An Artist You Can Respect

In a world of ghostwritten celebrity children's books, one man creates beautiful imaginative children's stories.

You have no idea how hard it is to find a good children's book. The bar isn't that high - it should not contain harmful or stupid material, it should have plenty of visual interest for the child, and ideally it's interesting enough that Mommy and Daddy don't want to kill themselves after the 150th re-reading.

So far, I have found only one author who clearly passes these tests - Mark Teague.

His art is hard to characterize because every book looks different. In fact, it's hard to believe that all of his books are illustrated by the same person. But they all do have three things in common - flawless composition, a visual sense of humor, and tremendous attention to detail. As a result, it's a pleasure reading them to my son every night.

• His most beautiful work, in my opinion, is an early book called The Field Beyond the Outfield, but can't find good links to show you. You can get it used at Alibris.
  
• How I Spent My Summer Vacation is very smooth and stylized, yet the story is full of action. The effect is almost statuary, if that's a word - moments are caught, frozen, perfected and polished.
  
• In Pigsty the illustrations have a slightly rough finish, and he employs lots of shadow and dissonant colors.
  
• In The Secret Shortcut he inclues lush jungle backgrounds, and sharply contrasts their rich colors with a subdued, pastel-like palette for the characters' ordinary lives.
• In The Lost and Found he gets more interested in spatial effects - winding corridors, underground tunnels, and returns to a bolder color palette.
• His masterpiece, in my opinion, is One Halloween Night, in which he does haunted houses, creates a two-page masterpiece of a clown scaring the hell out of four kids, and proves that he can draw a cat very, very well.
  

Here is what he has to say about criticism.

IMHO, this guy rules.