tiny hidden surprises, along with charming, smiling characters. Engelbreit's many fans will find this a garden of Christmas delights.
The Nutcracker by Susan Jeffers (2007) remains the quintessential interpretation, but there is room on the Christmas bookshelves for the Engelbreit version as well. (Picture book. 4-7)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Engelbreit, Mary: MARY ENGELBREIT'S NUTCRACKER." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2011. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A265504454/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=574b58f6. Accessed 9 Apr. 2020.
GRIMM BROTHERS. Hansel & Gretel. rev. ed. Amy Ehrlich, retel, illus, by Susan Jeffers. unpaged. Dutton. Sept. 2011. Tr $17.99. ISBN 978-0-525-4221-1. LC number unavailable.
Gr 2-4--This story of two poor children, abandoned in the woods and using their wits to outsmart a nasty witch, is so wellknown that it needs no further elaboration. Those familiar with Jeffers's 1980 version (Dial) will notice that this edition includes a few changes in the illustrations and a simplified text. Gone is the haunting, detailed portrait on the cover that hints of the dangers in the woods. This version has the smiling siblings poised at the front door of the gingerbread house, ready to step inside. The artwork, done once again in pen, ink, and dyes, is for the most part from the earlier edition. Observant readers will notice a few changes, however. Different foliage and animals surround the children when they are in the woods. The witch's house has had some remodeling work, including new doors and windows. The picket fence made of gingerbread men has received some new colorful icing. The pictures are slightly more muted overall, but are still presented in Jeffers's very recognizable style. This version is a nice effort, but it's difficult to top the near-perfection of the earlier book.--Roxanne Burg, Orange County Public Library, CA
Burg, Roxanne
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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MLA 8th Edition APA 6th Edition Chicago 17th Edition
Burg, Roxanne. "Grimm Brothers. Hansel & Gretel." School Library Journal, vol. 57, no. 9, Sept. 2011, p. 135. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A265870865/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1355aacb. Accessed 9 Apr. 2020.