BOOKS FOR KEIKI
Winning authors deliver classics for kids

By Jolie Jean Cotton
Special to The Advertiser

•	Children's Literature Conference Kickoff 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday UH-Manoa Campus Center Free Call Children's Literature Hawai'i at 956-7559.

Conference guest speakers include Newbery Award winner Nancy Willard, Caldecott Medalist Paul O. Zelinsky and 2004 Charlotte Zolotow Honor Award winner James Rumford (see story this page).

For the very young, I recommend Willard's "The Mouse, the Cat and Grandmother's Hat," which features a surprise guest at a birthday party, and "Night Story," a fantasy poem of an animal chase by night. Here, the child's dream is based on the real world.

Little ones will devour Zelinky's "The Wheels on the Bus" and "Knick-Knack Paddywack!" Both are engineering marvels. "Knick-Knack Paddywhack!" (with that familiar old man playing knick-knack on a thumb, a shoe, a knee) was the first moving-parts book to receive The New York Times Best Illustrated Book Award.

According to the New York Daily News, about 80,000 copies of "Knick-Knack Paddywack!" were printed, each assembled by hand by teams of 50 people and taking 77 minutes to put together. Zelinsky says "Knick-Knack Paddywack!" is one of the books he will be working with at this week's conference.

For Kindergarten through grade 3, I recommend James Rumford's picture book "Calabash Cat," in which a West African cat sets out on a journey to discover where the world ends. The Charlotte Zolotow Award is given each year to the author of the best picture book text published in the United States; honor awards — sort of silver medals — are given, too. "Calabash Cat" received a Charlotte Zolotow Honor Award this year.

Zelinsky's "Rapunzel," "Rumpelstiltskin" and "Hansel and Gretel" are all endlessly appealing for ages 3 to 8. The trio of 8-year-olds in our morning carpool has spent the last two weeks riveted by Zelinky's illustrations in these three Brothers Grimm tales. In an e-mail interview, Zelinsky answered their question, "How did he make those pictures?"

"'Rumpelstiltskin' (and 'Hansel and Gretel' before it) was painted in my version of a Renaissance technique that involved making a finished-looking black-and-white underpainting and then laying on transparent layers of color," Zelinsky writes. "In the Renaissance, the underpainting would probably have been done in egg tempera (preparing temperas in the traditional way would be a very interesting project for an 8-year-old — you start out by separating an egg; you clean off all traces of white from the yolk and then you puncture it and let the liquid yolk drip into a mortar (or is it a pestle?), then you grind powdered pigment into it; and you have to use the paints fast because they dry like lightning)."

"Underpainting could also have been done in oils," Zelinsky adds. "But in my case I used watercolors."

Zelinsky's original paintings from "Rapunzel," "Rumpelstiltskin," and "Hansel and Gretel" are on display now through July 31 at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

Finally, dip into Nancy Willard's brilliant poetry in "A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for the Innocent and Experienced Travelers," winner of both the Newbery and Caldecott honors.

Willard and Zelinsky, both from New York, say they are excited to return to Hawai'i this week. Willard and her husband traveled here several years ago. "The variety of landscapes in Hawai'i amazed us," Willard said. "I've long admired Paul's work and look forward to meeting him so I can tell him this in person."

"I've lived more than half my life in Brooklyn now, so I'm more than half a New Yorker, and I imagine Honolulu must be so not-New-York," Zelinsky said. "But it happens that my earliest memory is of Hawai'i: In the fall of 1955, my family moved from Chicago for Kyoto for one year, and on the way we stayed in Honolulu for a few days. My brain has held on to a few pale snapshots of that stay; I was 2 years old."

"Nancy Willard is a wonderful writer," Zelinsky said. "She's imaginative and innovative and of course she has a poet's way with words. I haven't illustrated any of her writing, but at the children's event ("Story Magic," 1:15 to 5 p.m. Saturday on the UH campus) we will be putting on a sort of performance together, something that will take in suggestions from the audience and that will involve on-the-spot storytelling by Nancy and illustrating by me."