Our new bimonthly update focuses on the world and the art of illustrators. If “every childhood lasts a lifetime,” as they say, so does the undoubted influence of picture books, and the world views they convey, in children’s lives. Translating stories into a language that needs no introduction to children, even when the subject matter is complex, children’s book illustrators communicate with their audience in a very unique way: being the language of imagination, the art of illustration lends itself perfectly to direct communication, without cultural or language barriers.

Through these new features, you will have a glimpse of how the highlighted artists work, what art means to them and how it transformed their lives. Please enjoy them. And while enjoying what they have to offer, chances are, you’ll also deepen your understanding of the important role their work plays in developing our children’s imaginations.

Featured artists include: Felicia Hoshino, Sally Rippin, Anne Spudvilas, Maya Christina Gonzalez and Amelia Lau Carling.

Long live children’s book illustrators and their picture books!…

Like most children’s book illustrators, Anne Spudvilas earns a living through many kinds of art work. She’s done court sketching, school presentations, and commissioned portraits as well as children’s books. Preparation for her most recent book, The Peasant Prince involved traveling to China with author and former classical ballet dancer, Li Cunxin, and studying Chinese painting. After her trip, Anne received an Australian Council grant that allowed her to focus exclusively on illustrating the story of Li’s remarkable life. It’s a luxury for an illustrator to work on only one project for a while!

The trip to China was wonderful, as Anne’s email and photos demonstrate (Here she is with Li’s brothers). “Visiting China with Li, getting to know him and his family and friends and discovering a country so rich in culture and history was the experience of a lifetime. Beijing was buzzing with new buildings going up everywhere, the skyline is alive with moving cranes, and workers were re-landscaping the streets before our eyes in preparation for the Olympics. My strongest memories are of the wide smile of Li’s mother, the delicious array of food, seeing Beijing grandfathers with their baby grandchildren, and the gorgeous old Beijijng Opera costumes for sale in the Panjiayuan market. And I can’t leave out the exhilarating experience of watching the students at the Beijing Dance Academy.”

The success of The Peasant Prince, has led Anne to another project. Li is sitting for a portrait that Anne will enter in the 2008 Australian Archibald Prize competition, awarded annually to the best portrait of a person “distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics.”

The Peasant Prince is coming out shortly in the United States with the title Dancing to Freedom, with a new cover illustration by Anne. We’ll be reviewing it on the PaperTigers website soon.

The Peasant Prince, just published in Australia, tells the inspiring and now beloved story of author Li Cunxin in a picture book format. From a childhood of near starvation in the Chinese countryside to stardom in the highest echelons on classical ballet, Li told his story first in the 2003 adult memoir Mao’s Last Dancer, now in development as a film with director Bruce Beresford.

Encouraged by his friend, children’s book illustrator Graeme Base, Li pitched the memoir to Penguin and was enthusiastically encouraged first to write more, then to write in more detail, and eventually to cut some of the many hundred thousand words he had delivered. The finished book, an immediate success, soon came out in a young readers’ edition. The former dancer, by then a stockbroker, began doing book tours, where parents and schools urged him to do a picture book.

Li had read books illustrated by Anne Spudvilas to his own children and had loved them, so when she was suggested as illustrator for the picture book, he knew immediately that she would be “fantastic.” Anne got a grant from the Australia China Council to accompany him on a trip he was making to China, where she met his family, dance teachers, and ballet school friends. “She soaked it all up,” he said in a recent radio interview, and even decided to study Chinese painting. “Her first batch of illustrations took my breath away,” he said. He was especially impressed with how Anne had captured his family members.

“It’s been a great experience,” Anne emailed me recently, after we met at the book launch party for Elise Hurst. Li agrees. The illustrations really help tell the story. “Kids today are so privileged,” he said on the radio. “I think the picture of our family table when I was young, with just a tiny bit of food on it, might help them see how different my life was. Even my own kids seem to appreciate my story more since the books came out.”

More on Anne’s adventures in China coming soon…

Added on July 2008

The Peasant Prince is now available in the U.S. as Dancing to Freedom: The True Story of Mao’s Last Dancer (Walker).