Join us in the Atrium Gallery for a look into Beth Peck’s creative process illustrating Angela Johnson’s “Just Like Josh Gibson.”
From the Artist: When I began thinking about this book, I took lots of baseball books out of the library and loved looking at old photos in black and white. I learned more about the Negro Leagues, the individual ball players, and Josh Gibson in particular. I watched the PBS
series on baseball by Ken Burns. Fantastic. I read a moving biography on the life on Josh Gibson, “The Power and the Darkness” written by Mark Ribowsky. This was a really good read.
I went to a local baseball game and took my own photographs. I had various children and adults, from my neighborhood, model for me. Looking at photos from baseball books and taking my own photographic references helps me arrive at figure gestures.
There was a baseball field, out in the country side, in our town. On my bicycle rides I would pass it. The field had a green wooden out house nearby. This made it into the book.
My dad’s store was in Flushing, Queens by Shea Stadium. My dad took me to a game in 1969 when the Mets were winning the World Series. I have fond memories of the game, the Hot Dog, the box of Cracker Jacks.
ABOUT THE ARTIST: It was during an illustration class at the School of Visual Arts I was introduced to Truman Capote's The Grass Harp, and fell in love. (Until then, the only book I had read by Capote was In Cold Blood.) Inspired and delighted by The Grass Harp, a warm, funny and sad account of Truman Capote's childhood, I went on to read his other works and discovered among them A Christmas Memory and The Thanksgiving Visitor. It was not until ten years later I was to gather the nerve as a young illustrator to make a proposal to illustrate A Christmas Memory. And so, pregnant and morning-sick I began illustrating this wonderful story, and gave birth to our daughter, Emma, soon afterward. Most recently, I have completed the illustrations for The Thanksgiving Visitor, another wonderful story about Capote and his childhood in rural Alabama in the 1930's with his eccentric and loving elderly cousin, Miss Sook.
Around the same time I was reading Capote I happened to see The Snow Goose in its film adaptation starring Richard Harris. Again, I let the images of the movie lay dormant for about ten years. Having just completed the illustrations for A Christmas Memory, I began to daydream about other stories which had an impact on me. The movie The Snow Goose came to my mind. Calling down to the Donnell's Children's Library in New York, where I was living at the time, I found The Snow Goose had been in print for almost fifty years but had never been illustrated. And so I had the wonderful opportunity to create a first-time illustrated edition of The Snow Goose in its 50th year of publication. I give special mention to these stories because I initiated their existence as illustrated editions, but I have enjoyed all the stories and images I have had the opportunity to work with.
Grandmother and the Runaway Shadow contains an introductory page which describes the immigration of Eastern European Jews to America. The author and I tell our grandmother's immigration stories. I had the pleasure of giving birth to our second daughter, Anna Rose, during the making of this book.