May Massee: As Her Author-Illustrators See Her

may massee

by Ludwig Bemelmans About seven years ago a typographer brought Miss Massee to my house for dinner. It was a dreary building of six rooms in a noisy neighborhood. The windows of my living room looked out at a cobweb of telegraph wires, a water tank, and a Claude Neon sign that flashed “Two Pants [...]

Ludwig Bemelmans

Ludwig Bemelmans

by May Massee Every writer leaves bits and pieces of his own story in his books whether he knows it or not, so I thought I’d look through some of Ludwig Bemelmans’ books to see what he says about himself here and there. The trouble is, I find a paragraph that shows what a good [...]

Caldecott Award Acceptance*

madeline's rescue

by Ludwig Bemelmans *Paper read at the meeting of the American Library Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 22, 1954. My deep gratitude to the members of the American Library Association for the Caldecott Medal. Now we shall talk about art. There is one life that is more difficult than that of the policeman’s and that is [...]

“Our Miss Jones”

Elizabeth Orton Jones at work in her studio

by Annis Duff One afternoon, a year ago last February, Elizabeth Jones came to tea. It was quite an occasion, for although we had known her incarnate, so to speak, for a comparatively short time, we were very much at home with her because of our long and intimate friendship with Ragman of Paris, Maminka’s [...]

Elizabeth Orton Jones’s Caldecott acceptance speech

Prayer for a Child

by Elizabeth Orton Jones *Read at the Awards Luncheon when the Caldecott Medal was given to Elizabeth Orton Jones for her illustrations in Rachel Field’s Prayer for a Child (Macmillan). There was once a little girl who found it very puzzling to say “thank you.” The words were too small for the feeling, the feeling [...]

Horn Book Reminiscence

Elizabeth Orton Jones

by Elizabeth Orton Jones Tchrr-r-r-r! The phone would ring. I’d answer, and after a considerable while I’d hear a faint little quavery voice, as if someone were calling me from beyond the Pleiades…“E-li-i-izabeth?” It would be my dear friend Bertha Mahony Miller, calling from Ashburnham, Massachusetts, about seventeen miles from Mason, New Hampshire, where I [...]

Artist’s Choice

Who Dreams of Cheese? by Leonard Weisgard

An illustrator comments in each issue of The Horn Book upon a new picture book he particularly likes. Who Dreams of Cheese? comment by Elizabeth Orton Jones Who can draw dreams? Who can draw thoughts? Who can tell with a few words and a paint brush how it feels to be a bird — so [...]

Horn Book reviews of Caldecott Medal winners, 1940-1949

Abraham Lincoln

1940 INGRI AND EDGAR PARIN D’AULAIRE, Author-Illustrators Abraham Lincoln (Doubleday) “Deep in the wilderness down in Kentucky there stood a cabin of roughly hewn logs. It was a poor little cabin of only one room. But the flames flickered gaily on the hearth….In this cabin lived a man named Thomas Lincoln with his wife and [...]

Thomas Handforth, China, and the Real Mei Li

Pu Mei Li holding the book she inspired. Photo courtesy of Zi Tan and Peggy Hartzell.

An online-only companion to Kathleen T. Horning’s “Mei Li and the Making of a Picture Book” article from the January/February 2013 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

Personal Progress Toward the Orient*

Thomas Handforth

by Thomas Handforth *Paper read at the meeting of the Section for Work with Children on the occasion of the American Library Association Conference in San Francisco, June 20, 1939. My progress to the Orient began apparently with my first baby steps and observations. I was born in Tacoma and spent my childhood on the [...]