Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Author/Artist Series: Gyo Fujikawa







Author/artist Gyo Fujikawa is the creator of one of Jake's newest favorite books, Baby Animals. He is really into baby animals (ducks especially) right now, and has started making animal sounds (primarily horse noises). I love reading this book to him again and again (and again and again) because the writing style, and illustrations are so incredibly sweet (with an emphasis on petting and snuggling baby animals GENTLY!)

Gyo Fujikawa was born in 1908 in Berkeley CA, and died in 1998. During her lifetime, she illustrated five books, wrote and illustrated 45 others, and designed several United States postage stamps. She is known for being one of the first illustrators to portray children of many different races in her books. She included very few adults in her books, choosing instead to let her drawings of children convey the emotion or action she was trying to achieve. She was one of the first illustrators to claim royalties for her books rather than a flat fee...a wise move as the first two books she wrote and illustrated, Baby Animals, and Babies are still in print, and have sold over 1.3 million copies combined!

4 comments:

Rachel Follett said...

Love all those fonts!

leslie said...

I loved Gyo Fujikawa's books when I was a kid -I will have to pick up Baby Animals for my children. Thank you!

Sarah's Fab Day said...

Oh Heather, she is one of my favorite illustrators! I had several of her books as a child, my favorite was Babes of the Wild. My Grandma always read Twas The Night Before Christmas illustrated by her to her children and grandchildren on Christmas Eve. Thankfully when they reprinted she bought them for all of the grandchildren so we would have them to read to our children.

Carolyne said...

I really love her illustrations! I have almost all of her books. My baby loves the baby animals book too. She loves dogs right now, and is in love with the page about puppies.