Image courtesy of illustrator Tomie dePaola, from his book Good Morning to You, Valentine!
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Tag Archives: Tomie dePaola
Happy Chanukah from the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection, and Tomie dePaola
My First Chanukah (cover). Written and illustrated by Tomie dePaola. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
In Celebration of Chanukah
In celebration of Chanukah we are delighted to present images from our children’s literature collection. Here is the cover of a work by noted children’s author and illustrator Tomie dePaola.
From My First Chanukah, by Tomie dePaola
Tomie dePaola featured in latest Kearsarge magazine
[slideshow_deploy id=’705′]One of our favorite NCLC donors, Tomie dePaola, is the cover guy for the winter 2012/2013 Kearsarge magazine, with a great article inside written by John Walters accompanied by lovely photography by Tom McNeill. Now 78 years old, Tomie has published something like 250 books. His newest book, The birds of Bethlehem, is a retelling of the Nativity story from a bird’s perspective. John Walters interviewed Tomie about his life and love of reading and art, his teaching career, and his outlook on the many awards he has received. His favorite, Walters reports, is that his hometown of Meriden, Connecticut, named its children’s library after him.
The Angel for Tomie’s 2012 Christmas card is a “re-imagining” of one of his designs for a hand-screened greeting card business in Vermont in the late 1950’s. Tomie has changed the background, added color and lettering, and reports, “It’s an interesting thing to take an image that is fifty-plus years old and re-visiting it.”
Tomie’s house is full of ornaments he has designed himself, in addition to a large collection of folk art from around the world. And, Walters reports, “plenty of poinsettias.”
Tomie dePaola receives Society of Illustrators’ Lifetime Achievement Award
Congr
atulations, Tomie! According to the Society’s home page, “The Lifetime Achievement Awards were established in 2005 by past chairs of The Original Art. Nominees must be judged to have a body of work that documents an innovative and pioneering contribution to the field of children’s book illustration, and final selection is made by artists whose work has been juried into the previous year’s show. ”
From an early age, Tomie and his parents knew he would be an artist. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York where he studied Art. His Master of Fine Arts degree was received from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California. He has also been awarded three honorary Doctorate degrees from separate Universities and Colleges.
Tomie’s 
career as a professional artist and designer, former teacher of art, children’s author and illustrator is expansive. He has designed greeting cards, posters, magazine and catalogue covers, record album covers, and theater costumes and sets. He has illustrated over two hundred books, and written over seventy. Tomie has won numerous awards, including the prestigious American Library Association’s Caldecott Honor Award for Strega Nona (1976), the University of Minnesota’s Kerlan Award (1981), the Catholic Library Association’s Regina Medal (1983), and the Smithsonian Institution’s Smithson Medal (1990).
Tomie’s books have been published world-wide in fifteen different languages and he has over five million copies in print. Many of his books are largely autobiographical such as Nana Upstairs, Nana Downstairs, Tom, and The Art Lesson. Tomie currently resides in New Hampshire.
The Tomie dePaola Collection contains artwork, sketch books and paintings from the beginning of his career, as well as many different editions from each book he wrote or illustrated, including foreign editions. Some of the languages represented are Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, French Canadian, German, Afrikaans, and even Zulu. Original 
illustrations from books, as well as paintings and other art work spanning from his childhood years are included. The Collection also contains marketing items from his books, such as towels, porcelain jewelry containers, music boxes, paper goods (wrapping paper, cups & plates), quilts from schools, and a large selection of Christmas tree ornaments designed by Tomie for the Marshall Fields Christmas trees in Chicago.
Well done, Tomie!
–Terri J. Goldich, Curator, Northeast Children’s Literature Collection