Lois Ehlert takes children on a guided tour deep inside her scrapbook and her studio. This succinct memoir is just right for a five-year-old, yet meaty enough to inspire adults. In it, she reveals the sources of her ideas, her planning stages and her wonderful collections of words, photos, paints and fabric swatches.
Ehlert starts with a capital "W" that looks stenciled onto the snow-white page: "When I was little, I read all the books on the library shelf, and I thought maybe someday I could make a book." A collage butterfly alights on a black-and-white photo of the author as a child of perhaps four or five. In the margins, polka dots and coconuts, orange shapes carved with pinking shears and spontaneous spatters of paint reveal an artist's hand guiding the pages. A banded bunch of asparagus (from Eating the Alphabet) acts as a picket fence between a photo of Ehlert's parents ("returning home after hunting for wild asparagus") and a picture of the house where she grew up. Her mother sewed, her father had a basement workshop and, in a corner of the house, he set up a folding table for young Lois: "It was my spot, a place to work and dream." In an inspired touch, Ehlert shows her "spot" then and now, with more similarities than differences (note the color scheme). She draws a linear progression from childhood play to adulthood creativity.
Ideas are everywhere, she tells children: "When a squirrel slipped into my house, a book idea walked right up to me." An image from Nuts to You!, along with scraps of watercolor wash she used in the book, serve as evidence. She shares the "fishy" words she collected for Fish Eyes, followed by a photo of her ice-fishing decoy collection, which dominates a spread. Her sister's cat brushing her ankles inspired Feathers for Lunch. A walk becomes an opportunity to go "looking for good stuff" (such as seedpods, crab apples and pumpkin seeds, all of which made their way into her books).
The author-artist reveals "I'm messy when I work. My wastebaskets overflow," encouraging children to embrace their passions and try new things (e.g., spattering paint with a toothbrush and rubbing a crayon over a cheese grater). In these pages, Ehlert shares not only studies for her books (which children will certainly seek out after examining these pages) but also lessons for a life well lived--observing, collecting, playing and creating. Brava! --Jennifer M. Brown
Shelf Talker: In this compact, skillfully designed scrapbook-cum-memoir, Lois Ehlert takes readers deep inside her creative process.