Michael Emberley | Author & Illustrator

Emberley family invades Ireland

Michael — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:29:52 +0000

The Emberley family make their way to the National Library of Ireland on Kildare street in Dublin this weekend for the Children’s Books Ireland /Weaving a Shared Story conference. The family will be part of a large two day conference open to anyone interested in children’s literature.

From the program:

“In what is sure to be one of the highlights of this year’s programme, CBI have brought together picture books’ premier family! We are delighted to be joined by Caldecott Medal winner Ed Emberley, the man who inspired a generation to draw, including his own children Rebecca and Michael. Today Ed and Rebecca join us from the USA, while Michael Emberley and his wife Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick join us from closer to home. As this impressively creative extended family sit down together, be prepared for a lively debate about working practices, inspiration and collaboration. Illustrator and designer Steve Simpson chairs this session.”

Creative clans are not unique, there even are several in American children’s books, but this one goes on for longer and involves more family members than most. Ed, Rebecca, Barbara and Michael and Marie-Louise have all produced books over the years, Rebecca’s daughter Adrian and husband Peter Black are both professional singer/songwriter/musicians.

Ed has been writing, designing and illustrating books since 1962 with well over 100 books to date and no signs of stopping. He is known for picturebooks, as well as his classic drawing series including the “drawing alphabet” that some consider the only new insight into visual learning since the invention of the pencil…and the classic Go Away Big Green Monster.

Barbara has adapted or written several titles as well as “built’ many of Ed’s best known drawing books by creating thousands of pages of mechanical artwork.

Rebecca has been involved with children’s books since the 70′s, at one point creating her own publishing company, and has recently collaborated on an explosion of wildly creative picturebook titles with Ed and Adrian as well as the world of new media – animation and apps.

Marie-Louise is a well known icon in Irish children’s literature, having won the coveted Irish Bisto bestbook award 3 times. She has written and illustrated many picturebooks, as well as three novels.

Michael has been writing and/or illustrating children’s books since the age of 18. His first book was published in 1980, and with a few breaks, continues to this day with collaborations with several award winning American authors such as Barbara Bottner, US Children’s laureate Mary Ann Hoberman, and Robie Harris. He is currently busy exploring new ideas by writing longer books and novels, demonstrating the creative drive never stops.

Ed and Barbara met at Art school back in the 50′s in Boston Mass., and Michael and Marie-Louise met at a Children’s literature conference, not unlike this one, in Maryland, USA. Proving all kinds of creative unions and collaborations can occur these events. Join us!

Maybe a Bear Ate It! wins state Honor

Michael — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:15:41 +0000

Maybe A Bear Ate It! (text by Robie Harris, published by Scholastic/Orchard) was chosen as the sole book for the state-wide Colorado, USA, One Book 4 Colorado program. This event manages to put the same book into the hands of every 4 year old in the state. ( http://onebook.cvlsites.org)

The Book was featured originally as a co-publication with the organization – Reach Out and Read – which aims to get more books into children’s hands through the health services – Doctors offices for example. Children attending a doctor appointment would leave with a free book to keep. Encouraging the idea of literacy as part of a broader health strategy. Reach out and Read in Colorado was involved with the One Book 4 Colorado program. http://www.reachoutandreadco.org/Preschool%20One%20Book%20One%20Denver.html

Some of my favorite images of the character I named “Gatto”, for myself, since he has no actual name in the text. Not just for fun – it makes it tedious to keep referring to him as “the main character” during editorial meetings. These images were taken from the Korean edition. I like the jacket and the text, like most designers, looks better to me in Asian lettering…I don’t know, it just does. I’ll add some more later.

New Book is out!

Michael — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 20:02:16 +0000

The new book is out! It’s a long one at 144 pages. Didn’t count how many illustrations. It’s a poetry anthology put together by Mary Ann Hoberman, former US Children’s Poet Laureate. Some original poems by MA but mostly a vast selection of poems from all over not just children’s books.

Not every page has art on it though. Some pages are completely blank as the owners of rights stipulated no image on the page, not even a decorative border….

I had fun with this one as it has so many different style poems in it. Broken into chapters of similar types like sad, or scary, or poems about time…. speaking of which I always enjoy doing the more unusual ones with abstract or surreal themes.

I also tried to combine art into a spread encompassing several poems. Not as easy as you’d think.

I’ll add more art soon.

An Annoying ABC Jacket

Michael — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:26:08 +0000

A book jacket can take a long time to get right. Almost always there are conflicting issues – from marketing demands, editorial preferences, to the illustrators artistic ego. I want one thing they want another. We all have the same goal: make the best jacket possible. But not everyone has the same idea of what constitutes the best solution.

The jacket is the sales tool for the book. The message should be about two things: here’s what I am about – buy me. Usually the primary drive for the publisher, and rightly so, is getting the “Buy Me” message across no matter what it looks like. As the designer or illustrator, my desire is for both the book to sell and look great as well. I always assume both are possible. But time is usually my problem. Not enough of it to find the perfect design that makes everyone happy.

The jacket for this book: An Annoying ABC, was pretty straightforward. I came up with a few ideas and this one with kids holding the letters A B C above them came early on.After a few thoughts, I drew as many different faces as I felt I needed to get the expressions just right.

More to come…

An Annoying ABC – news and reviews

Michael — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 17:35:12 +0000

“A is for one awesome, amusing, antic alphabet book.”(!) - Starred review – Kirkus Review

“The hilarity lies in the illustrations, typical Emberley style, done in pencil and watercolors.” “Emberley’s spirited pencil and watercolor cartoons nearly sing from the pages”. – starred review, Kirkus Reviews.

“Emberley gives it a true story, one that will have kids gasping and giggling(!) – GoodReads/Marika McCoola

Anyone who thinks life is a breeze for abecedarians should check out this knowing and very funny primer from Bottner and Emberley. Bottner’s deadpan, minimalist text inspires Emberley to some terrific portraits in extremis–this isn’t just an alphabet book, it’s an encyclopedia of kindergarten deportment, from aggression to zealotry - Starred Review, Publishers Weekly, July 25, 2011:

My New Book, An Annoying ABC, Written by Barbara Bottner, and Published by Knopf, is just out and beginning to getting reviews. She reviewed the book recently in one of the big review houses, Kirkus, which uses many reviewers, including Julie Danielson, who is also an accomplished blogger. Below is an excerpt from a recent entry of hers featuring the new book on the amazing children’s book blog – “Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast”, run by Jules Danielson.

“If you missed last week’s Kirkus column, I discussed the newest picture book titles from Peter Brown, Michael Emberley, and Adam Gudeon. But you know I can’t talk about picture books without also showing lots of art and sketches,…..” http://blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/?p=2193. Below is a page from my sketchbook working out the climax of a kindergarten meltdown in alphabetical order…

Mouse tour of Greystones

Michael — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 00:24:54 +0000

So, this morning, this nice wooden box of little mice show up at my door. I opened the package, and all these little brown and white faces were looking up at me, like I had something to tell them. I didn’t know what to say. I could see they were chocolate mice, meant for eating. And no matter how cute they were, the handwriting, as they say, was on the wall for this lot.I figured, since it was such a grand day and all, the least I could do was show them a bit of the village and such, before they, you know. So next I took them down for a look at the Irish sea. Milk , dark, white; they all seemed to enjoy the salt air. And they asked a lot of questions. I did my best to answer all of them. They sounded like they didn’t get out much.Then I took them over to the sea walk, and showed them the view of Bray head to the north. They really liked that. They spent time just taking it all in, as if they knew it was the last time.

One particular dark chocolate one couldn’t tear himself away from the view. Kept going on about how he couldn’t explain it, but’t touched him somewhere, deep inside. Then I took them over to the Happy Pear, our favorite local coffee shop, and they sat in the window watching daily life in Greystones village go by.

They asked me to show them something particularly Irish. I told them I’d lived here long enough to forget what was different from where I grew up. But I did show them the local doctor’s office where everyone goes, I do remember it being a lot friendlier than the doctor officers in the States. Before we knew it it was time to head home. Well, for some of them. I just couldn’t help it. They were just so cute.

New Book

Michael — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:57:47 +0000

This is my new book that’s coming out titled: An Annoying ABC, written by the legendary Barbara Bottner, and published by Knopf. The editor was Nancy Siscoe and the art director was Isabel Warren-Lynch. This is an image of a jacket “proof”, which means this is a pre publication test print used to try and get the colors of the final book as good as they can be. Usually 2 or 3 test prints or proofs, are ordered to make small adjustments to the printing press to try and match the original art as closely as possible.

Down in the bottom right hand corner you can see a 1, 2, 3 and the first two blocked out. This means this is a second proof, or the second attempt at getting the colors right. In this case I would have liked to have another proof as I didn’t think the colors were very good, even on the second go round (this web image is greatly enhanced, the actual colors are a bit off to my taste). But the artist is seldom thrilled with the printed results as the 4 color printing process, the cheapest way of printing full color books, can never really capture the original art, unless there is a very skilled person every step of the way from the scanner/separator, to the printer, to the production supervisor at the publisher. It can be done well, but there is just not the money in these days of ever tightening budgets to pay for the time it takes to properly tweak the process, and to pay the high cost of a true printing artist…

I know printing is just as much of an art as any of my illustrations, and I have watched some great ones. I had the pleasure of going on a print run in Italy years ago with a master production person at Little Brown, and watch the process of her expertise, matched with the old school craftsmen working the press just outside Milan. It was the book Welcome Back Sun, and it contained many soft graded backgrounds of changing light – very tricky to capture, and very difficult to match the spreads as they go from left page to right.

A children’s picture book is printed on one sheet of paper generally, and the pages, if you saw them, look like they are all over the sheet, not right next to each other, as you would expect. This is because the machine that folds the paper up into a small folded bundle that will become the finished bound book pages only works one way… try it sometime with a piece of paper folded in half several times, you’ll see what I mean. One or two left and right hand pages will match up but the rest won’t. Color is much easier to match on the big printing press if the areas are close to each other. If the two pages are on opposite ends of the single sheet being printed, it’s a nightmare to get them exactly alike, and compromises have to be made…usually in the color. But… I have seen it done… so it is possible. I think these artistic printing professionals are a dying breed.

(to be continued…)

Irish children’s books award 2011

Michael — Wed, 18 May 2011 10:53:28 +0000

The 2011 Bisto Award, the biggest prize in Irish children’s books, has been won, interestingly, for the second year in a row, by a picture book: Chris Haughton‘s A Bit Lost. The top prize is open to children’s books by an Irish author of any age or format. (Last year the ward was won by my wife , Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick (for the 2nd time!) for her picture book There.)

It’s Chris‘s first attempt at a children’s book. And not surprisingly, he also won the Bisto award this year for best first book. The book wa

s originally p ublished in Korea, with, as Chris said at the award ceremony, complete artistic freedom. It’s not possible for that to happen in the west, even at Walker Books/Candlewick Press. I’m sorry but that’s the truth. There is far more fear of failure, far more of a sense that an editor or art director, no matter how much experience they have, must know more that the artist/writer about their own book. This is not to say everyone has something to say and sometimes they are right. But I worryin the economic climate, and even before, about creative expression being squashed in the name of commerce and children receiving ever increasingly homogenized books. As so often happens if a book slips past the radar of editorial “correction” it is often praised for it’s “originality”, or “fresh voice”. Must this always happen by accident?

Congratulations Chris. A really lovely book. And something I almost never say – Great digital art. Really shows what a computer can do in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing. Walker is doing his next book. I hope, and I say this with the best possible intentions, and their hands off it.

Grandma’s Lap

Michael — Tue, 17 May 2011 14:18:40 +0000

What could be better? A nice warm lap to sit in and a hug from Grandma. One of my favorites from recent books.

Illustration © Michael Emberley. From the book Mail Harry to the Moon!, written by Robie Harris, published by Little, Brown/Hachette.

Ed Emberley tribute prints available

Michael — Tue, 17 May 2011 13:36:08 +0000

Ed Emberley original limited edition print

Monster Parade with Ed Emberley

A new collection of original prints are now available from Koyama Press. Two prints by my father Ed and one by my sister Rebecca.

As the site says, “Ed Emberley and fourteen of his biggest fans have also created set of screen prints, also titled Monster Parade. All 15 four-color images are on 4?x6? paper, and come wrapped in a custom, die-cut, letterpress slipcase, printed in purple. The colors on the prints are matched to Ed Emberley’s wonderful Make-a-World book, in green, blue, red, and black. This edition is limited to 100 hand-numbered sets, and includes art by Ed Emberley, his daughter Rebecca Emberley, S. Britt, Tad Carpenter, Maura Cluthe, Becky Dreistadt, Bob Flynn, Meg Hunt, David Huyck, John Martz, Caleb Neelon, Heather Ross, Souther Salazar,Bwana Spoons, and Nate Wragg. And don’t miss the bonus fold-out print by Cloudy Collection curator, David Huyck.

“A portion of the sales of these prints will go to Heifer International, providing reliable sources of food to women and families in developing nations, and to the Central Asia Institute, which provides books and literacy and educational opportunities to girls and women in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

4x6 set - Ed Emberley Monster Parade tribute collection