Award-winning children’s book author and illustrator Rosemary Wells is set to participate in the 10th annual Children’s Book Festival at Princeton Public Library on September 19, 2015.
By Annie Batterman
Which comes first, the pictures or the words? Parents who read books to their kids may sometimes wonder, but for noted children’s book author and illustrator Rosemary Wells, this is no chicken-or-the-egg debate.
“You can’t have pictures that don’t illustrate something,” she said in a recent phone interview. The story, she said, always comes first.
Wells will be one of more than 50 authors and illustrators in attendance at the Princeton Public Library’s Children’s Book Festival, set to be held September 19 in Hinds Plaza, adjacent to the library. Others scheduled to attend the 10th annual festival include Brian Floca, Alyssa Satin Capucilli, Tad Hills and Gail Carson Levine.
Festivities will take place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with authors and illustrators spread out under four tents. Those attending can stop by to chat or get books signed by their respective authors. There will be presentations by featured guests every 10 minutes, with Wells set to talk about her career in children’s literature at 12:40.
Wells is probably best known for her Max and Ruby series and her illustrations in Iona Opie’s My Very First Mother Goose. But over the course of her 45-year career, Wells has written or illustrated 136 books for children and young adults.
She has won multiple awards for her work, and many of her books have been listed among the best books of the year by School Library Journal. Her newest book (being published this month) is Felix Stands Tall, and she hopes readers will see that at the festival, along with her latest Sophie books: Sophie’s Terrible Twos and Use Your Words, Sophie.
Wells was born in New York City, but grew up on the Jersey Shore, spending a lot of time outdoors with animals or playing baseball. Her parents were both in theater and “understood the arts from the inside,” she says in her biography at rosemarywells.com.
She attended Boston Museum School, and later spent seven years in publishing before her first book was published in 1968, an illustrated edition of Gilbert and Sullivan’s A Song to Sing, O!
Wells always knew that she would be a writer as well as an illustrator. “I don’t separate the art from the writing, it’s one and the same,” she said.
When she was growing up in the ’40’s and ’50’s, there weren’t many children’s books available. “The subject matter was extremely limited, and there was much inherent censorship of what children were expected to read,” Wells said.
Today, there are a lot fewer rules. “In those days, it was not appropriate to discuss a lot of things that go into children’s books today. The books I grew up with were squeaky clean,” she said.
She was influenced by Ezra Jack Keats, whose 1962 book The Snowy Day was the first well-known picture book with main character who was black. “His books were considered watersheds of breakthrough because they didn’t represent only white children,” she said.
Wells is critical of the modern publishing era. “A great deal of children’s publishing is extremely commercial, TV oriented,” she said. She also has strong views on the digitization of literature, particularly the use of e-books for children.
“Picture books for young children should not be on e-books. It’s very difficult to capture the artwork and story…it doesn’t work. E-books and digitized picture books are not anywhere near the same as sitting down with a child in your lap with a real book,” she said. “It gets in the way of the intimacy of the reading aloud from a parent to a child.”
She does believe e-books can be beneficial to older readers, giving them access to more books than they would have otherwise.
A number of the writers and illustrators set to appear at the festival are locals, some of whom have recently published their first books. Wells advises anyone thinking of writing or illustrating books for children to join the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (scbwi.org).
“They answer many more questions than anyone else does, and set up a great many successful careers among their members,” she said.
She admits it is difficult for newcomers to break into the publishing world, but encourages people to give it a try.
“If you are truly talented, and present the publisher with a truly good work, you will eventually be published,” she said.
Wells will offer more how-to advice during her presentation at the Children’s Book Festival.
“Probably I will show a video, a visit to my studio, where I show some of the artwork and the techniques involved in illustrating. If I have any time left, I will do a short writing workshop for youngsters,” she said.
More information, including a complete list of of authors and illustrators set to appear, is online at bookfestival.princetonlibrary.org.
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