A Caldecott Celebration: Six Artists Share Their Paths to the Caldecott Medal - Hardcover

"Books bearing medals have the look of things that have been with us forever. But the truth, of course, is that someone, sometime, had to draw (and probably redraw) the pictures and write (and revise) the words. Certainly, none of the six Caldecott books described in the pages that follow just happened...You are about to meet the people who made them. And you are about to see six works of art as ideas in the making: sketches and scribbles on the way to becoming books that readers prize."

Beneficially, his subjects turn out to have amazing stories behind them--both the texts and the creators both. Robert McCloskey, we learn, brought 16 ducks to live with him in his small Greenwich Village apartment while he was working on "Ducklings," and drew the final versions of the tale directly onto sheets of metal to abet the printing process. When William Steig chose a donkey to be the main character of "Sylvester," it turns out he spent a long time thereafter trying to decide if the creature should walk on two legs, human style, or remain more realistically four-legged. Maurice Sendak for years worked on a tale that wasn't going anywhere entitled "Where the Wild Horses Are."

Not a drop of the mystery and fondness one feels towards these works gets diluted by the details shared in A Caldecott Celebration. Afterwards, you'll only love these book the better. --Jean Lenihan, Amazon.com

Leonard S. Marcus is one of the children's book world's most respected and versatile writers, historians, and critics. His incisive book reviews have been featured in Parenting magazine in every issue since the monthly magazine's founding in 1987. In addition, Leonard has been a Parenting contributing editor since 1988 and has directed the magazine's annual "Reading Magic Awards" for excellence in children's literature since their inception in that year.