About the Author

I was born in 1941.  My father was Charles Lawson Woodward, my motherís maiden name was Esther Claflin. 

My fatherís family was descended, in America, from John and Priscilla Alden.  His branch of the family had long been in Cincinnati, Ohio, where I was born and raised.

My fatherís family was  large and close.  I grew up surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins. 

This led to a sense of security, of knowing where one stood in the larger world.  Many of these relatives were inclined to the arts.  Among my fatherís brothers and first cousins, one earned his living as a painter and illustrator, one taught art at Wayne University, one was a conductor and professor of music, and two were architects. Painting was a very popular family recreation, and almost every excursion included one or more easels and a variety of sketch pads, chalks, paints, and pencils.  My grandfather was an architect who designed many  public and private buildings in Cincinnati, including the high school that I attended.

My motherís  mother named among her ancestors Hannah Dustin, the pioneer woman who, with her newborn babe and nurse was carried off by Indians.  She, the nurse, and a captive English boy fought their way to freedom and a monument to her still stands in Haverhill, Massachusetts.

My motherís father was a printer, and it is from this Irish strand of the family that my pseudonymous last name, Day, derives.  (The first name Alexandra was the name my grandmother thought I should have been named, rather than the shortened Sandra.)

My mother was raised in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.  My mother and father met at the University of Wisconsin.  They were married in 1932, and came to live in Cincinnati.  I was the first of three daughters.  My sister Patricia, is four years younger than I am, and a watercolorist who regularly exhibits in galleries in Canada, where she lives.  My youngest sister, Shawn, is eight years younger than  me, and it is with her that I have always shared a love of animals. 

My father attended the Cincinnati Art Academy after college and loved to paint landscapes in watercolor.  I remember him having commissions to paint the homes of people in the Cincinnati area, and occasionally accompanying him to the sites.  One memorable afternoon we were  in a field adjoining a farm he was painting and I fell asleep.  I was awakened by chewing noises and there, in a semi-circle behind my father and me, were at least a dozen cows, chewing their cud and curiously looking on.  He had been so absorbed that he hadnít noticed their approach.  He did portraits of Mr. Procter and Mr. Gamble which still hang in their headquarters.  One of his favorite commissions was a series of paintings done for The Ohio River Steamboat Company, of the last of the paddle-wheelers on the Ohio River.

Sadly, however, these commissions were not enough to support a family, and, like many artists, he was forced to take jobs in commercial art.  One of these was for the Gibson Card Company, and I remember, at the age of about eight or nine, being taken to the print shop and getting my first lesson in how four-color printing was done.

My father worked at home from the time I was nine until I was thirteen years old.  This was important because I could watch paintings grow from the first sketches to their finished reality.  I particularly enjoyed arising in the morning and discovering how much my fatherís work in the night had changed what had been there when I went to bed.  My father encouraged my early painting efforts and offered, as well, practical advice upon which I still lean.  My father taught me the power of images.  When a beloved horse of mine died he made me a portrait of her, and I was comforted by this memorial of her presence.  I remember a beautiful mask of a fox which he painted me for a school play.

In my home imagination was encouraged to flower.  My father enjoyed Frank Baumís Oz books, and frequently read them to us.  He also referred to them in daily conversation.  One Halloween he made himself a giant paper-mache head, and attended a party as Jack Pumpkinhead.  I saw how life and art reflected each other.

Another encouragement to the play-life of my mind was the gift to us, by a family friend, of a trunk full of costumes.  For many years this allowed us to change character, to play in other times, and to realize, in a small way, our dreams.

My mother excelled in the arts of the home,  She cooked and baked, and taught me to do so.  She taught well so that I could follow a cookbook with understanding and precision, or when circumstances demanded, make a recipe to fit the circumstances.  All my life this has benefited me, for I need not depend either on restaurants or commercially prepared food products, for culinary adventure.  She also taught me to sew, and again this has changed my life, for I have always been able to design and make my own clothes, which as a young woman encouraged my self-esteem, for I could dress with a style and individuality far beyond my purse.  I also learned from my mother, gardening, canning, cleaning, and many other thingsñall of which added up to a repertoire of devices by which one could achieve beautiful and orderly surroundings.  Today, at the age of eighty-six my mother still bakes her own bread, because she says that store-bought bread just isnít the same.

Through the good efforts of both my parents my home was always well supplied with those things necessary for creation, repair, and transformationñpencils, chalk, paint, brushes, paper, tools, wire, nails, glue, and so on.  My sisters and I were always made to feel that these materials were there to be  freely used.  Even more significant was the assumption in our family that if you wanted something, whether it was a kite, a strawberry  pie,  a prom dress or tree house, with a little ingenuity and application (and help,  if necessary) you could make it.

We spent many of our summers at a vacation cottage on an island in Georgian Bay, a part of Lake Huron in the Canadian province of Ontario.  This cottage was owned by my fatherís parents.  It was rustic, had no telephone or electricity, and could only be reached by boat.  We used an ice box, and cooked and lighted with kerosene.  On other islands in the area other branches of my fatherís family also vacationed.  In the brief and brilliant summers I saw  much of aunts and uncles and played regularly with cousins, deepening my awareness of a large and comfortable family.

In Georgian Bay the woods and waters were the primary reality.  Raccoons attacked our trash cans.  Porcupines were backyard visitors, and our dogs had to be taught to leave them alone.   Beavers built dams in inconvenient places, and we  needed to dismantle them.  Red squirrels went up and  down every tree, and raced along the porch railings.  Because water was all around us we all became practiced swimmers and skilled in the use of canoes, rowboats and small sailing craft.

The lack of electricity made us dependent on the sun, and in the evening we, like the animals, grew quiet and retreated to our nestsñ in our case to pop corn and play games under lamp light.  The omnipresence of the lake made us similarly dependent on the weather, and when the weather turned we fled to land much as the birds sought the trees. 

For four years we lived on a hundred acre farm in Kentucky.  The space invited roaming, and the animals became my friends.  Here I grew especially fond of horses, training and riding.  It was a half  a mile to our nearest neighbor, and this made me dependent on myself and my family.  As with many country children nature was a very important companion.  I spent long periods playing in streams, and fruitlessly attempting to redirect them.  My Grandmother Woodward was a very educated woman, and had been a school teacher before her marriage.  She taught me that ìplants, animals, and birds are our friends.  We must respect them, and learn their names, as we do our human friends.î  I am told she was proud of my learning to identify and say ìPhiladelphia Fleabaneî at the age of three.  Here in Kentucky I put this knowledge to good use, and what had been before mere nodding acquaintances became close friends.

Living in the country led to lots of time for reading.  My father had art booksñI remember Rockwell Kent, Lynn Ward, Winslow Homer, Russell Flint, and Edward Hopper, particularly.  We had in our basement a run of National Geographic from 1901 to current (with indexes) from which questions about Tibet or polar bears or the Okeefenokee Swamp got answered.  There were also my fatherís own childrenís booksñSt. Nicholas Magazine, Strewelpeter (which we all thought hysterically funny), the Oz books, Wind in the Willows, the Winnie-the-Pooh books (my motherís favorite, which she read aloud, with sound effects which we loved).  My mother inherited, from her father, a beautiful set of Dickens, which had been read to her as a child, and which she in turn read to us.

Another aspect of my strong feeling about the interconnection of spirit and matter is the importance which Christianity has had for me, especially since 1975.  My fatherís family was Episcopalian and my mother Presbyterian, but we only attended church sporadically in my childhood.  When our children were ready for school, we heard about a school run by the All Saints Episcopal Church in San Diego.  Through this wonderful school we discovered the church itself and both Harold and I have been inspired and sustained by the traditional Anglo-Catholic spirituality which we found magnificently manifested there.

I remember being an avid reader of fairy tales; I also read Nancy Drew, and the Black Stallion books, Laura Ingalls Wilder, E. Nesbit and wept with Black Beauty and Little Women.  I remember being tremendously impressed with George MacDonaldís At the Back of the North Wind.  This, I think, was no accident, as I have always been particularly attracted to stories which attempt to describe the relation between the material,  tangible world and the spiritual.  George MacDonald has remained a favorite author of mine, along with C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien. and Charles Williams, for this reason.  I think that one of the reasons my illustrations  have appealed to people is that they can sense  my sincerity.  I have no trouble at all in believing that dogs can read, stuffed animals come alive, or a bear and an elephant run a business.  I know that marvels exist which are just outside our ordinary experience, but that at any moment we may turn a corner and encounter one of them.  Children also believe this, and because they and I have this conviction in common, we, as creator and audience, make good partners.

I was living in Kentucky when I finished the sixth grade.  My parents decided to make the considerable sacrifice of driving me each week day into Cincinnati(45 miles away) so that I

could attend Walnut Hills, a six year college-preparatory high school.  It was an excellent school, and their effort did help me to a better education.

My father died when I was fourteen.  Aside from the psychic blow to all of us it changed things practically.  My mother, who had always stayed home with us, now had to work.  I, the oldest daughter, found myself assuming unfamiliar responsibilities.  My fatherës death had tumbled me from the nest of childhood to the hard ground of practical necessity.  Fortunately my motherís lessons in domestic skills prepared me for a good portion of the new challenges.

In high school several remarkable instructors made good impressions on me.  An art teacher encouraged me to believe that my talent was worth further development.  He also taught me that the best approach to an artistic problem was the exploratory sketch.  He was in charge of design for the schoolís drama department. and I found the experience of helping to paint sets liberating and instructive.  Other excellent professors were one in physics, who started me thinking about the vastness, complexity and order of matter; and one in French, who made me realize the goodness of single-minded devotion to an intellectual pursuit.  I had always enjoyed reading books, and this affection led to study of literature and my appointment as editor of the school literary magazine.

When it came time to attend college I decided that I wanted to attend a small liberal-arts institution.  I had the opportunity to attend several colleges,  and I visited their campuses.  After visiting I found it easy to decided on Swarthmore College.  The old stone buildings were set in a park-like setting, surrounded by an arboretum.  It was a Quaker college, not far from Philadelphia, and the simplicity and friendliness of its heritage made it an ideal choice.

I had a major in English literature.  I probably would have profited from studies in art, but Swarthmore, being an old fashioned liberal-arts institution eschewed the practical in all areas of study.  Literature did prove a fruitful choice because it took me, an enthusiastic but untrained reader, and taught me that distinction, analysis, and background can greatly enrich oneís enjoyment of books.  In my last two years I was part of the honors program, in which it was assumed that the student was a mature scholar ready for research and self-direction.  Seminars were held once a week, and in them the emphasis was on the writing of papers, and discussion in the small group.  We were expected to do research and present a clear and, if possible, somewhat individual presentation of the subject we had chosen that week.  Though Swarthmore may have been too optimistic about the skills of a still relatively untrained student, their approach did encourage independence and responsibility, and did push me to raise my levels of performance and confidence.

Swarthmore had a strong sense of community.  All students lived in dormitories, ate together in a dining hall, and adhered to clear, and rather strict, codes of behavior.  Far beyond many colleges Swarthmore valued intellectual achievement.  Scholarship and creativity here were esteemed more than social facility or athletic accomplishment.

My college proved to be for me an excellent choice.  Its heritage of individual dignity, moral order, and idealistic striving are with me still.

After college I went to work for the 92^nd Street Y.M.H.A. in New York City.  I had worked for this organization while I was in college, acting as a counselor in their summer camp for girls in Maine.  In New York I taught crafts, primarily silversmithing which I had learned as an extra-curricular activity at Swarthmore.  While in New York I took classes at The Art Studentsí League.  I took figure drawing  and I am very glad to have this in my background for I believe that accurate observation should underlie all painting, no matter how idiosyncratic.  I also took courses on painting from Wil Barnet.  At that time he was an abstract painter, and in his classes emphasized composition and the juxtaposition of shapes.  His teaching has been valuable for me, for, being a realistic illustrator, there is always the temptation to surrender to the demands of narrative, forgetting the fact that each illustration should succeed as a painting if the book as a whole is to achieve its highest artistic potential.

While visiting a friend in California I heard that La Jolla was home to an excellent school of art.  I went there to investigate, and though the school proved disappointing, I did meet my future husband Harold Darling.  He was the owner of a very unusual businessñThe Unicorn Cinema and Mithras Bookstore.  The Cinema was small and featured remarkable programming.  It was eclectic in the extremeñmixing foreign, Hollywood, experimental, short and silent films in nearly equal measure.  The bookstore, which sold a highly personal selection of new and used books, was the entry to the cinema, and stayed open until thelast film had concluded.  As a consequence it had two lives.  In the daytime it was a quiet bookstore, and in the evenings it pulsed with the life of the cinema.  The theater tickets were dispensed from a counter in the store, and the cinema goers waited for the change of films while browsing the shelves.

In 1967 Harold and I were married, and these two remarkable institutions became a part of my life.  The Cinema changed me in several ways.  My mother and father were not movie goers, and as a result I was a relatively unsophisticated film viewer.  The immersion in moving images that the Unicorn offered somewhat moved me from the concept of an image as a fixed and individual thing, to the idea of an image as part of a continuum.  This helped prepare me for illustration when the opportunity offered itself.

The Unicorn issued seasonal brochures which described and pictured their future programs.  I took on the task of designing these.  I was thus moved from the world of fine art to that of commercial art.  Typesetting and the practical and economic problems of paper and printing became familiar.  So, too, did the underlying challenge, which was to gracefully combine the printed word and picture.

The Mithras Bookstore also had its impact on my life and thinking.  Since it carried both new and used books, both of these two rather different worlds had to be attended to in order to keep the store running.  Even though I had been a lifelong reader and had majored in English literature, I had had no idea of the width and depth of the ocean of books.  Like most people, only those books that impinged on my life had significant reality.  What I discovered was that books are like the sands of the seashore; that every subject in the world has inspired a book, or more likely, a library of books; that behind every one of the   numberless volumes there is a mind; that most books sink unremembered; that nothing is new under the sun; and that those few books that are remembered have something remarkable about them.  All of these lessons were useful for a future maker of books, and they affect everything I do in my career as an illustrator.

In 1969 my first son was born.  We named him Sacheverell, after the English writer Sacheverell Sitwell.  In 1971 Rabindranath Tagore was born, named after the Bengali Poet of the same name.  In 1972 Lafcadio Hearn was born, named after the American writer who is best  known for his writings on Japan.  In 1973 Christina, our only girl was born.  She was named after the English poetess Christina Rossetti.  We selected these names for a number of reasons.  We chose only the names of authors, and we wished in our naming to pay tribute to the world of books.  Further, they were not the best known of literary figures, and we wished to emphasize that excellence does not belong alone to the leviathans.  We also liked the sound of each name.  Finally, we hoped to encourage individuality in our children by giving them very different first names.  I cannot be sure how this last intention was fulfilled, for the growth of character is a process to mysterious to chart, but all of the children have very individual characters, and all have come to be fond of their strange names.

We continued for some years in the cinema and bookstore business, but we realized that these businesses, both characteristically difficult to make profitable, were insufficient to support our rapidly enlarging family, and so we searched our minds for an activity that would fit our needs.  We wanted to be in business for ourselves.  We wanted it to proceed our of our enthusiasms, to draw equally on Harold and myself, and to utilize our knowledge and skills.  We needed it so organized that a good portion of the necessary work could be accomplished at home, for our children were small and needed our presence.

Publishing was our answer, and The Green Tiger Press its manifestation.  We founded it in 1970.  In the beginning it published only postcards, but soon we were making notecards, calendars, posters, bookmarks, and so on.  Our aim was to rescue from the pages of old childrenís and illustrated books images too good to be forgotten.  Arthur Rackham was our first success, and he was soon followed by Edmund Dulac and Kay Nielsen.  Harold had long been a collector of old books, and it was in his library that our pictures were found.  My natural roles were design and art director, and I found these agreeable, though increasingly demanding.  The business grew, in not too many months, too large for our home.  Also we needed more hands than our own and employees were hired.  Soon all the problems of a growing business surfaced, but the rightness of publishing was so great that the difficulties were worth bearing.

In 1972 we published our first book, All Mirrors Are Magic Mirrors by Welleran Poltarnees.  It was a series of essays on the pictures in old childrenís books, a natural outgrowth of our interests.  It proved to be a modest success, and our fate was sealed.  Though stationery products were profitable, and a marvelous vehicle for our trove of images, and though we continue to this day to publish them, books are, for both Harold and me, one of civilizationís supreme achievements, and the opportunity to participate in their creation a joy beyond our expectations.

All Mirrors Are Magic Mirrors had its colored illustrations tipped (i.e. glued) onto their pages.  In doing this we were echoing a practice followed by the publishers of many of the book artists whose images we were publishing.  We shortly thereafter began to produce our notecards in this fashion.  We did this because we were determined to link our efforts to the efforts of our predecessors.  In looking back I realize that our choice of old childrenís books as a focus of our business lives had deeper roots that we had realized.  We were, in an age of confusion, determined to connect ourselves with timeless goodness and truth.  Paul Hazard, in his Books, Children, and Men, said of these pictures we loved, ìChildren lead us back to the fountainhead.  We are blasÈ; we have seen too many strange things.  They call, inviting us to look at and admire, pictures that owe their strength to their simplicity.î  We wanted a stable and idealistic climate, and the world of myths, folklore and childrenís stories is such a world.  One of our catalogs put this clearly:

            ìOur company started by reproducing pictures from old childrenís

            books, and though we have since pursued a variety of other enthusiasms

            this origin says a great deal about us.  We stress those qualities which the

            child exemplifiesñthe freshness of vision, the spontaneity, the hunger for

            mystery  and  adventure.  Francis Thompson in his essay on Shelley said that

            to be a child was ëto believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief.í

            We hold these as our ideals, and we select all that we print to their support

            and encouragement.î

As The Green Tiger Press published more and more we grew increasingly discontent with the quality of work we were receiving from our printers.  In 1975 we purchased our own printing press.  This became my area of expertise, and taught me much that has been valuable in my work as an illustrator.  The more one knows about the creation of a book the better one is able to conceive it correctly.

Some of the most valuable lessons I learned from The Green Tiger Press came from reviewing unsolicited submissions sent to us to consider for publication.  Harold and I, and a variety of employees, shared the task of reviewing the thousands of manuscripts and portfolios that arrived each year.  We discovered  several valuable truths from this work.  First, that most were not publishable (a generous estimate would be one in one thousand were.)  Second, one of the reasons they were unpublishable was that the creators had little or no knowledge of the world of childrenís publishing, of the kinds of books wanted, and of the forms desired.  Third, they seemed to imagine that since childrenís books were short and simple then their creation would be a simple, short task open to anyone who could write.  In truth, writing for children is a challenge akin to the challenge of poetry, where every word must count and be in the right place.  Fourth, most of  these works were based on hollow and trite impressions of what a childrenís story should be.  These impressions are probably based on each personís imperfect memories of early childhood reading.  Fifth, that most writers imagined that children were more different from adults than they actually are.  They thought that almost any banal, imitative story would delight the child.  Sixth, that illustration, like story, requires little talent,  probably deduced from the fact that children themselves have only primitive artistic skills.  Seventh, the creators were almost invariably insincere.  They submitted books because they wished to be published, not because they had a story to tell or a vision to show.  There were always drifts of manuscripts about whatever subject or character was fashionable at the moment.  Those few that did proceed out of a real impulse at communication could achieve goodness, even if their makers are inexperienced and untalented.  Genuineness is the one essential ingredient in a childrenís book.  Eight, storytellers were commonly heavily didactic, which was unfortunate since most editors, librarians, and children resent too obvious moral instruction.

One of the best things about publishing is the nice people one meets, for the making of books draws decent and interesting people as honey draws bees.  I was particularly interested in what the various illustrators had to teach and to learn.  We worked with many artists who had not before illustrated a book, and no matter how accomplished they were at painting or drawing they did need to adapt their style to the necessities of reproduction.  Some of the illustrators whose first books we published, and continued into notable careers, either at The Green Tiger or elsewhere, were Don Wood, Michele Clise, Katie Thamer, Michael Hague, Jasper Tomkins, Dan Lane and Cooper Edens.

Of all the friendships that arose out of our publishing activities the one that developed between ourselves and Cooper Edens was the most remarkable.  We received, in the torrent of unsolicited submissions, his text for If Youíre Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow in 1976.  We liked it, and wanted to publish it, but were cautious about letting him illustrate it because his paintings for it were very unique and somewhat naive, but he convinced us to let him do it.  This book, which is a series of poetic solutions to common problems, went on to become one of the most successful we have ever published.  It appealed to both children and adults, and continues to be popular, having sold more than a million copies. 

This dual appeal is one of the things that characterizes Cooper Edens work and The Green Tiger Press as well.  We believe that adults and children are not as different as is commonly imagined; that they share the same needs for story, fantasy, and laughter, and that books occupying this common ground need not define their audiences.  I believe all of our books, and my books as well, have been affected by this belief.  Cooper became not merely one of our finest creators, but a friend and compatriot in many aspects of our publishing efforts.  His enthusiasm for the pictures from old childrenís books became as great as our own, and The Magic Spectacles Calendar which we published annually from 1981 to 1992 was his joint inspiration and responsibility.  It was an engagement calendar, and featured an abundance of antique illustration in both line and full color  Each month was organized around a theme, and each yearís set of themes was different.  For example, we had A June of Solitude, An August of Bubbles, An October of Clowns, and A March of Tigers.

Quotations were added which illuminated each of our visual essays.  Each yearís choices involved hundreds of hours of image searching, which Harold and I and Cooper shared.  The result was not only a fine series of calendars, but an enforced and deepened education in the scope of our library of books and images.

Another marvelous educational opportunity that our publishing house gave me was our frequent attendance at the annual childrenís book fair in Bologna, Italy.  Here the publishers of the world assemble each spring to show their new childrenís books to publishers from other countries, hoping they will wish to publish them in their own lands.  Each is, of course, looking for foreign books that they can make their own.  Here also come many illustrators, hoping to find commissions.  The breadth of this experience gives one a better view of contemporary childrenís illustration than anything else I know.  We secured for Green Tiger publication many fine works.  We were the first American publishers of several notable illustratorsñMonique Felix (A Little Mouse Trapped in a Book), Mario Marrioti (Hanimals and Humands), Frederic Clement ( Animalís Ball).  We commissioned several European illustrators with pleasant resultsñSophie Kniffke (The Sunny Hours), Louise Jalbert (The  Diverting Tale of the Radish and the Shoe) ,Reinhard Michl (Mr. Death and the Redheaded Woman), and Alberto Pratelli (Soup Pot).  The latter two artists, the first a German, the second Bolognese, became friends, and to them we owe a wider view of the art of illustration.  Also at Bologna we met and came to know Paola Pallotino, a professor and expert on Italian childrenís books, and she helped broaden our understanding of this rich field.

It is strange to look back and realize that we had been publishers for 12 years and that it had never occurred to me to illustrate a book.  It seemed as if my artistic time was fully utilized in designing books, and helping illustrators find the best way to bring manuscripts to life.  I had painted the occasional isolated illustration, but a book seemed out of my way.  A customer of The Green Tiger Press wrote us several times saying that we should make a book out of the old song The Teddy Bearís Picnic.  The music had been written in 1907, by John Bratton, and the words added in 1932 by Jimmy Kennedy.  We searched our minds to discover who among the illustrators we knew would be right for the project and, finding no one, I eventually wondered if I might not be the one.  I had plentiful reasons for thinking it difficult.  I had small children to raise and an important job to do at The Green Tiger Press.   We at that time lived in the mountains about 45 miles east of San Diego.  We arranged that I would stay home a couple days a week and paint on the book.  I started work in 1982, and finished in about a year.

I was attracted to this project for several reasons.  First, I  liked teddy bears, and had a small collection of beloved ones.  I also borrowed bears from my son Rabindranath and a friend.  Second, the words stimulated my imagination, offering hints and possibilities as to what took place, and who attended that famous picnic, but  not really specifying the answers.  A key statement for  me was, ìIf you go down to the woods today youíd better go in disguise.î  What I decided, and what I pictured, was that the song was addressed to human children, and that this was advice to allow them to witness this remarkable picnic.  Thus, in my book, human children put on bear suits, which allow them to attend unnoticed, and to mingle with teddies.  The real teddy bears wear human costumes of human roles such as Indian chief, medicine man, and soldier.  We accompanied each book with a phonograph record which contained two versions of the song, one sung by Bing Crosby, and the other one sung by a local klezmer band, which we renamed the Bearcats.

The Teddy Bearís Picnic sold very wellñin fact it continues to sell.  Everyone seemed pleased with my work, it won an award from the childrenís jury at the Bologna Book Fair and was selected by the Childrenís Book Council as one of their choices for 1984.  I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process, and so I determined to continue as an illustrator.

My second book was based on a short story published in 1942 by Joan Grant that we believed would make a good picture book.  It was called The Blue Faience Hippopotamus, and was published in 1984.  It is set in ancient Egypt, and tells the story of a river hippopotamus who falls in love with a human princess whom he sees while she is bathing.  His love leads to sacrifice, and a beautiful kind of fulfillment.  I was attracted not only by the touching story but also by my love of animals, and by what I perceived as the opportunity to emulate the Egyptianís love of flat patterns in my book design.  I have always been fond of borders, and this opportunity to create them in the spirit of ancient Egypt was welcome. 

We were visiting Zurich, Switzerland in 1983 and found in a second-hand bookstore a volume of old German picture sheets.  These were originally single sheets, intended to be sold individually on the streets, at a low cost, and were usually humorous in content.  The volume was quite expensive, so we didnít buy it, but we did see a picture story about a poodle who played with a baby who was supposed to be napping.  On the air flight home we talked about making a childrenís picture story on the same idea, but using our Rottweiler in place of the poodle.  The original had been farcical, cartoonish, and we decided that we wanted our book to be serious and lovely in approach.  The Rottweiler was a deliberate, not circumstantial, choice.  We owned two other breeds of dog.  We liked the apparent fierceness of our hero to contrast with his gentle care.  The Rottweiler, as a breed, does have considerable tenderness and sensitivity underneath his aggressive demeanor.  In our story, entitled Good Dog, Carl, the dog hero helps the baby out of bed, and they enjoy together a series of household adventures.  When the mother returns she finds the baby back in her crib, all the disorder having been put to rights, and she mistakenly imagines that Carl has been a silent and trusty guardian.  She closes the book by praising him with the phrase which is the bookís title.

I went to work on the book in 1984.  A book in our collection called Our Hospital ABC, illustrated by Joyce Dennys, inspired me to create my illustrations on gray paper.  We realized that since neither the baby nor Carl could talk that we were in a good position to avoid words, and thus the book has only a few words at the beginning and at the conclusion.  This dependence on pictures to tell the story focused me on the narration, which drives the irrelevant out of the frame.  Further, as the story rushes wordlessly forward I pictured some of the episodes by showing only a small pieces of the action as floating vignettes.  This sketched quality was intended to convey to the reader that there was insufficient  time to finish the paintings because the events were so fast moving.  Molly Myers, the daughter of an employee, was my model for the baby girl.

Good Dog, Carl, which was published in 1985, was an even larger success than The Teddy Bearís Picnic.  It, and its sequels, continue to sell enormously, and I have to fight off the pressure to make a career of babies and dogs.

The next project I turned to was, as my first book, based on a song.  It was When You Wish Upon a Star written for Walt Disneyís Pinocchio in 1940.  The words were by Ned Washington, the music by Leigh Harline.  As before we included a phonograph record.  On one side was the voice of Jiminy Cricket (Cliff Edwards), and on the other a version by Louis Armstrong.

I chose a song again because I like the challenge of extending the reality that familiar songs have achieved in our minds.  We remember Pinocchioís yearning when Jiminy Cricket sings When You Wish Upon a Star , and it was my desire to listen closely to the words.  This I did, and this time applied them not specifically to Pinocchioís situation, but to the similar striving in all conscious creatures. 

In this work I carried further than I have ever done the impulse to work the words of a picture book into the pictures.  Here they are painted on fences, appear as embroidered samplers, stand on the steps of a staircase and on the shelves of a bookcase, appear on a passing truck, and so on.  No one comments on this aspect of When You Wish Upon a Star, but I am pleased to have attempted so complete an integration.

When You Wish Upon a Star  was not a great popular success, and I think I know why.  I have always tried to select stories of interest to both children and adults, for I believe that the best childrenís books manage to appeal to human traits that we all have in common.  I failed to realize that the longing which is the core of this song, and my book, is not a feeling present in any strength in the child, who is occupied too fully by the present moment.  I had selected for a childrenís picture book a theme of limited interest to children.

In 1986 we sold The Green Tiger Press, and thus When You Wish Upon a Star , which was released shortly after the sale, was the last book of mine published by the company we had founded. 

We sold The Green Tiger Press because the financial and practical details had overwhelmed us.  We now wanted to find a way to concentrate on the creative parts of bookmaking and get rid of the financial and administrative tasks which we found unrewarding.  To this end we founded The Blue Lantern Studio.  Here we made books for other publishers, letting them take our ideas and designs away, leaving us to turn to new projects.  No business can altogether avoid the practical, but our experiment has been, on the whole, a success.  We have made many books with joy and profit.  We employ only a few people, almost entirely family members, and we have been able to concentrate on efforts where they are most fruitful.

At the heart of The Blue Lantern Studio is our library.  It is not a really large collection, numbering about 10,000 books plus uncounted kinds and categories of ephemera.  What makes it remarkable is the same as that which makes any private library unique.  It is the embodiment of the ideas and enthusiasms of its owner or owners.  Our library is primarily a collection of images which attract us.  Our library is principally illustrated childrenís books, but we do have fair-sized collections of art, photography, design, natural history, fashion, typography, and Shakespearean books.  Within the childrenís books we favor books earlier than the 1930ís, and prefer fiction to fact.  We naturally have a special fondness for particular artists and collect them fully.  A few among these are:  Charles Robinson, L. Leslie Brooke, Honor Appleton, Beatrix Potter, Arthur Rackham, Walter Crane, Edward Ardizzone, W. Heath Robinson, Peter Newell, Cecil Aldin, Else Wenz-Vietor, N.C. Wyeth, Ludwig Richter, John R. Neill, and Jessie Willcox Smith.  We have subject specialties as well, for example:  object books, primers and readers, art instruction for children, baby record books, annuals, elephants, dogs, St. Nicholas, and other childrenís periodicals, to name a few.  We also have a substantial reference library to help us understand the books and things we collect.  Our collection of ephemera includes post and greeting cards, calendars, prints, labels, magazines, advertisements, and much more.  Again these have been collected because of their imagery.  Sometimes we know why, often we donít.  We collect instinctively.

Everything we have ever published is in some way related to our library, not the least affected being my illustrated books. When one is in possession of so much excellent illustration one can never be satisfied, alone complacent.  I learn specific lessons which help me with my books, but mostly I am simply inspired by the great traditions of childrenís illustration.

One activity of The Blue Lantern Studio is the development of books which utilize the images in our library.  Some of the books developed by us, for other publishers, and featuring this material are:  Cracker Jack, The Ultimate Alice in Wonderland, Bon Voyage, A Christmas Alphabet, Childís Garden of Verses, Cakes Men Like,  Favorite Fairy Tales, Three Princesses, Glorious Mother Goose, and Tips for Teens.  The impulse behind this effort is the same one that led us to the foundation of The Green Tiger Pressñthe desire to share our enthusiasm for odd and out-of-the-way pictures.

The first book I illustrated for anyone except my own publishing house was Frank and Ernest, published by Scholastic in 1988.  It is the story of a humanized elephant and bear who are in the business of taking care of other peoplesí business enterprises for short periods, while they are away.  In my book they take care of a diner, and are faced with the challenge of learning the language used by waiters to relay their orders to the cook.

The origins of this book are complex.  I chose an elephant and bear as partners because of my fondness for a book published in Switzerland in 1920, called Martin et Tommy.  The characters are an elephant and a bear, and they act like human beings, though, unlike mine, they do not wear clothing.  Ours were named Frank and Ernest because these names fit their personalities.  We also remembered an old radio program in which a man named Frank asked a man named Ernest bible questions.  An interest in trade vocabularies was the spark from which the whole project started.  The terms used in diners is called Hash House Greek, and Haroldís desire to find a way to use this in a childrenísí book started the thinking which led to Frank and Ernest.  The biggest problem I had with this book was how to show animals, particularly an elephant, who has very clumsy feet, doing intricate human tasks.  Fortunately, elephantsí trunks are marvelously adroit. 

Something which needs to be said is that the books of Alexandra Day are often written, sometimes conceived by my husband Harold.  When I sign my pen name it is with the understanding that it includes both of our contributions.

Frank and Ernest was successful, and two more books featuring this helpful pair have been published by Scholastic:  Frank and Ernest Play Ball (1990) in which they manage a minor league baseball team, and need to learn the vocabulary; and Frank and Ernest On The Road (1993) in which they load and deliver a truck-full of freight, and learn the language of CB radio. 

In the beginning, for Teddy Bearís Picnic, I started my work in watercolor, but I was dissatisfied with the results, and so I used a combination of egg tempera and watercolor.  The advantage of egg tempera is that it, unlike watercolor, allows one to build layers of paint, and this painterly technique was what I desired.  I have used this method in  many of my books.  I was not entirely happy with the watercolor, egg and body color method I used for Good Dog, Carl because I found it too hard to render Carlís shiny black fur in that medium.  So for Carl Goes Shopping I changed to oil on canvas.  I used this for Carlís Christmas and Carlís Afternoon in the Park as well, but, particularly with the last of these three we had trouble with color separation.  I concluded that the laser scanner was picking up dark canvas, or the oil medium was causing a darkening and diffusion of the colors which was untrue to the feeling I wanted to achieve.  Therefore, I changed medium again, and now use either all watercolor, occasionally adding egg, or watercolor with certain areas (for example Carl) overpainted in oil.  This seems to separate more satisfactorily, while giving me more range of effects where I need it.

The next book I illustrated was Paddyís Payday, published by Viking in 1989.  This is based on the character of our beloved Irish Terrier, Padraic.  He was graceful, clever, independent, adaptable and friendly, and we wanted a book which manifested these traits.  In the book he is the assistant for a lady acrobat.  He receives his pay, as a small bag of coins, and we follow as he walks to town, by himself, spends his wages on a variety of pleasures, and returns home under the moonlight.  It is one of my favorite works, and though Paddy hasnít achieved Carlís fame, I get many letters from fans who love him.

One obvious theme that runs through my books is the interrelationship between  humans and animals:  Frank and Ernest are animals who mix with and act as humans, Carl and the baby have a close and sympathetic relationship, Paddy moves intelligently and comfortable in the world of people and the blue faience hippopotamus is actually transformed through his empathy with a human.  I myself feel this connection very strongly.  I have been a vegetarian most of my adult life because I cannot be a party to killing animals.  I think that this theme is one to which many people respond.  There is an essential loneliness in the human condition and we long for a sympathetic communion with the ìother.î  Religious people believe this is a hunger for God, for the lost harmony of Paradise; Jungians talk about connection with unconscious, and so on.  There is a thrill which ravishes us at a deep level when we experience the gap being bridgedñit can happen in romantic love, or as when the German and Allied troops in the First World War came out of their trenches on Christmas Eve and sang carols together.  People dream of it between us and beings from other planets, and are moved to tears when someone gives his life for another.

Animals are manifestly ìotherî than we are, but most people feel that at least some communication with them is possible.  They are therefore a natural manifestation and symbol for me of the ìotherî with whom we long to be at one.

In 1989 Farrar, Straus, and Giroux published my second Carl book, Carl Goes Shopping.  In it Carl and the baby (whom we named Madeleine, after our first grandchild), are supposed to wait in a designated area while the mother is shopping in a department store leave and explore the book department, the toy and pet departments, and so on.  Again, Carl was very popular, and the publicís enthusiasm has led to a series of sequels, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  Carlís Christmas (1990) chronicled a variety of Christmas Eve adventures, including a meeting with Santa Claus.  Carlís Afternoon in the Park (1991) shows the variety of adventures a baby and dog can find in a large public park.  Carlís Masquerade (1992) involves the two of them attending a masquerade party and avoiding the parents, who are attending as guests.  In Carl Goes to Daycare  the teacher is accidentally locked out of the classroom, and Carl has to supervise the group in her absence.

In Carlís Makes A Scrapbook (1994) we attempted something unusual.  Carl and the baby, who are supposed to be napping,  pull out the motherís scrapbook, and on blank pages imitate her work.  Hers is organized around headings, for example:  Friends, Vacations, Family, Milestones, etc.  Carl understands what she has done, and puts things on the facing page that are his dog equivalent.  Madeleine does not understand exactly what is going on, but sees it instead as an occasion to select and paste anything she finds colorful and appealing.  Her contributions are placed every which way on the pages, sometimes even covering Carlís items.

The strangest thing about Carlís Makes A Scrapbook is that whereas the world of Carl has hithertofore been a painted, entirely fictive world, now we are shown real things, actual photos of the characters and events we have come to know.  All of the scrapbookís pages on which Carl and the baby are seen to be working are real pages with real things pasted onto them.  In actuality it is only a counterfeit reality.  The motherís photographs are either photographs of my models (the mother is my daughter Christina, for example), their friends and relations, or unrelated photos from our collection.  The things she includes (postcards, invitations, patches, greeting cards, and so on) are from our collection of ephemera.  The whole is a diverse accumulation, partially rooted in reality.  We hope that we have fused all of these elements into an artistic reality. 

Carlís Afternoon in the Park has a Rottweiler puppy who joins Carl and the baby on their adventures.  This came about because our original Rottweiler, Toby, who had been model for Carl, died of old age just after Carlís Christmas was completed.  To assuage our grief at losing him, we got a Rottweiler puppy who was so appealing that I couldnít resist putting him into the book on which I was then working.  Because we have long been enthusiastic fans of the Basque ball game of Jai-alai, a family vote named the new puppy Arambarri, after a favorite player.  When he grew up I used him as a model for Carl.  He was wonderfully athletic and  would jump, carry, pose, etc. with a will.  He loved children, and was happy to have babies pose on his back.  When I was painting Carl Goes to Daycare, I took him to the pre-school which I used as my model, and he and the children enacted many of the scenes which appeared in the book. He unfortunately died young and I now have another Rottweiler, named Zabala (also after a Jai-alai player) to be my Carl for the current and future books.  I try to make Carl always look the same, but each of the dogs adds a little of himself to the portrayal.  The same thing is true to an even greater extent with the baby in the Carl books, since I must change models with almost every book, because the babies keep growing up. 

River Parade, published by Viking in 1990 was a book that grew out of my many vacations at Georgian Bay, which began in childhood and still continue.  It is the story of a little boy on vacation at a lake who is afraid of the water, and who finds a way to conquer that fear.  I painted this book at Georgian Bay and it is, for me, a distillation of memories and a lovely memory in itself.

The Teddy Bears' Picnic Cookbook,  published by Viking in 1991, and written by my step-daughter Abigail, was for me an opportunity to create vignette illustrations and decorative devices, both of which I particularly enjoy.  This book was done effortlessly and joyously, flowing like a dancing stream from my brush.

After some years in the making of books for other publishers we found ourselves missing being publishers ourselvesñ especially the rich variety of challenges and the fact that one had complete control over the form of each book.  We also believed that we had, on reflection, extracted the lessons to be learned from our years at The Green Tiger Press, and wanted to test ourselves against reality.

In 1992 we started Blue Lantern Books and The Laughing Elephant, which was the notecard arm of our enterprise.  We produce, as we did in the beginning, pictures from our library of old childrenís books.  As before they are popular.  People enjoy the unfamiliar images that remind them of the timeless realm of childhood.  We have published at this writing (mid 1994) eleven books and more than 100 cards.  Curiously, only one of our books is a childrenís book.  We are making gift books, because here fine design and rich imagery finds a ready audience.  Childrenís book publishing is so crowded that it is difficult for a new and small publisher to be noticed.  We are, however, determined again to enter this delightful field, and we are meditating an approach.  The books we have published all draw upon either our trove of antique images or on the fertile minds of our associates Cooper Edens and Richard Kehl, a university professor and graphic artist who consistently inspires better design in our publishing activity

In 1993 we moved from San Diego, California, where my husband had lived from his high school years, and I from our marriage, to Seattle, Washington.  We preferred Seattle because of its definite seasons (San Diego basks in Mediterranean uniformity), because we like water; because we find it more culturally active, and because two of our best friends live there ñ Richard Kehl and Cooper Edens.

Harold brought three children to our marriage, and these plus our four children and a foster child, Jack, are a large, close, and harmonious family.  Five of the children, with a number of their close friends, moved to Seattle with us, and we make a small community of work and sociability.  Abigail, Christina, Rabindranath, and Sacheverell all work at The Blue Lantern.  Three of the children still live away from SeattleñHarold Jr. is involved with printing in San Francisco; Benjamin runs a bookstore in San Diego, and is also an author; Lafcadio is a college student, majoring in history, and living in San Diego.  He is engaged to be married.  They do frequently visit, and it is our hope that soon all of us will live in Seattle and work together on our library and publishing company.

A friend, Elizabeth Ratisseau, has lived with us for many years, and is an important part of our life and work.  She loves cleanliness and planning and helps us keep our household in good order.  She loves animals, and our two dogs daily thank her for feeding and companioning them.  She loves books, and her enthusiasm and fertile imagination contribute to many of the books we make.

The Blue Lantern Studio, including our library, is now located in a wonderful Seattle building.  It is called The Good Shepherd Center.  It was built in 1902 as a nunnery, but has been owned since 1906 by Historic Seattle.  It is the home to a variety of non-profit institutions and a few businesses such as a yoga center and ourselves.  It is a large and comfortable old building, located in an eight acre park.  Our library, which had been crammed into an old house in San Diego, is now comfortably housed on shelves and in cabinets, which makes its use easy and pleasant.  We have many large tables where we spread the materials for each book on which we are working.  There are large windows all along three sides of our premises.  From one side we look out into a small park with many old trees, including an eccentric and aged monkey pod tree.  From another side we look over a larger park and the city and Sound to the Olympic mountain range.  From the third side we see across Lake Union to downtown Seattle, and beyond that the snowcapped bulk of Mt. Rainier.  This is a place where creativity seems the natural order of life.

When people ask me my age (children have a great interest in this!), I always have to figure it out.  This year I figure Iíll be 59.  That means I illustrated my first book almost two decades ago.  Itís true I need glasses for close work these days and my back objects to too much sitting or too much gardening, but on the other hand, my paintbrush obeys my desires more readily with each passing year and ideas seem to be like loveñthe more one pours out the bigger the pool from which one has to draw.  Iím excited about all the things to do and think up and paint.  I look forward to the rest of today and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Books By Alexandra Day

Reprinted with permission From Something About the Author, by Alexandra Day, Vol. 19, Gale Group, 1995. Reprinted by Permission of The Gale Group.