25th August Charles Ghigna (1946) Lane Smith (1959)

Two birthdays of note today as well as Ian Falconer who I wrote about last year. It is American poet Charles Ghigna's birthday and American illustrator/author Lane Smith's birthday too.

Charles Ghigna (aka Father Goose) is the award-winning poet responsible for some absolute favourite children's poems...

What's A Poem?

A whisper,
a shout,
thoughts turned
inside out.

A laugh,
a sigh,
an echo
passing by.

A rhythm,
a rhyme,
a moment
caught in time.

A moon,
a star,
a glimpse
of who you are.

Wild Romance

I love ewe.
I'm not lion.
I really gopher you.
I never gnu this would happen.
You are so deer to me.
It's more than I can bear.
Let us seal our love with a kiss.
I will always bee yours.
I will never have any egrets.
You are my one and only gull.
Owl always love you.

Note all the things that can be used for teaching. The vocabulary and wordplay is wonderful.

Lane Smith is the illustrator who brought us that book that is destined to be a classic one day...It's a Book. Hopefully books won't have to fight with technology, but will continue to live alongside it, bringing pleasure to many new readers. I see this pleasure on a daily basis in the library watching my 3 to 8 year olds pore over books, carry them around, hug them and finally read them before rushing back to the library to repeat that pleasure with another book. Previous to this book Lane Smith has worked collaboratively with Jon Scieszka and other authors on many memorable books. I particularly like Seen Art? It is easy to make the focus of an art unit of work or display. And last year Lane Smith illustrated a chapter book for literary legend Judith Viorst, Lulu and the Brontosaurus.

25th August Ian Falconer (1959)

American, Ian Falconer is the illustrator responsible for the Olivia books. Olivia is a precocious, hyperactive piglet who tests her mother's patience to its absolute limits. Ian was drawing for The New Yorker and designing sets when his niece, Olivia was born. He was smitten, and decided he wanted to make a little present for her, so started working on a book. It was not published immediately but after some work it was published and became the first of a series of books about Olivia. Ian has based all of the piglet's family on members of his sister's family. The illustrations are particularly uncluttered and they use black and white with splashes of red. The subsequent titles have another colour introduced as well. Olivia has been so successful that she now has a television show and television spin-off book titles. These are not illustrated by Ian Falconer or in his style, but nevertheless keep my young clientele interested in Olivia until Ian's next title comes out. In fact the next title Olivia Goes to Venice is due out at the end of September. It looks somewhat different in its amount of detail and the amount of colour in the illustrations, so I cannot wait to see it.