I think what’s unique about my grandfather and Madeline is that he was so successful and such a fantastic writer and illustrator both. I can’t really think of another person who’s done children’s books who’s quite as accomplished not only was he a very successful painter, but he was also, he wrote I think 20 books for adults.
He wrote over 200 magazine articles, was a regular contributor to “The New Yorker” for both covers and for fiction. And I think what he really brought where Madeline really is something apart is it was published in 1939 and at the time most children’s books, illustration, the idea was really to illustrate the story, illustrate the words.
And they weren’t
the pictures really weren’t meant to stand on their own. My grandfather really came from things at a very visual, very graphic. He was definitely
his pictures are deceptively simple, he was
he knew plenty about expressionism and (unint.) and he is
you know just incredible library of art books.
He was also, he grew up in the Tyrol in the Alps and there’s a very naïve native folk-art there that he also really assimilated into his work. And his original dream, his first dream was to be a comic strip artist and he did that comic strip in the mid-20s which wasn’t very successful, wasn’t very funny, which I think was the main problem.
But the illustrations were just really stunningly beautiful. And the first Madeline book was something so different, it was
there’s a part in it, Miss Clavell ran fast and faster and it takes about three pages and I can see from his early work that he was working, he was thinking about the panels of a comic strip.
You know one, two, three. It was in France, I think in France they call comic books, sequential art. And he really used his art in that kind of manner. And it was actually rejected by his editor who said it really wasn’t
it wasn’t worthy enough, it didn’t have enough
it didn’t have enough depth to it.
And I feel like there’s almost something
and I feel in a way that that’s true and that’s also the most fantastic thing about Madeline, it’s all about (unint.), it’s about color, it’s about movement, it’s about life. And there’s nothing didactic about it. And I think that that’s what children have responded to all these years, more then anything else.
And I think that that’s what a lot of
I really have so many, it’s incredible how many illustrators, in terms of children’s books illustrators come up to me and say that, you know, my grandfather was such a big influence on them. And I think he really did, he was one of the people who really helped to free children’s book illustration and really bring it into a more mass popular culture and not something that was such, you know, such an elite sort of thing.
