Archive for the ‘illustration’ Category

You owe H.A. Rey. If you passed an astronomy test on constellations any time since 1960, chances are you passed because this author/illustrator (best known for the original Curious George books) wrote The Stars, A New Way to See Them.

I heard of the book listening to Science Friday. I grew up on Curious George and love when art meets science, so I did a quick search in our local library system. Royal Oak and Ferndale didn’t have it, but thanks to inter-library loan I got my hands on it late last week.

When I first looked at his redrawing of each constellation (Figure 4) I thought, “Oh, this is how I learned the constellations. He must have popularized this.”

But I was wrong. He made it up.

It’s a great intro to stargazing; mostly practical, non-technical guides to recognizing the constellations. The end of the book has some technical details regarding astronomy but leaves out most of the math. He’s quoted in the book jacket, “What surprises me is that nobody has done it before.” Indeed.

As an young twenty-something illustration student I completely overlooked the value of children’s book illustration as an art form. One, I didn’t consider children an interesting audience for illustration work. Two, I didn’t consider a powerful secondary audience: the parents. As a father of three small kids, I see I was wrong on both counts.

Barbara McClintock is the latest discovery Molly made at our local library, and her work is phenomenal. The first we brought home was (aptly named) Molly and the Magic Wishbone. Molly then picked up Adèle & Simon and Dahlia, both good. Molly and the Magic Wishbone has remained my favorite. In it McClintock creates a world of realistic looking animals who nevertheless wear Dickensesque period outfits and poignant, believable human expressions in each scene.

This is for the (beta) Mac version of a tool my brother and I produced that will tell you which of a set of keyword phrases will display local results when searched in Google’s web search. A great tool for local SEO.

Full disclosure: The magnifying glass is an edited iStockPhoto.com illustration. The rest is mine.