The Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota is one of the most extensive collections of art and manuscripts for children’s books in the world. Students and professionals in children’s literature come from all over to study its holdings. If you follow this link you’ll find fascinating details of how this collection came to be, to thrive and to grow.

Last summer I visited the Kerlan and gave a talk to graduate students from Hamline University. I also brought my paintings for the new edition of AT THE SUPERMARKET to Minnesota to contribute to the Kerlan's collection of my work and that of my late husband, Harlow Rockwell. When I saw his 3-color, pre-separated art for the original edition of SUPERMARKET (published by Macmillan in 1973), it was a dramatic demonstration of changes that have taken place in publishing books for children over the past 40 years.

A visit to a research collection such as this requires advance permission. This was the first time I had visited there, and I was thrilled to be given a tour.

Apples and Pumpkins, the first book I collaborated on with my daughter Lizzy Rockwell back in 1989, has a beautiful new cover! So I asked Lizzy to guest-blog about it, and to share some of her test artwork.

From Lizzy:

"Here are scans of the tester paper used when I was getting ready to do the jacket for the revised version of Apples and Pumpkins. Having not worked in this style in 15 years or so, I needed to practice on some test sheets to make sure I had the right textured watercolor paper (T.H. Saunders 140 lb. cold press), the right watercolor pigments (Winsor & Newton Artist's colors) etc.  With the re-release of Apples and Pumpkins in hardbound, the publisher wanted to give the title a fresh package, but without looking like a different book.

"Last weekend I was at a book festival in Warwick, NY (apples and pumpkin territory!) and got to see the reactions of buyers first hand. I signed quite a few copies of Apples and Pumpkins to teachers and parents who were already familiar with the book. They did not seem to notice that it was a new jacket, but lots of people unfamiliar with the original were drawn to it too.

I’m only one of many people worried about rapid climate change, and am always open to reading and listening to responsible comments and information on the subject. I came across the Green Philly blog, which I like. Imagine my pleasure in discovering that they are offering one of my books as a prize, and gave it a good review, too!

The book is WHAT’S SO BAD ABOUT GASOLINE? written by me and illustrated by Paul Meisel. I enjoyed writing this book on a subject I believe is important for today’s children. But I never tackle a subject, no matter how worthwhile, that doesn’t interest me.  Geology has fascinated me ever since I started noticing, while a very little girl, that not all rocks looked alike and not all soil was the color of the red hills of Mississippi. I wondered why. 

When I'm doing artwork, there's an order inside my head, but it would be hard for me to tell anyone else what it is. I'm an assistant's nightmare.

Here's a shot of my table while working on the book At the Supermarket. If you look carefully within the clutter, you can see a pencil drawing of a boy's face. I have a 5-foot long drawing table, but I often end up having to move to the 8-foot long dining table pictured here.

This year has been “the best of times and the worst of times.”  It’s been a year of financial problems for me and too many other people.  It’s been my year of discouraging health problems, too.  As if that weren’t enough, the manager of my building took up heroin dealing in his spare time (even though he wasn’t even one of the many unfortunate unemployed in our nation) and used his passkeys to rob 176 apartments, including mine.

But it was also the best of times.  The crowning glory of the year was the birth of my fifth and littlest grandchild, Sullivan Wong Rockwell aka Huang Luo Yi to my son Oliver and his wife Xiaoling in Beijing in March.  So now I am NaiNai, which means “father’s mother” in Mandarin.  My first blog of 2011 will be about the month I spent in China getting to know Sullivan.

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