SATA
ENTRY TYPE:
WORK TITLE: That Curious Thing
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CITY: New York
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COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: SATA 403
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PERSONAL
Born March 6, 1959, Huntingdon, PA; son of Donald F. and Hedwig T. Durnbaugh; married Lydie Olson (a writer), August 4, 1984; children: one son.
EDUCATION:St. Olaf College, B.A., 1981.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, artist, and musician. Art teacher in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, 1985-86; freelance artist, cartoonist, and editorial illustrator, Ann Arbor, MI, 1987-89; freelance artist and children’s book writer and illustrator, New York, NY, 1989—. Intern in an orthopedic clinic in Germany, 1981-82; respite care worker in Ypsilanti, MI, 1982-84. Member, New York City School Volunteers Program; member, Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, 1982-84, 1986-89, and Flint Symphony Orchestra, Flint, MI, 1983-84. Exhibitions: Artwork included in exhibitions at Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1998; galleries in Bolzano, Padua, Rome, and Venice, Italy, 1998-2000; Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI, 1999; Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY, 2001; Thurber Center Gallery, Columbus, OH, 2003; Padiglione Esprit Nouveau, Bologna, Italy, 2005; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2007; and Bologna, Italy, 2017.
AVOCATIONS:Yoga, walking, playing solitaire, playing viola and concertina, knitting.
MEMBER:Authors Guild, Authors League of America, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, Pen America.
AWARDS:Best Books of the Year citation, Publishers Weekly, Notable Children’s Book citation, American Library Association (ALA), and Pick of the Lists citation, American Booksellers Association, all 1992, all for Charlie Parker Played Be Bop; New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year selection, Caldecott Honor Book designation, ALA, and U.S. winner of UNICEF-Ezra Jack Keats Award, all 1994, all for Yo! Yes?; Caldecott Medal, 2006, for The Hello, Goodbye Window by Norton Juster, and 2012, for A Ball for Daisy; nominee for the biennial, Hans Christian Andersen Medal (nominee), 2012, 2016.
WRITINGS
Author of foreword to Reading Picture Books with Children: How to Shake Up Storytime and Get Kids Talking about What They See, by Megan Dowd Lambert, Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art/Charlesbridge (Watertown, ME), 2015. Contributor to anthologies, including Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?, Dial (New York, NY), 2006; Knock, Knock!, Dial, 2007; and What’s Your Favorite Animal?, Henry Holt and Company (New York, NY), 2014.
SIDELIGHTS
Chris Raschka is an award-winning author and illustrator. While he initially planned to be a doctor after finishing his biology degree, Raschka instead moved to New York City to pursue his interest in illustration and working with children’s books. Many of his books have been included on best-of lists or received awards, such as the Caldecott Medal-winning books The Hello, Goodbye Window and Yo! Yes? In an interview on the Eerdlings website, Raschka shared that his book “ideas come from my daily life, which always has talking to people, walking, reading, and looking at things in it.” As for influence, Raschka admitted in the same interview that “the great Chinese painters and calligraphers of antiquity” have been a big influence on his style “because of the eternal immediacy of the touch of their brushes.”
Raschka creates unique and unconventional books for young children. For example, employing a thirty-four-word text and artwork that a Publishers Weekly contributor dubbed “brash, witty, and offbeat,” Raschka’s Yo! Yes? crystallizes the process of making friends while also subtly weaving in issues such as race relations. In addition to other acclaimed original stories, such as his self-illustrated Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, The Purple Balloon, and A Ball for Daisy, the author/artist has also illustrated stories by an impressive list of other writers that includes Nikki Giovanni, Paul Janeczko, Norton Juster, bell hooks, Jacqueline K. Ogburn, and Margaret Wise Brown. His collaboration with Juster on The Hello, Goodbye Window secured Raschka his first Caldecott Medal in 2006, and his original work in A Ball for Daisy earned him a second six years later. In 2012, Raschka expanded his creativity to prose fiction, producing the young-adult novel Seriously, Norman!
Born in Pennsylvania, Raschka was raised by parents who met in Europe in the wake of World War II: his father was a Detroit native while his mother was born in Austria. Growing up speaking both German and English, he started school in Germany, where his father, a seminary professor of church history, was on sabbatical. The Raschkas returned stateside the following year and moved to suburban Chicago, where the young Raschka “played in the storm sewers and ditches,” as he once recalled to SATA. “They were the one interesting place in the whole bleak environment.”
The European picture books that informed Raschka’s earliest imaginings have influenced his work as an author and illustrator and include Die kleine Hexe (The Little Witch) by Otfried Preussler and the “Max and Moritz” stories by Wilhelm Busch. “I even liked Struwelpeter when I was growing up,” Raschka added. “I know they are all pretty frightening, with horrific things happening to children who disobey their parents, but I think that kids are so used to seeing dangers all around them that they can deal with it. I was disturbed by some of the cruelty of the old German stories, but I loved the drawings and still do.”
As a child, Raschka loved to draw and honed his talent for music with piano lessons beginning at age six. Eventually exploring the recorder and the violin, he moved to viola and mastered this instrument while performing in both high school and college orchestras. “All the while I planned to be a biologist,” he later recalled. During college Raschka majored in biology and then took a position as an intern in a children’s orthopedic clinic in Germany. Although he was admitted to medical school, a visit to St. Croix, Virgin Islands, with his new wife led to a change in plans when the couple decided to attempt a living as artists.
After Raschka and his wife returned to the United States he opted to work as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines in the Detroit area, doing everything from political cartoons to illustrating legal texts. Meanwhile, his wife trained as a Montessori teacher. “After a couple of years illustrating, I thought I would try a children’s book,” Raschka recalled. “That’s how R and R: A Story about Two Alphabets came about.”
With a bilingual Russian/English text, R and R “is a story that contrasts the English and Russian alphabets and the two letters are the main characters,” according to Raschka. “It’s a Russian-American friendship book.” In this picture book the author/illustrator demonstrated the care and attention to detail that would characterize his work. “My goal is to create a book where the entire book—text, pictures, shape of book—work together to create the theme,” he explained to SATA. “The placement of images and text on the page is crucial for me.”
While working on several illustration projects for other writers, Raschka also pursued his music and knew that the best place for a viola player to be was New York City. Relocating there in 1989, he prepared to audition for a major orchestra, but a case of tendonitis ended his dreams of playing professionally. Illustration would be his career from now on.
Ironically, it was Raschka’s love of music that earned him his first major book project: Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, which he designed to inspire children with a similar passion. “Rather than attempting to teach his young audience about Parker’s music,” Booklist contributor Bill Ott noted of the work, “Raschka allows them to hear it—not with sounds but with words and pictures.” The accompanying artwork gives his rhythmic text “extraordinary energy; creating jaunty, fantastical creatures to move with the beat,” explained a Kirkus Reviews critic, and “even the typeface joins in the fun as italics and boldface strut and swing across the pages,” according to a Publishers Weekly writer. Raschka “has created a memorable tribute” to Parker, wrote Elizabeth S. Watson in Horn Book, the critic praising Charlie Parker Played Be Bop as “one of the most innovative picture books of recent times.”
Like Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, Raschka’s Mysterious Thelonious honors a famous figure in jazz history—composer Thelonious Monk—and here his text also mimics the music created by his subject. Watson, again writing in Horn Book, remarked of Mysterious Thelonious that, while not all readers will be able to access this aspect of Raschka’s tribute, those who can will find that the book’s “fresh, inventive use of color, rhythm, and melody will sing.”
In John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, Raschka adapts one of Coltrane’s songs to the printed page by representing each instrument with a “performer”: a kitten represents the saxophone, snowflakes take the part of the piano, raindrops serve as drums, and boxes stand in for the bass. The characters depicting these instruments all refer to Coltrane’s jazz interpretation of the popular song “My Favorite Things.” While some reviewers noted that John Coltrane’s Giant Steps would be best accompanied by a recording of the song it represents, most applauded its visual representation. “Raschka’s transparent watercolors layer colors and shapes the way a musician would [layer] notes and harmonies,” reported a Publishers Weekly critic, and Wendy Lukehart noted in School Library Journal that “the sequential design and layering of the organic forms are a creative, joyful, and energetic match” for the original music.
The positive reception earned by Charlie Parker Played Be Bop encouraged Raschka to push ahead with another project that had been germinating for some time. “I was walking to the post office one day,” he recalled, “and was suddenly struck with how rich the street scene was. I’ve got a real interest in language and how words such as ‘Yo’ come into use. And so I began thinking about how language and culture and race all seem so big, but are actually small. They shouldn’t really stand between people and keep us apart.”
With just thirty-four words, Yo! Yes? captures a potential racial stand-off that forges a friendship. On the left-hand page, an African American boy who is coolly outfitted in baggy shorts and unlaced sneakers calls “Yo!” across the book to a shy white boy who seems to be inching off the right-hand page. As the pages turn, one-word exchanges reveal the white boy to be lonely and the story culminates in the Black boy’s offer of friendship. “Raschka exhibits an appreciation of the rhythms of both language and human exchange in his deceptively simple story,” Maeve Visser Knoth wrote in her Horn Book review of Yo! Yes?, and a Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books reviewer concluded that “the language has the strength of a playground chant” and “the story is a ritual played out worldwide.”
Named a Caldecott Honor Book, Yo! Yes? marked another step in Raschka’s innovation of the picture book: his placement of illustrations on the very bottom edge of the page is as important as the hand-lettered text. The structure of the book itself also adds to the story, as the two boys seem to be looking across, and eventually bridge, the actual seam between the book’s left and right pages.
As an innovator within the picture-book genre, Raschka also sparked a measure of controversy with Arlene Sardine. Here he chronicles the two-year life of Arlene, from her birth in a fjord among thousands of her kind to her death on the deck of a fishing boat and, beyond death, to her processing in a sardine factory. Writing in Booklist, Ilene Cooper summed up much of the critical reaction, observing that the sardine’s short life and subsequent death “seems a dubious topic upon which to write a book for preschoolers.” School Library Journal reviewer Carol Ann Wilson expressed a similar viewpoint while praising the touches of whimsy injected into the fact-based account of Arlene’s life through poetic rhythms and repetition. “Arlene’s saga, like sardines, is an acquired taste,” Wilson concluded. While Betsy Hearne, in the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, questioned the appropriateness of the book for its intended audience, she nonetheless praised Arlene Sardine concluding that “Raschka’s work always surprises, challenges, and intrigues.”
Raschka also takes up the topic of death in The Purple Balloon, a picture book created for terminally ill children and those dealing with another’s death. Here he depicts family, friends, and caregivers as soft-edged balloons, an image suggested by art therapists as an effective visual metaphor for the fragility and tenuousness of life. Balloons that bear human faces are colored—green for someone elderly and red for a child—and as death comes the balloon’s face assumes a peaceful expression and its hue resolves to purple. In addition to helping children make sense of their own terminal illness, The Purple Balloon also aids caregivers working to comfort others in hospitals or hospice situations. Noting Raschka’s “sensitive” approach to a difficult topic, Booklist critic Randall Enos described The Purple Balloon as “a useful tool for the right child with the right adult at the right time.”
In the Caldecott Medal-winning A Ball for Daisy, Raschka turns from death to loss. In his wordless story, a dog named Daisy loves playing with her ball until a bigger dog accidentally punctures the toy with his teeth and the ball loses its bounce. The book’s sparely drawn illustrations are arranged in “fairly sophisticated comic-book arrangements,” according to Booklist contributor Daniel Kraus, and the overall effect is one of “pure emotion, a pretty close approximation of what it is probably like to be a dog.” Noting a small child’s ability to “cause an accident,” Wendy Lukehart praised Raschka’s work in A Ball for Daisy, writing that the author/illustrator’s “genius lies in capturing the essence of situations that are deeply felt by children.”
In New York Is English, Chattanooga Is Creek, Raschka illustrates the source of America’s place names by depicting cities as representatives of the many countries and cultures that founded them. New York, for example, is portrayed as the British duke of York, complete with powdered wig and buckled shoes, while San Francisco is dressed in somber monk’s robes. Noting the author’s focus on cultures coming together rather than breaking apart, a Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that the “lilting approximate rhyme, and … piquant watercolors” in New York Is English, Chattanooga Is Creek make the book “an aural and visual pleasure.” For Kate McClelland, writing in School Library Journal, Raschka’s “farcical flight-of-fancy” is “at once carefully intentional and casually random,” with whimsy captured in its “loose, impressionistic” watercolor-and-ink art.
Raschka’s more mainstream picture books include animal-centered stories such as Snaily Snail, Sluggy Slug, and Wormy Worm. A young bunny is the focus of Five for a Little One, which inspires readers to be conscious of everything they can see, smell, touch, hear, and taste, while the story of a bird who cannot summon the courage it takes to fly is the focus of Waffle. In Little Black Crow, Raschka creates what Horn Book contributor Martha Parravano described as a “quietly compelling” story about a young boy who begins to question what it is like to be a wild animal while observing a crow perched on a nearby tree branch.
Five for a Little One features “graceful, Zen-like spreads” that reflect “Raschka’s focus on simplicity and natural materials,” according to a Publishers Weekly critic, while School Library Journal critic Joy Fleishhacker wrote that the “ebullient” ink and potato-print illustrations “convey a child’s curiosity and enthusiasm.” Michael Cart commented in Booklist that the same book’s “spare, alliterative text will be great fun to read aloud.” With its highly graphic, “abstract” art, Little Black Crow “will appeal to contemplative young kids who wonder about their place in the world,” concluded Andrew Medlar in another Booklist review.
In Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle, the story revolves around a parent figure teaching a young girl how to ride a two-wheeler. “The artist’s marvelous sequences, fluid style, and emotional intelligence capture all of the momentum and exhilaration of this glorious accomplishment,” wrote Wendy Lukehart in School Library Journal. Daisy Gets Lost sees the return of Daisy the dog from A Ball for Daisy. Once again, Daisy has another misadventure, this time Daisy is playing ball with her owner when Daisy sees a squirrel and chases off into the woods after it, getting separated from her young owner. Julie Roach, writing in Horn Book, noted: “Sequential panels, full of color and movement, generate intense energy and emotion.”
Raschka offers up another musician’s biography in The Cosmobiography of Sun Ra: The Sound of Joy Is Enlightening. Herman “Sonny” Blount, known as Sun Ra, was an avant-garde jazz musician who often claimed he came from Saturn. Raschka notes the obvious disbelief that comes with such a statement but goes on to point out that it might explain much of Sun Ra’s music and his beliefs. “Sun Ra … gets a portrait as bemusing and sparkly as the man himself in this fantastical tribute,” wrote Thom Barthelmess in Horn Book. Writing in School Library Journal, Wendy Lukehart remarked: “Raschka pulls out all the stops in what may be his finest work yet.”
Raschka also continues to write and illustrate picture books about animals, such as Cowy Cow, Crabby Crab, Lamby Lamb, and Whaley Whale. Commenting on the books, School Library Journal contributor Luann Toth noted “that they cleverly explore the sense and sensibilities of toddlerhood.” Give and Take is about a farmer who, during the course of the story about greed and generosity, meets two little men named Give and Take. Horn Book contributor Joanna Rudge Long called the story “good fun for the little ones—plus something for their elders to discuss.”
In Side by Side: A Celebration of Dads, Raschka presents pairs of fathers and children playing games of pretend together. Gay Lynn Wan Vleck, reviewer in School Library Journal, noted that the book would be “perfect for one-on-one sharing, side by side.” Paul Writes (a Letter) is an introduction to the writings of the Apostle Paul. Paul is thought to have written fourteen of the books in the Bible’s New Testament. Raschka’s book summarizes those books and highlights famous passages from them. A writer in Publishers Weekly commented: “Both those intimidated by and those appreciative of formal biblical prose will find Raschka’s version moving.” “This visually appealing introduction to Paul and his writing can serve as a useful starting point to help young readers understand a key figure in the spread of Christianity,” remarked a Kirkus Reviews critic.
A child narrator tries on and chooses a new pair of footwear when he or she grows out of old ones in New Shoes. A Publishers Weekly reviewer suggested: “It’s the kind of book that might become a battered, dog-eared favorite.” A writer in Kirkus Reviews described the volume as “a delightfully important adventure for a very small person.” “Vibrant and full of energy, the pictures fully engage the reader as a participant in the story,” wrote Lucinda Whitehurst in Booklist. Barbara Auerbach, writing in School Library Journal, called the volume “a lovely, original book about a familiar rite of growing up, perfect for one-on-one and small group sharing.”
In his 2019 self-illustrated volume The Magic Flute, Raschka adapts the celebrated Mozart opera for young readers. He introduces main characters from the work, including Sarastro, Pamina, Papageno, and the Queen of the Night. Booklist critic Kathleen McBroom suggested: “This is an excellent introduction to opera, and a whole lot of fun for everyone,” while a contributor to Kirkus Reviews remarked: “Love, adventure, and enchantment artfully cast their spell.”
In searching for new uses for the picture-book format, Raschka sometimes collaborates with others, among them fellow artist Vladimir Radunsky, a good friend with whom he created Table Manners: The Edifying Story of Two Friends Whose Discovery of Good Manners Promises Them a Glorious Future, Boy Meets Girl; Girl Meets Boy, and Hip Hop Dog. In Table Manners, Chester and Dudunya ask questions about appropriate manners and give examples of good restaurant conduct, as well as teaching readers to say “please” and “thank you” in six different languages. In Boy Meets Girl; Girl Meets Boy the text on each page reads the same from right to left as from left to right, and words are occasionally sprawled across the page upside-down. Raschka and Radunsky tap their shared love of upbeat music in the story of a downtown canine in Hip Hop Dog.
Commenting on the “free-spirited” illustration style in Table Manners, a Publishers Weekly reviewer found that, “together, these two [artists] are anything but uptight,” and Kathleen Whalin, writing in School Library Journal, called the collaboration “a funny, artistic creation on the subject of living well.” The experimental format in Boy Meets Girl; Girl Meets Boy “busts linear narrative to smithereens,” according to a Kirkus Reviews contributor, and a Publishers Weekly reviewer likened the coauthors’ innovative book design to “a Mobius strip that never stops.” “Raschka’s musicality undergirds his street-savvy lingo” in Hip Hop Dog, according to Lukehart in School Library Journal, and the energetic artwork by Radunsky enriches a picture book that “will gladden the hearts of readers young and old.”
Another collaboration by the pair is Alphabetabum: An Album of Rare Photographs and Medium Verses. Featuring Radunsky’s collection of old photos of children from around the world gathered via flea markets, antique shops, and from other sources, the book includes an alphabet listing of rhyming verses by Raschka. Each verse matches the appearance of a child in a photograph given a name such as “Fabulous Freddie Fritz.” Michael Cart, writing in Booklist, called Alphabetabum “an ingenious alphabet book.” The duo’s final collaboration was Mother Goose of Pudding Lane. The volume was published shortly after Radunsky’s death. In this volume, Raschka offers details on the life of the real Mother Goose. Her name was Elizabeth, and she married a man named Isaac Goose in Boston during the 1600s. Elizabeth’s writings were first published by a printing house on Pudding Lane. A Kirkus Reviews writer asserted: “It’s a book as playful and cryptic as many a Mother Goose rhyme.” “The longtime collaborators pursue the verses’ unadulterated silliness, creating a strange and wonderful effect,” commented a reviewer in Publishers Weekly.
In his picture book Mama Baby, Raschka uses orientation and mirroring in the illustrations to show Mama and Baby interact. A Publishers Weekly contributor commented that the book “highlights the way that this kind of universal play builds trust and warmth between the generations.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews mentioned that the account “cleverly shows mirroring in action, though the manipulation required may make sharing difficult.”
The Blue Table shows how a family and friends connect with each other through a pivotal piece of furniture. Food, newspapers, books, crayons, and a number of other objects come and go as individuals come together around a house’s blue table, the centerpiece for friendly and familial interaction. A Publishers Weekly contributor praised this “gentle picture book that celebrates the joy to be found in both everyday routines and holiday abundance.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews referred to it as “a charming and cozy celebration of the places and routines that anchor and connect us.”
With his picture book In the City, Raschka uses flocks of birds to act as guides through an urban landscape, showing the city how only they can see it. Using poetic verse, Raschka also illustrates how children in a park look and admire the birds above. Booklist contributor Kay Weisman found the book to be “a worthy choice for one-on-one sharing or story hour reads, especially for city dwellers.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews pointed out that in addition to having “bright, joyful light on some ubiquitous yet often unappreciated natural wonders, this heady outing irresistibly invites young readers into a ruminative frame of mind.”
In the informational picture book Saint Spotting: (Or How to Read a Church), Raschka takes readers through large cathedrals to introduce images and stories of various saints that are found there. The book provides some basic vocabulary and concepts and gives tips to help identify certain saints. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews called the picture book “a charming, light, and personal introduction to saints and their symbolism.” A Publishers Weekly contributor remarked that the book “offers a gift to families who want to know more about the renderings and stories of saints.”
A meow is worth a thousand words (or so) in Raschka’s self-illustrated Meow, starring a brown-skinned girl and a ginger cat named Marigold. Whether naughtily jumping on the table, finding a ray of sunshine, or being unexpectedly awoken from her nap, Marigold meows—meaning something a little different every time, as the floating text and watercolor illustrations suggest. The misunderstanding of a trampled tail is resolved with a little heartfelt communication. In School Library Journal, Rita Baguio Christensen observed that the graphic-panel sequences “create smooth transitions between the poignant scenes,” which introduce young readers to ideas about “phonics, emotions, and active listening.” Christensen hailed Meow as “expressive and engaging.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer enjoyed how the “delicate balancing act between loving, wanting to be loved, and yearning for independence resolves in a tender rom-com ending.”
Mary’s Idea is Raschka’s homage to twentieth-century pianist Mary Lou Williams, who started playing at age three and became a celebrated jazz performer and composer. In paintings on textured brown paper, swirls and bubbles of color evoke the kinetic energy of Mary’s brown hands playing. An afterword gives a more detailed account of Williams’s life and her belief in the cathartic and therapeutic power of music. A Kirkus Reviews writer affirmed that, like Raschka’s other jazz tributes, “this loving remembrance captures rich hints of his subject’s joy and sound.” The reviewer praised Mary’s Idea as “elevating and evocative.”
[open new]Daylilies and their twenty-four-hour blooms are the subject of Tomorrow’s Lily, another self-illustrated title. With their short life spans, a lily for each day of the week is depicted as flowering for the likes of a baby rabbit, a cat, a mother, and other muses. The text compares lilies to people both directly–declaring that humans, too, bloom for others–and implicitly, with everyone’s life ultimately gone in the blink of an eye. A Kirkus Reviews writer hailed Raschka’s “paean to impermanence” as “brave to its core, … unafraid to ask for whom will you bloom during your one wild and precious life.”[suspend new]
Working as an illustrator, Raschka has contributed art to a number of stories by other writers. His collaboration with Sharon Creech on Granny Torrelli Makes Soup was considered by Maria B. Salvadore in School Library Journal to be “a meal that should not be missed,” and his paintings for Nikki Giovanni’s The Grasshopper’s Song: An Aesop’s Fable Revisited ground the book “solidly in the realm of fable,” according to Joan Kindig in the same periodical.
Norton Juster’s gentle, multigenerational story about a playful girl’s visits with her doting grandparents inspired the artist’s Caldecott Medal-winning illustrations for The Hello, Goodbye Window and also for its sequel, Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie. In The Hello, Goodbye Window an “endearing” story comes to life in “lush paintings” of brilliant hue, observed a Publishers Weekly critic, while a Kirkus Reviews writer noted that Raschka captures the happiness of the book’s multicultural family in “loose and energetic” paintings rendered “in jewel tones and extravagant swirls.” While its “simple lines and squiggles … suggest a child’s own drawings,” The Hello, Goodbye Window contains “the art of a masterful hand,” concluded School Library Journal critic Angela J. Reynolds.
Reviewing his illustrations for bell hooks’s Be Boy Buzz, a Publishers Weekly contributor cited “Raschka’s trademark visual haiku,” while Booklist contributor Hazel Rochman concluded of Skin Again, another Raschka-hooks collaboration, that the book’s images “vividly celebrate … history and the realism, fun, and fantasy inside each one of us.” In her appraisal of Grump Groan Growl, hooks’s story about controlling one’s moods, Heidi Estrin asserted in School Library Journal that the artist’s “thick, almost tactile lines of paint are slathered onto the pages with gusto, capturing a feeling of movement and strong emotion.”
Raschka also illustrated When Lions Roar by Robie H. Harris. The story revolves around a little boy and the various things that scare him throughout a day as he tries to gain control of his fear. School Library Journal contributor Maryann H. Own noted Raschka’s “brightly colored, deceptively simple crayon and watercolor illustrations.” If You Were a Dog by Jamie A. Swenson focuses on children imagining themselves as various animals. “Raschka brings movement, energy, and personality to his vibrantly colored art,” noted Susan E. Murray in School Library Journal. Vera B. Williams is the author of the adoption story Home at Last. School Library Journal contributor Maria B. Salvador noted that Raschka’s “moving watercolors use fluid line and gentle colors to amplify the poignant family story.”
In Dear Substitute, written by Liz Garton Scanlon and Audrey Vernick, a young elementary school student feels anxious about the new substitute teacher, Miss Pelly. Ultimately, the child comes to appreciate her and finds a new interest in poetry due to her teachings. Lolly Gepson, contributor to Booklist, remarked: “Raschka’s childlike illustrations in vivid watercolor and gouache are joyful and expressive.” Similarly, a Publishers Weekly writer noted: “Raschka paints dreamy watercolor scenes with feeling and whimsy.” “Raschka’s good-humored watercolors take all this disruption just seriously enough,” suggested Miriam Lang Budin in School Library Journal.
Written by Richard Jackson and illustrated by Raschka, Puddle is narrated by a puddle in a playground. She is upset about being deeper than other puddles at first, but she realizes that this is an advantage when the sun dries up the shallower puddles. Susan Dove Lempke, contributor to Horn Book, commented: “Jackson’s lively and poetic text and Raschka’s humor-filled paintings help children grasp the idea of empathy and perspective.” Writing again in Booklist, Whitehurst described the book as “vibrant, unusual, and beautiful.” Yelena Voysey, reviewer in School Library Journal, called it “a winsome and uplifting tale.” “Raschka perfectly captures a child’s wonder and excitement in the world,” asserted a Kirkus Reviews critic.
Raschka’s illustrations have also adorned a number of poetry collections, among them A Poke in the I, A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms, and A Foot in the Mouth: Poems to Speak, Sing, and Shout, all of which are edited by Paul B. Janeczko. Raschka “works in tandem with each poem’s design,” noted a Publishers Weekly critic in a review of A Poke in the I, while a Horn Book critic wrote that “Raschka decorates rather than interprets, but he does so with strong, vertical lines and bold colors that add energy to the collection without overwhelming it.” The artist’s “high-spirited, spare torn-paper-and-paint collages” expand on the “wide-ranging emotional tones” of Janeczko’s verses in A Kick in the Head, wrote Engberg, and a Publishers Weekly critic cited Raschka’s “spirited Asian-inspired images” in the same book for “add[ing] oomph to this joyful poetry lesson.”
The Death of the Hat: A Brief History of Poetry in 50 Objects features poems selected by Paul B. Janeczko that provide a history of poetry’s development beginning in the Middle Ages. “Raschka’s soft, impressionistic watercolors showcase each poem,” noted Horn Book contributor Betty Carter. Julie Fogliano’s Old Dog Baby Baby is about an old dog who willingly accepts a baby into the family. “Raschka’s … watercolor images … have just the right mix of joy and melancholy,” wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor. Raschka also is the illustrator of A Song about Myself, a short poem about a boy written by John Keats in the nineteenth century. “Raschka’s whimsical watercolors are childlike and lively,” wrote Barbara Auerbach in School Library Journal.
In Alice Faye Duncan’s Yellow Dog Blues, young Bo Willie searches for his missing dog in a journey that takes him along the famed Mississippi Blues Trail. Booklist reviewer Lucinda Whitehurst marveled at how Raschka amplifies the story’s musical qualities by combining “fabric paint, embroidery, and collage on canvas” and “incorporating hand-stitched patches, maps, and words into the visual images.” Whitehurst lauded Yellow Dog Blues as a “unique artistic exploration.”
[resume new]Rand Burkert is the author of Star Stuff, a constellation drama that finds Orion the Hunter, Taurus the Bull, and Cancer the Crab helping free heavenly custodian Giovanni and his donkey Lorenzo from a nebula. A Kirkus Reviews writer declared that Raschka’s “soft and luminous illustrations engage, with bold brush strokes that create celestial energy,” in this “dreamlike and quirky” tale. Raschka relished the challenge of illustrating Nicholas Day’s Nothing: John Cage and 4’33”, about a musical composition that debuted in 1952 to present four and a half minutes of silence—intended to bring out the soft aural landscape underlying any performance venue or circumstance. A Kirkus Reviews writer enjoyed how Raschka “repeatedly inscribes” the word nothing “with page-filling glee in his luminous, exuberantly brushed images of the scene.” A sea anemone who much prefers never getting “booped” by fellow creatures is an inspiration to a young child in Rachel Vail’s You and Me, Anemone. A Kirkus Reviews writer observed that Raschka’s “clever art uses paint and embroidery on burlap to create an expressive world full of textures and colors.”[suspend new]
Raschka made his fiction-writing debut in Seriously, Norman!, a novel published in 2011. Salted with original black-and-white spot drawings, Seriously, Norman! introduces twelve-year-old Norman Normann, who has failed a test that would have allowed him entrance into a prestigious urban school. With their son’s future hanging in the balance, Norman’s parents now hire Bathazar Birdsong to tutor their son, although his teaching method—urging Norman to read a dictionary from cover to cover and also getting the boy out into the world—are a bit unconventional. Surprisingly, Birdsong’s scheme works, in a way, and soon Norman is casting a fresh eye on the world around him, especially at his father’s questionable income source: selling used bomber jets. Joined by best friend Leonard Piquant and shadowed by twin sisters Emma and Anna, Norman now explores his surroundings with an eye to adventure, all the while continuing his dictionary-page-turning trek from A to Z.
Praising Seriously, Norman! as a “rousing tale,” Horn Book reviewer Betty Carter recommended Raschka’s novel on the strength of its “strong wordplay” and “humor,” and a Publishers Weekly critic cited the novel as “a veritable benefaction for readers’ vocabularies.” “A loopy story full of interesting ideas,” according to the Publishers Weekly reviewer, Seriously, Norman! treats readers to what Meg Wolitzer characterized in the New York Times Book Review as “a visual, loopy, absurdist experience, not exactly like reading most novels, and less like looking at a picture than entering one.”
[re-resume new]Raschka delivers another middle-grade novel with That Curious Thing, in which twelve-year-old Cleopatra Stein is astounded to learn that elder neighbor Jane Oakhurst’s five cats can talk—and are members of the organization PURR, or Peace Urgently Requires Reasonableness. PURR is developing an aether beam to propagate positive energy, but their opponents in KLAW, or Cats Loving Awful Warfare, want to turn it toward dastardly ends. (The evildoers even misspell their acronym on purpose.) Cleo, Jane, and the good cats aim to stop them. A Kirkus Reviews writer found That Curious Thing to be “most fun when it leans into the cats’ zany antics,” making for an “endearing and diverting story for cat lovers.”
A wasp sting lends twelve-year-old Peachaloo Piccolozampa profound powers in Peachaloo in Bloom. With her newfound EWP, or extra wasp perception, Peachaloo can see the truth beneath people’s spoken words. This comes in handy as Major Gasbag and his grandson purchase historic Ajax Mansion and aim to convert it from a home for nature-loving artisans to a country club for the wealthy—cutting off access to Peachaloo’s grandmother’s favorite swimming hole in the process. Peachaloo walks with a limp, having one leg shorter than the other, but takes pride in her uniqueness as she pugnaciously takes on the privileged. A Kirkus Reviews writer remarked that “eccentricity abounds in this fantastical underdog tale,” as “humor joins clever dialogue and an engaging plot that will sweep readers away to a whirlwind ending.”[close new]
Raschka often works on several creative projects simultaneously. As for content and theme, he writes out of personal experience and necessity, “My books are my own thoughts about things that are important to me,” he once noted in SATA. “I work through how I feel about such things as language, art, music, and friendship with these loose, colorful and slightly wild drawings.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, September 1, 1988, Ilene Cooper, review of Arlene Sardine, p. 126; June 15, 1992, Bill Ott, review of Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, p. 1843; April 1, 1999, Julie Corsaro, review of Like Likes Like, p. 1409; May 15, 2001, Michael Cart, review of Waffle, p. 1760; November 1, 2002, review of Be Boy Buzz, p. 508; April 1, 2003, Gillian Engberg, review of John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, p. 1414; May 1, 2003, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of Talk to Me about the Alphabet, p. 1606; September 15, 2004, Hazel Rochman, review of Skin Again, p. 250; March 15, 2005, Ilene Cooper, review of The Hello, Goodbye Window, p. 1286, and Gillian Engberg, review of A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms, p. 1291; August 22, 2005, review of New York Is English, Chattanooga Is Creek, p. 63; March 1, 2007, Jennifer Mattson, review of Good Sports: Rhymes about Running, Jumping, Throwing, and More, p. 85; April 1, 2007, Randall Enos, review of The Purple Balloon, p. 60; February 15, 2009, Thom Barthlemess, review of Violet and Winston, p. 88; January 1, 2010, Andrew Medlar, review of Hip Hop Dog, p. 95; June 1, 2010, Andrew Medlar, review of Little Black Crow, p. 93; December 15, 2010, Daniel Kraus, review of A Primer about the Flag, p. 44; June 1, 2011, Daniel Kraus, review of A Ball for Daisy, p. 90; September 15, 2011, Daniel Kraus, review of Seriously, Norman!, p. 68; December 15, 2011, Linda Perkins, review of Little Treasures: Endearments from around the World, p. 60; April 15, 2013, Carolyn Phelan, review of Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle, p. 56; September 1, 2013, Daniel Kruas, review of Daisy Gets Lost, p. 122; December 1, 2013, Carolyn Phelan, review of What’s Your Favorite Animal?, p. 46; February 1, 2014, Daniel Kraus, review of The Cosmobiography of Sun Ra: The Sound of Joy Is Enlightening, p 62; June 1, 2014, Ilene Cooper, review of Give and Take, p. 113; October 15, 2014, Michael Cart, review of Alphabetabum: An Album of Rare Photographs and Medium Verses, p. 41; March 15, 2015, Sarah Hunter, review of The Death of the Hat: A Brief History of Poetry in 50 Objects, p. 60; August 1, 2016, Ilene Cooper, review of Home at Last, p. 69; December 1, 2016, Lucinda Whitehorse, review of A Song about Myself, p. 41; March 15, 2017, Julie Smith, review of The Doorman’s Repose, p. 54; March 1, 2018, Lucinda Whitehurst, review of New Shoes, p. 55; May 1, 2018, Lolly Gepson, review of Dear Substitute, p. 83; November 15, 2018, Ilene Cooper, review of Paul Writes (a Letter), p. 48; February 1, 2019, Lucinda Whitehurst, review of Puddle, p. 78; May 15, 2019, Kathleen McBroom, review of The Magic Flute, p. 60; September 1, 2020, Kay Weisman, review of In the City, p. 114; August 1, 2022, Lucinda Whitehurst, review of Yellow Dog Blues, p. 60.
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, April 1, 1993, review of Yo! Yes?, pp. 262-63; September 1, 1998, Betsy Hearne, review of Arlene Sardine, pp. 3-4.
Children’s Bookwatch, March 1, 2014, review of Crabby Crab, p. 40; July 1, 2018, review of Dear Substitute.
Entertainment Weekly, October 9, 1992, Dizzy Gillespie, “What about Bop?,” p. 70.
Horn Book, November 1, 1992, Elizabeth S. Watson, review of Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, pp. 718-719; May 1, 1993, Maeve Visser Knoth, review of Yo! Yes?, p. 323; March 1, 1996, Mary M. Burns, review of Can’t Sleep, p. 191; January 1, 1998, Elizabeth S. Watson, review of Mysterious Thelonious, p. 68; May 1, 2001, Martha V. Parravano, review of Waffle, p. 315; July 1, 2001, review of A Poke in the I, p. 466; November 1, 2004, Susan Dove Lempke, review of Skin Again, p. 498; July 1, 2010, Martha V. Parravano, review of Little Black Crow, p. 94; November 1, 2011, Betty Carter, review of Seriously, Norman!, p. 110; March 1, 2013, Joanna Rudge Long, review of Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle, p. 89; September 1, 2013, Kathleen T. Horning, review of When Lions Roar, p. 74; January 1, 2014, Julie Roach, review of Daisy Gets Lost, p. 79; May 1, 2014, Thom Barthelmess, review of The Cosmobiography of Sun Ra, p. 112; September 1, 2014, Joanna Rudge Long, review of Give and Take, p. 91; November 1, 2014, Megan Dowd Lambert, review of If You Were a Dog, p. 81; March 1, 2015, Betty Carter, review of The Death of the Hat, p. 116; September 1, 2016, Rogert Sutton, review of Home at Last, p. 97; March 1, 2017, Susan Dove Lempke, review of A Song about Myself, p. 102; May 1, 2018, Julie Hakim Azzam, review of New Shoes, p. 118; January 1, 2019, review of Dear Substitute, p. 13; March 1, 2019, Susan Dove Lempke, review of Puddle, p. 60.
Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 1992, review of Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, p. 853; August 15, 2001, review of Little Tree, p. 1210; October 1, 2001, review of Table Manners: The Edifying Story of Two Friends Whose Discovery of Good Manners Promises Them a Glorious Future, p. 1431; July 1, 2003, review of Granny Torrelli Makes Soup, p. 908; August 1, 2004, review of Boy Meets Girl; Girl Meets Boy, p. 748; March 1, 2005, review of The Hello, Goodbye Window, p. 289; March 15, 2008, review of Grump Groan Growl; September 15, 2008, review of Peter and the Wolf; January 15, 2010, review of Hip Hop Dog; February 1, 2011, review of A Primer about the Flag; November 1, 2011, review of Fortune Cookies; December 1, 2011, review of Little Treasures; March 15, 2013, review of Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle; August 1, 2013, review of When Lions Roar; August 15, 2013, review of Daisy Gets Lost; March 15, 2014, review of The Cosmobiography of Sun Ra; March 15, 2014, review of Crabby Crab; June 15, 2014, review of Give and Take; August 1, 2014, review of If You Were a Dog; September 15, 2014, review of Alphabetabum; January 1, 2015, review of The Death of the Hat; December 1, 2016, review of A Song about Myself; March 1, 2017, review of The Doorman’s Repose; March 15, 2018, review of New Shoes; August 15, 2018, review of Paul Writes (a Letter); January 15, 2019, review of Puddle; April 1, 2019, review of Side by Side: A Celebration of Dads; May 1, 2019, review of The Magic Flute; July 1, 2019, review of Mother Goose of Pudding Lane; April 1, 2020, review of Mama Baby; July 1, 2020, review of In the City; July 15, 2020, review of The Blue Table; April 1, 2021, review of Saint Spotting: (Or How to Read a Church); August 15, 2022, review of Yellow Dog Blues; February 15, 2023, review of Mary’s Idea; August 15, 2023, review of Star Stuff; December 1, 2023, review of Tomorrow’s Lily; February 15, 2024, review of Nothing: John Cage and 4’33”; October 15, 2024, review of That Curious Thing; March 15, 2025, review of You and Me, Anemone; June 1, 2025, review of Peachaloo in Bloom.
New York Times Book Review, November 14, 2004, Marigny Dupuy, review of A Child’s Christmas in Wales, p. 28; May 13, 2007, John Green, review of The Purple Balloon, p. 21; November 13, 2011, Meg Wolitzer, review of Seriously, Norman!, p. A&E 25.
Publishers Weekly, October 1, 1992, review of Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, p. 108; February 15, 1993, review of Yo! Yes?, p. 236; December 13, 1993, review of Elizabeth Imagined an Iceberg, p. 69; August 5, 1996, review of The Blushful Hippopotamus, p. 441; April 16, 2001, review of Waffle, p. 64; September 24, 2001, review of Little Tree, p. 49; October 29, 2001, review of Table Manners, p. 62; June 25, 2002, review of John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, p. 55; August 26, 2002, review of I Pledge Allegiance: The Pledge of Allegiance, p. 68; September 30, 2002, review of Be Boy Buzz, p. 71; February 3, 2003, review of Talk to Me about the Alphabet, p. 74; December 22, 2003, review of Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, p. 63; August 30, 2004, review of Boy Meets Girl, p. 53; February 21, 2005, review of The Hello, Goodbye Window, p. 173; March 14, 2005, review of A Kick in the Head, p. 67; August 22, 2005, review of New York Is English, Chattanooga Is Creek, p. 63; July 17, 2006, review of Five for a Little One, p. 155; April 16, 2007, review of The Purple Balloon, p. 49; May 15, 2008, Jennifer Mattson, review of The Grasshopper’s Song: An Aesop’s Fable Revisited, p. 42; September 15, 2008, review of Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie, p. 65; January 5, 2009, review of A Foot in the Mouth: Poems to Speak, Sing, and Shout, p. 50; September 12, 2011, review of Seriously, Norman!, p. 78; August 19, 2013, review of When Lions Roar, p. 64; August 26, 2013, review of Daisy Gets Lost, p. 72; annual, 2014, review of What’s Your Favorite Animal?, p. 30; March 3, 2014, review of The Cosmobiography of Sun Ra, p. 67; spring, 2014, review of Daisy Gets Lost, p. 21; spring, 2014, review of Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle, p. 22; spring, 2014, review of When Lions Roar, p. 39; May 19, 2014, review of Give and Take, p. 67; July 7, 2014, review of If You Were a Dog, p. 67; September 8, 2014, review of Alphabetabum, p. 62; December 2, 2015, review of The Death of the Hat, p. 54; December 2, 2016, review of Old Dog Baby Baby, p. 34; December 2, 2016, review of Home at Last, p. 32; January 16, 2017, review of A Song About Myself, p. 63; April 16, 2018, review of Dear Substitute, p. 89; November 26, 2018, review of Puddle, p. 60; November 27, 2018, review of Paul Writes (a Letter), p. 92; November 27, 2018, review of New Shoes, p. 27; November 27, 2018, review of Dear Substitute, p. 13; February 25, 2019, review of Side by Side, p. 77; May 13, 2019, review of The Magic Flute, p. 43; May 27, 2019, review of Mother Goose of Pudding Lane, p. 89; September 21, 2020, review of The Blue Table, p. 88; December 2, 2020, review of Mama Baby, p. 17; February 22, 2021, review of Saint Spotting, p. 63; April 4, 2022, review of Meow, p. 49.
Reviewer’s Bookwatch, May 1, 2014, Karyn L. Saemann, review of The Cosmobiography of Sun Ra.
School Library Journal, May, 1993, Judy Constantinides, review of Yo! Yes?, p. 90; April, 1994, Kate McClelland, review of Elizabeth Imagined an Iceberg, p. 112; September, 1996, Barbara Kiefer, review of The Blushful Hippopotamus, pp. 117-118; September, 1998, Carol Ann Wilson, review of Arlene Sardine, p. 179; October, 2001, review of Little Tree, p. 63; November, 2001, Kathleen Whalin, review of Table Manners, p. 134; July, 2002, Wendy Lukehart, review of John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, p. 97; December, 2002, Anna DeWind Walls, review of Be Boy Buzz, p. 97, and Krista Tokarz, review of I Pledge Allegiance, p. 127; February, 2003, Lee Bock, review of Yo! Yes?, p. 97; June, 2003, Marian Creamer, review of Talk to Me about the Alphabet, p. 113; August, 2003, Maria B. Salvadore, review of Granny Torrelli Makes Soup, p. 158; September, 2004, Grace Oliff, review of Skin Again, p. 162; November, 2004, Marie Orlando, review of Boy Meets Girl, p. 116; March, 2005, Angela J. Reynolds, review of The Hello, Goodbye Window, p. 174; October, 2005, Kate McClelland, review of New York Is English, Chattanooga Is Creek, p. 125; July, 2006, Joy Fleishhacker, review of Five for a Little One, p. 85; February, 2007, Teresa Pfeifer, review of Good Sports, p. 111; March, 2008, Heidi Estrin, review of Grump Groan Growl, p. 168; June, 2008, Joan Kindig, review of The Grasshopper’s Song, p. 102; October, 2008, Joan Kindig, review of Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie, p. 112, and Wendy Lukehart, review of Peter and the Wolf, p. 120; February, 2009, Kathleen Finn, review of Violet and Winston, p. 86; March, 2009, Julie Roach, review of A Foot in the Mouth, p. 164; March, 2010, Wendy Lukehart, review of Hip Hop Dog, p. 129; February, 2011, Carolyn Janssen, review of A Primer about the Flag, p. 93; August, 2011, Wendy Lukehart, review of A Ball for Daisy, p. 82; January, 2012, Kathleen Finn, review of Little Treasures, p. 97; March, 2013, Wendy Lukehart, review of Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle, p. 124; September, 2013, Yelena Alekseyeva-Popova, review of Daisy Gets Lost, p 129; September, 2013, Maryann H. Own, review of When Lions Roar, p. 122; February, 2014, Lindsay Persohn, review of What’s Your Favorite Animal?, p. 68; April, 2014, Wendy Lukehart, review of The Cosmobiography of Sun Ra, p. 182; May, 2014, Luann Toth, review of Cowy Cow, p. 92; June, 2014, Mary Jean Smith, review of Give and Take, p. 88; August, 2014, Susan E. Murray, review of If You Were a Dog, p. 81; October, 2014, Billy Parrott, review of Alphabetabum, p. 93; July, 2015, review of What’s Your Favorite Animal?, p. 54; August, 2016, Maria B. Salvadore, review of Home at Last, p. 82; September, 2016, Teresa Pfeifer, review of Old Dog Baby Baby, p. 113; February, 2017, Barbara Auerbach, review of A Song About Myself, p. 70; April, 2017, Steven Engelfried, review of The Doorman’s Repose, p. 142; June, 2018, Barbara Auerbach, review of New Shoes, p. 68; August, 2018, Miriam Lang Budin, review of Dear Substitute, p. 54; February, 2019, Yelena Voysey, review of Puddle, p. 50; March, 2019, Gay Lynn Wan Vleck, review of Side by Side, p. 89; June, 2022, Rita Baguio Christensen, review of Meow, p. 62.
ONLINE
BookPage, http://www.bookpage.com/ (September 1, 1998), Etta Wilson, author interview.
ChildrensLit.com, http://www.childrenslit.com/ (November 15, 2009), “Chris Raschka.”
Eerdlings, https://eerdlings.com/ (February 26, 2021), author interview.
Greenburger Associates website, http://www.greenburger.com/ (August 8, 2019), author profile.
Illustration Institute website, https://www.illustrationinstitute.org/ (August 8, 2019), author profile.
National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature website, https://www.nccil.org/ (August 8, 2019), author profile.
Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau website, https://www.prhspeakers.com/ (August 2, 2023), “Chris Raschka.”
R. Michelson Galleries website, http://www.rmichelson.com/ (December 28, 2017), “Chris Raschka.”
Scholastic website, http://www.scholastic.com/ (August 8, 2019), article by author.
School Library Journal, https://afuse8production.slj.com/ (October 3, 2024), Betsy Bird, “In the Midst of the Swirl: A Cover Reveal and Chris Raschka Interview for Peachaloo in Bloom!”
Storyopolis Art Gallery, http://www.storyopolis.com/ (November 15, 2009).
Walker Books website, http://www.walker.co.uk/ (August 8, 2019), author profile.*
Chris Raschka is the Caldecott Award-winning illustrator of A BALL FOR DAISY and THE HELLO, GOODBYE WINDOW. He is also the illustrator of YO! YES? (which won a Caldecott Honor), SOURPUSS AND SWEETIE PIE, CHARLIE PARKER PLAYED BE BOP, and FARMY FARM. He lives with his wife and son in New York City.
In the Midst of the Swirl: A Cover Reveal and Chris Raschka Interview for Peachaloo In Bloom!
October 3, 2024 by Betsy Bird Leave a Comment
They sez to me, “Betsy! Howzabout a Chris Raschka interview?” To which I sez right back, “You betcha!” That’s paraphrased, by the way, but you get the idea.
Yes, were you aware that the multi-Caldecott Award winning author/illustrator Chris Raschka has been dabbling in novels as of late? He’s acquired quite a taste for middle grade chapter book titles, and today’s newest book is no exception. Peachaloo in Bloom is slated for our library and bookstore shelves on July 1, 2025, but it’s never too early to talk about a fun book, folks. Here’s the plot (and please take a moment to appreciate the staff member at Neal Porter Books who came up with this opening):
“Waiting for Guffman meets Parks and Recreation for middle grade readers, in this one-of-a-kind illustrated novel from Caldecott Medalist Chris Raschka, where a wasp sting grants Peachaloo a useful new superpower.
Two very large things have just happened to Peachaloo Piccolozampa. First, she’s discovered a plot to ruin her favorite swimming hole and replace it with a golf course. Second, a wasp sting has given her the superpower to understand the truth behind what people say.
Peachaloo knows a golf course is not the destiny for the grounds of the Ajax Mansion, a former monastery whose jump-roping denizens proclaimed it freely open to all. But the mansion’s new owner has other ideas—and has managed to bury the evidence of the Brothers and Sisters’ wishes. Now it’s up to Peachaloo to use her superpower to prove this villain a liar, star in the annual pageant, and somehow get her town back the way it’s supposed to be.
Caldecott Medalist Chris Raschka proves as deft with pen as paintbrush in this sizzlingly witty tale of Extraordinary Wasp Perception, oyster-slinging bank robbers, and a community standing strong against the forces of greed and real estate. Illustrations sprinkled throughout paint a small town entirely unique and yet all too familiar to readers across the U.S. Readers of all ages won’t want to miss the next train to the big-hearted, peculiar, one-of-a-kind town of Fourwords.”
Is not that description a thing of beauty?
Naturally, I have a LOT of questions. Chris Raschka? He has a LOT of answers. We pair well:
Betsy Bird: Chris! I do appreciate you answering a question or two about PEACHALOO IN BLOOM with me today. This is your first novel with Neal Porter Books/Holiday House, and that strikes me as particularly interesting. Where did this book come from and how did it end up with Neal Porter Books at the end of the day?
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Chris Raschka, photo by Lydie Raschka
Chris Raschka: Yes, it’s interesting to me and comforting to be working with Neal Porter again, who published my very first book, Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, over thirty years ago. We’ve done many books together since then, with a variety of publishers, but then not for a few years. So when Neal asked me if I would illustrate Nicholas Day’s book about John Cage, called Nothing, I immediately agreed. Always happy to work for Neal for Nothing, ha ha etc etc. While we were finishing the book, Neal asked if I had anything for older readers. I did. Peachaloo in Bloom had been sitting on my shelf since the fall of 2020.
BB: This is by no means your first novel for kids. There was THAT CURIOUS THING with Michael di Capua and THE DOORMAN’S REPOSE with New York Review Books. David Small once told me that he cannot work on several projects simultaneously. Are you the type of writer who has a number of different novel projects happening at once or are you someone who goes one at a time?
Chris: This is how it works for me. I have an idea and I mull. I mull over this idea for a couple of months, or a couple of years, or sometimes just for one evening in the bath. Then I pick a day when I’ll begin to write it. The last two times this has been in April. I always walk a bit before I sit down at my table to work, and if I start in April I can watch the leaves come out and the trees and flowers bloom and the sun rise a bit earlier each day.
When I do sit down, I write from 9:30 to 11:00, and not more than this, but pretty strictly, six days a week. The writing should last about ten to twelve weeks.
So, in answer to your question, I only work on that novel during those weeks. However, this schedule allows me time to illustrate in the afternoons, which means I can still work on illustrating other things, or shepherding older books along to publication.
After the writing of a novel is complete, which I do in long hand in notebooks, I spend another several weeks typing the manuscript up. I then edit this and rewrite passages that call for it.
What I do like about the time I’m writing, although there is plenty of trepidation accompanying it—what if I don’t have anything to say?—is that I become very absorbed in the lives of the characters, the story they tell, and the world they inhabit. And this does swirl about me all day, which is what David is talking about, I think.
I’m okay with doing other things, even painting or drawing, in the midst of the swirl.
And I really can’t stop the rest of my life even if I wanted to. Michael and I have been working on That Curious Thing for a dozen years—more than a dozen years. Twelve years ago we had a contract for a completed manuscript. Things come up.
Peachaloo in Bloom has whizzed by. For a variety of reasons I had to do all the illustrations in a very short period of time, much quicker than I anticipated. When I heard when everything was due I’m sure I “paled beneath my tan” as the Edwardians say. But in the end, it was a good thing, teaching me how to be as strict and focused with my illustrating as I am with my writing. Maybe it’s what David is alluding to, and insists upon. You could learn a thing or two from David Small.
BB: Well, I always thought so. I also adore the phrase “in the midst of the swirl”, as you put it. So how did working with Neal compare to other editors you’ve worked with in the past?
Chris: Though Neal asked for the manuscript, it was Taylor Norman, Neal’s executive editor, with whom I worked. Was working with Taylor different from working with past editors? When it comes to writing novels, Michael di Capua has been my editor. Let me say this. If you happened to find yourself in a room, say a literary salon of the mind, with Taylor and Michael, you could not picture two more different people. You would think they were on opposite poles of life. However, you would be wrong. Actually they are quite similar. In regards to book-making, they both see what is essential, they see where the essential is obscured, and they possess a razor’s sharpness for any incoherence in character or the story itself. Also, they appreciate writing for itself, and humor for itself and tone for itself.
Taylor also has some very good ideas. I will relate one. In Peachaloo in Bloom there is a story within a story, in this case, the story eventually is told as a three-act play. Originally, we see act one in rehearsal, then acts two and three as they are performed. Taylor suggested that I rework Act Two to present it as the script itself. By this point, we’ve been given most of the details of the story, so following it in script form should not be difficult. This was an excellent idea. It was intriguing to do and pumped welcome air into the storytelling which, because of all the plots and sub-plots might otherwise have gotten a bit weedy and overgrown.
In other words, I’m very happy to have been taken up by Neal and Taylor.
BB: Marvelous! And Peachaloo’s personality is crystal clear from the first moment we meet her onward. Did she come to you fully formed as a character or did she emerge in the process of your writing?
Chris: I’m glad Peachaloo struck you this way. I’ll say this. I had an idea which I mulled: What if being stung by a wasp could bring, along with the pain and danger, something good? The first chapter starts in the hospital where Peachaloo wakes from unconsciousness, having been stung by a wasp and fainted.
How Peachaloo reacts—as I wrote it—to waking up in a hospital bed, what she thinks and remembers in doing so, how she speaks with the doctors and nurses, all of this basically told me everything I needed to know about her. The rest of the story followed from there. Especially her thinking. It all came out in the first chapter.
I had a teacher of English in college, Professor Haldor Hove, a very imposing and unsmiling, but kind, man, in his last year of professoring, who impressed on us that in a short story everything important must be found in the first paragraph, that the whole story must coherently flow from there. So it must be true as well of the first chapter of a novel, I should think.
Maybe it also helped that Peachaloo was named after a favorite cactus of mine
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BB: I’m now feeling a bit put out that I don’t have a favorite cactus of my own. Seems like an oversight on my part. In any case, finally, what can we look for from you next?
Chris: Well, as far as novels go, Michael has a book about an old New York City apartment building taken over by demons in the penthouse. Fortunately, the building’s super and her twelve-year-old son, Corky, who live in the basement, happen to be angels.
And Taylor has a novel that concerns a family of three people—mother, father, and daughter—who adopt a family of three kittens—brother, sister, and sister. Unfortunately one sister kitten gets lost and then found by another family of three, in this case, robbers—sister, sister, and sister—and taken to their hideout, a musty stone cottage one hundred miles up the Hudson River. How our kitten gets home again is what we have to find out.
That’s it—Thanks for asking!
And thanks to Chris for telling!
As I mentioned before, you won’t be able to find Peachaloo in Bloom until July 1, 2025, but this interview makes it clear that it’s worth the wait. In the meantime, please raise a cactus in honor of Chris Raschka for taking so much time to answer my questions today. A second cactus must also be raised to Sara DiSalvo and the team at Holiday House for being so kind as to help me with this interview.
Burkert, Rand STAR STUFF Michael di Capua/HarperCollins (Children's None) $19.99 10, 24 ISBN: 9780062858177
A whimsical tale that creatively introduces three constellations.
Specialists in Sky Repair, Giovanni, a jolly, light-skinned mustachioed fellow, and his sweet donkey, Lorenzo, roam the skies as custodians of heavenly matter. They fill holes in the universe with "star stuff," which magically morphs into bright stars. When Lorenzo's hoof is trapped by a nebula, Giovanni needs help freeing his friend. Who can help them? Readers meet Orion, the Hunter; Taurus, the Bull; and Cancer, the Crab, as they try to pull Lorenzo out of trouble, echoing Winnie-the-Pooh's sticky situation. Raschka's soft and luminous illustrations engage, with bold brush strokes that create celestial energy. The pops of red on the donkey's bridle and Giovanni's hat and shoes provide excellent contrast to the dark heavens. The text pales in comparison. The rhyming has an uneven meter, making reading aloud clumsy. Both nebulas and constellations are undefined (do nebulas have gravitational pull?), and the constellations quickly enter and exit the scene--a missed opportunity to offer clues to both the science and the mythology. Yet the man and his donkey, like Sancho Panza and Dapple, are affectionally portrayed, full of compassion and care for each other. This is a curious introduction to constellations--a better story about helping one's donkey friend. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Dreamlike and quirky. (Picture book. 4-8)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Burkert, Rand: STAR STUFF." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2023. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A760508219/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=07219b55. Accessed 19 June 2025.
Raschka, Chris TOMORROW'S LILY Greenwillow Books (Children's None) $19.99 2, 13 ISBN: 9780063049376
The fleeting loveliness of the lily is celebrated in this paean to impermanence.
"Pretty lily. You bloom for just one day." An exceedingly simple text introduces young readers to a flower with an all too brief life. Like an herbaceous mayfly, Raschka's daylilies have only 24 hours to present their blooms. "Monday's lily blooms for the baby"; the accompanying image depicts a little rabbit huddled beneath the flower. "Tuesday's lily blooms for the cat"; a feline cuddles up to a splendid pink blossom. Each day reveals a new lily and whom it blooms for, whether it's a mother, friends, or no one at all. As Raschka is quick to note, "We're all like lilies. We bloom for others." While the sunny watercolor art may be full of adorable duckies and kitties, a serious undercurrent is at work. To underline this idea, Raschka carefully includes images of the wilted blossoms that have already had their day in the sun. The rhymes may take some practice to read aloud properly, but it's easy to appreciate the rare book where life's impermanence is presented alongside a lesson on something as basic as the days of the week.
Brave to its core, this is a book unafraid to ask for whom will you bloom during your one wild and precious life. (Picture book. 3-6)
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"Raschka, Chris: TOMORROW'S LILY." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Dec. 2023. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A774415216/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=34894817. Accessed 19 June 2025.
Day, Nicholas NOTHING Neal Porter/Holiday House (Children's None) $18.99 4, 2 ISBN: 9780823454099
An introduction to Cage's (in)famous concert work that asks the musical question: What is to be heard when no lyrics, no score, and no instruments are played?
Describing, and then in a far wordier postscript explaining, what the piece known only by its length is all about, Day recounts its 1952 premier, during which pianist David Tudor sat on stage for the indicated time doing--as Raschka repeatedly inscribes with page-filling glee in his luminous, exuberantly brushed images of the scene--"nothing." Audience reactions were understandably mixed: "We have been tricked, they say. They do not use their inside voices." But it wasn't a trick; Cage, gifted since birth with (as the author puts it) "massive ears," wanted audiences to realize that "there is always something to hear inside the silence." He goes on to explain that each time the piece is performed, "the audience hears something different. They hear whatever there is to be heard in that moment." Younger readers should have no trouble buying in to the notion, and for older foot draggers, the ensuing smaller-type essay eloquently builds a case for Cage's sincerity with further details about his boundary-pushing works and his involvement with Zen. The backmatter also includes photos of the composer, a copy of the "score," and a bibliography of titles aimed mostly at adults.
Goofy yet profound. (Informational picture book. 6-9)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Day, Nicholas: NOTHING." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A782202567/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=75738160. Accessed 19 June 2025.
My Book and Me
Linda Sue Park, author
Chris Raschka, illustrator
Red Comet Press
https://www.redcometpress.com
9781636550947, $18.99, HC, 36pp
https://www.amazon.com/My-Book-Linda-Sue-Park/dp/1636550940
Synopsis: Meet the child who loves books in "My Book and Me", a lyrical tribute to the joys of books and reading by Newbery medalist Linda Sue Park and featuring the jubilant illustrations of celebrated Caldecott artist Chris Raschka.
This is my book.
My favorite book.
I carry it with me
wherever I go.
"My Book and Me" invites young children to reflect on beloved books which are friends we hold dear; books we read over and again; books that may take us to places afar to experience the world in different ways, and books that comfort and reassure us. "My Book and Me" is a jubilant paean to literature is a celebration of favorite authors, characters, and stories; those that we cherish the most and are friends for life... which books are your favorite?
Critique A celebration of the joy of reading and the value of books, and showcasing a diverse group of children, all enjoying their favorite books, "My Book and Me" deserves as wide a readership as possible and therefore an unreservedly recommended pick for family, daycare center, preschool, elementary school, and community library picture book collections for children ages 3-6. It should be noted that "My Book and Me" is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $10.99).
Editorial Note #1: Linda Sue Park (www.lindasuepark.com) is the author of the Newbery
Medal-winning A Single Shard, the best-seller A Long Walk to Water, and the highly-praised novel Prairie Lotus. She has also written several acclaimed picture books and serves on the advisory board of We Need Diverse Books. She can be followed on Twitter: @LindaSuePark
Editorial Note #2: Chris Raschka (www.illustrationinstitute.org/chris-raschka) received the Caldecott Medal for The Hello, Goodbye Window and for A Ball for Daisy. He also won a Caldecott Honor for the book Yo! Yes?. He has been hailed by Publishers Weekly as one of the most original illustrators working today, and he continues to create stories and art that appeal to readers of all ages. Follow Chris on Instagram @chris.raschka
Please Note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyright restrictions.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Midwest Book Review
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"My Book and Me." Children's Bookwatch, Apr. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A793839116/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=966e4922. Accessed 19 June 2025.
Raschka, Chris THAT CURIOUS THING Michael di Capua/HarperCollins (Children's None) $24.99 9, 17 ISBN: 9780062858276
A 12-year-old New Yorker joins a secret society of intelligent, peace-loving cats working to save the world from felines with evil intentions.
When Cleopatra Stein and her cat, Muffin, discover that Jane Oakhurst, an old lady in their apartment building, has five talking cats, Jane explains that they're part of the organization PURR: Peace Urgently Requires Reasonableness. Cats are responsible for most of the world's technological advancements, but while PURR members are dedicated to stability, there's another cat society with opposite goals: KLAW, or Cats Loving Awful Warfare ("They put the 'K' in just to be annoying"). When KLAW members get their paws on the plans for the aether beam, PURR's new invention that's intended to be a source of "pure energy," they decide to twist its purpose for their own gain. Their goal: to blast all the dogs on Earth into outer space. It's up to Cleo to go undercover and stop them in their tracks. In this entertaining although overstuffed tale featuring frequent, appealing black-and-white watercolor-style spot illustrations, Cleo, Jane, and their band of lovable, amusing cats are easy to root for as they go up against nasty baddies of both the human and feline varieties. The story is most fun when it leans into the cats' zany antics, but it stumbles when it comes to the extraneous side plots. The main humans are cued white.
A somewhat bloated yet endearing and diverting story for cat lovers. (character portraits)(Fiction. 8-12)
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"Raschka, Chris: THAT CURIOUS THING." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A811898392/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ba7d5c8e. Accessed 19 June 2025.
Vail, Rachel YOU AND ME, ANEMONE Greenwillow Books (Children's None) $19.99 5, 27 ISBN: 9780063414723
Don't touch that anemone!
A "lemony anonymous anemone" has just one demand: "Please, oh, please, / DON'T / BOOP / ME!" The accompanying illustrations show the sea anemone recoiling when a purple fish enthusiastically nuzzles it. The anemone is an avatar for a brown-skinned child who tells readers, "If you ever feel, like me, / that you'd prefer / to stay boop-free / just say these words / assertively-- // NO / BOOPING / ME! I / AM / AN ANENOME!" Despite their pleas, both anemone and child delight in community and celebration, dancing along with their peers as everyone respects their need for space. This ingenious story doubles as a scientific portrait of an animal with a fun-sounding name and a lesson on setting boundaries. Vail's rhythmic, rhyming text has a playfulness to it that will propel readers forward, making it an ideal candidate for a vibrant, educational read-aloud. Raschka's clever art uses paint and embroidery on burlap to create an expressive world full of textures and colors. A spread featuring the unfortunate "boop" depicts numerous silent sea anemones in visible distress in an explosion of stitching, packing as much punch as the one featuring the child making a vehement exclamation. Backmatter includes an author's note in which Vail discusses her own (misguided) experiences with anemones as well as information on these fascinating sea creatures.
Don't boop this book away! Embrace this lively, creative look at asserting one's boundaries. (photograph)(Picture book. 4-7)
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"Vail, Rachel: YOU AND ME, ANEMONE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A830532481/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=57025541. Accessed 19 June 2025.
Raschka, Chris PEACHALOO IN BLOOM Neal Porter/Holiday House (Children's None) $18.99 7, 1 ISBN: 9780823458554
A quick-witted preteen challenges a country club tycoon while visiting her grandmother's peculiar hometown.
After inquisitive 12-year-old Peachaloo Piccolozampa is stung by a wasp at her grandmother Helena's favorite swimming spot in Fourwords, Pennsylvania, she acquires EWP--extra wasp perception--which allows her to understand the real meaning behind people's words. Peachaloo applies her new skill when Major Gasbag and Georgie, his grandson, arrive in town after purchasing the historical Ajax Mansion, which once belonged to a community of rope-jumping craftspeople and artisans with a love of nature and no use for luxury. Major Gasbag plans to fence off the forest and other natural resources around the mansion, including Helena's swimming hole, and build a country club accessible only to wealthy townspeople. In this quirky and whimsically narrated small-town story, Helena, Peachaloo, and best friend Lily protest Major Gasbag's plans, all while preparing for the annual end-of-summer pageant. Simple, stylized line illustrations accompany the text, bringing the town of Fourwords to life. Humor joins clever dialogue and an engaging plot that will sweep readers away to a whirlwind ending. Peachaloo limps due to having one leg that's shorter; she takes pride in her physical difference and loves her cane. Main characters are cued white. Lily reports an odd exchange after asking her father, Ira Schwartz, whether their surname, which meansblack, means they have Black ancestry; he says maybe someone in their family was a soot-covered chimney sweep or just black-haired.
Eccentricity abounds in this fantastical underdog tale of natural and historical preservation.(Fiction. 10-13)
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"Raschka, Chris: PEACHALOO IN BLOOM." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A841814825/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f3e4906c. Accessed 19 June 2025.