The artist is Trina Schart Hyman, an incredible and prolific talent who passed away in 2004. You can find a ton of tributes to her online from other illustrators and organizations, like the children’s literary magazine Cricket, which she helped create. She illustrated over 150 books, won the Caldecott Medal and Honors, and helped other artists land gigs for decades. She was also gay, hilarious, and one of the first white children’s book illustrators to include diverse characters.
“You have to be so motivated that you have to want to draw so badly that it’s like taking away your oxygen not to draw. It has to be so much a part of your expression and your personality that you cannot live without it. You can’t go for more than two days without drawing. I mean, it is that basic a need for me.”
“[As a child,] I was too imaginative and sensitive. I used to burst into tears at the slightest thing and I was terrified, of people especially. I had trouble, I think, separating reality and fantasy. I learned to read early and I loved to read and I just lived in storybooks and in pictures. That was more real to me than the world. And, in a way, it still is.”
“For the past thirty years I’ve lived in a big old farmhouse in northwestern New Hampshire. Some part of it always needs fixing – there’s always a room falling off or a roof caving in – but to me it is home. Mostly there are walls and walls of books that hold it up and keep out the cold. I live here with my partner, Jean, who helps me keep it all going, and our two dogs, two cats, and five sheep. Jean is a teacher and the director of a little school where kids actually have fun learning.”
[To fellow illustrator Jim Arnosky] “I want a page of hands. You need to learn to draw hands.”
[To Arnosky, who lived in a rural Pennsylvia cabin with his pregnant wife and kid] “I’m giving you this cover assignment on one condition: that you get water put in that cabin.”
[To author Eric Kimmel] “Why is it that whenever someone writes a story about knights, ladies, and dragons, they send this shit to me?”
[To a Caldecott commitee organizer who asked if she enjoyed the dinner at the ceremony] “Oh, yes. Especially the dessert. It looked like a large chocolate penis.”
[To Kimmel] “Listen, Eric. I know this is scary for you now. It’s really nothing in the big scheme of things. Do you want to know what’s going to happen? We live. We die. And in the middle we have some good times and some bad times. That’s your story. That’s my story. That’s the story of everybody who ever lived and whoever is going to live. You just hope that when the end comes, it will be quick and won’t be too painful.
“As for what you just told me, it will work itself out. The best result you’re hoping for probably won’t happen. But neither will the worst. It will end up somewhere in the middle. It’s all about money anyway, which is not that big a deal. You’ll write a check and that will be the end of it. Life moves on and so will you. I promise that the next time we get together we’ll have a drink and laugh about it.
“There’s one more thing I want you to remember while you’re going through it all. Pills help. So does booze. And so do friends. So use them.”
[On the Dykes on Bikes at a mid-90s Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco, to Kimmel] “Did you see that, Eric? There are a lot of us.”
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