Sophie Blackall has illustrated more than 20 books for children, including the Ezra Jack Keats Award–winning Ruby's Wish; Meet Wild Boars, which won a Founder's Award from the Society of Illustrators; and the Ivy and Bean series. Her editorial illustrations have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and many magazines. Her new book is Missed Connections: Love, Lost & Found (Workman, October 4, 2011). She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., with her family and a stuffed armadillo.
On your nightstand now:
I belong to a very indulgent book club for one, offered by Crawford Doyle booksellers in New York. In the beginning I furnished them with a list of favorite writers and fancies and obsessions, and every month I receive a beautifully wrapped, hand-selected book. By my bed I have Luc Sante's Folk Photography: The American Real-Photo Postcard 1905-1930, which I flip through when I'm too tired to read; Violette Nozière by Sarah Maza, which I have just opened; and We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen, which I finished a while ago but can't bring myself to put away because I loved it so much. All 678 pages of it.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The House at Pooh Corner. It's possibly still my favorite book.
Your top five authors:
I would find it easier to make a list of my five favorite books (Moby Dick, The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard, Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). But I am not necessarily a fan of these authors' entire collective works. It follows then, that my favorite authors have not necessarily written my favorite books. My favorite authors in no particular order: Jane Austen, Meg Rosoff, E.M. Forster, Ian McEwan and Tim Winton.
Book you've faked reading:
Ulysses. I was trying to impress someone I had a crush on. I lost my page at one point, flipped back to find where I'd left off and not a single passage seemed familiar. Nothing. It was as though the book had rewritten itself in my absence.
Book you’re an evangelist for:
I have given away over a dozen copies of Maira Kalman's The Principles of Uncertainty. I think that might count as evangelism.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Jonathan Safran Foer's Tree of Codes. The physical book and the whole idea of a book cut from another book is awfully seductive. Unfortunately I haven't been able to concentrate hard enough to actually read it yet.
Book that changed your life:
Moby Dick. It's got everything: drama, adventure, taxonomy, household advice, recipes, love.... I became a little obsessed. I visited whaling towns in Massachusetts and actually carved a sperm whale into the trunk of a chestnut tree in the Tuileries in Paris, because there's a passage in the book which tells of a whale skeleton being excavated in the Tuileries from a time when it was all sea. I still hide a whale somewhere in all of my picture books.
Favorite line from a book:
"How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends." --Moby Dick
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Pride and Prejudice. One of the (many) delightful things about having children is watching them discover a book you have loved yourself. It's almost as good as reading it for the first time.