Building Stories with Leonard Marcus!

You may recall that I took at trip to Washington, DC last fall as a dry run to see what it would take to invite my students on a field trip to the Building Museum this spring. Well, it all came to fruition this past Friday. Several of us hopped on Amtrak at 6:15am to head to DC. Here are a few of us (Hale, me, and Karen) in Union Station upon our arrival. From the station, we walked the pleasant short distance to the Building Museum, where we met up with several alumni and one of our instructors who live nearby. Leonard Marcus met us there.      Don't know who Leonard Marcus is? Well, he is one of the world’s preeminent authorities on children’s books and the people who create them. He is the author of more than 25 award-winning biographies, histories, interview collections, and inside looks at the making of children’s literature’s enduring classics. He is a founding trustee of the Eric Carle Museum, curator of the New York Public Library's landmark exhibition The ABC of It: Why Children's Books Matter (that I visited and talked about HERE, and interviewed him about HERE.) He has served as a consultant to the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature, National Book Foundation, Bank Street College of Education, American Writers Museum, Bard Graduate Center, National Book Council (Singapore), Lamsa Media (UAE), and Trust Bridge Media (China). In 2007, the Bank Street College of Education awarded Leonard an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters. In 2019, Leonard became the first American to win the Shanghai-based Chen Bochui Foundation International Children’s Literature Award for “special contributions to the development of Chinese children’s literature.” He also recently published a fascinating article in the New York Times: The American Picture Book’s Unsung Parent: Japan Missing for decades from the Anglophile version of its origin story was another great visual narrative tradition, of the East.
     I met Leonard at the Decatur Book Festival following our very successul SCBWI Southern Breeze Illustrator Conference in 2012 and we've been friends ever since. So, when I heard he had curated this new show, I knew I had to connect him with our Hollins students! And what a magical connection it was!      Leonard pointed out so many things I'd missed my first time through on my own. For instance, the arches were designed with twigs, sticks, and bricks from The Three Pigs: Or the tunnel that was designed to look longer than it actually was - like a magical portal into another world, just like in so many picture books that do the same. Or the debut book by Korean artist Yoon Kang-mi (Changbi, 2019) about a girl "gazing out her high-rise window" who reinvisions the polluted city view as what she would rather see.       We all learned new things and so enjoyed Leonard's passion and knowledge. He was an absolute JOY to listen to and learn from! What a rare opportunity - it was an absolute treat for all who came. But my fave photo was of the two of us on the way into the David Macauley room in the exhibit, just under the Chaos of it all! Thank you, Leonard!!!