{"id":19,"date":"2016-08-24T09:34:36","date_gmt":"2016-08-24T14:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/?p=19"},"modified":"2016-09-01T11:51:22","modified_gmt":"2016-09-01T16:51:22","slug":"the-golden-age-of-illustration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/24\/the-golden-age-of-illustration\/","title":{"rendered":"The Golden Age of Illustration"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I finally began writing my biography of Pete Seeger, one of my main decisions involved the story I would tell. I had roughly 15,000 words \u2014 and I could have written that much about any one year of Pete\u2019s life. In fact, I needed five drafts to craft a clean and uncluttered saga. In the end I decided not to dwell on Pete\u2019s music, which would be unknown by contemporary children, but focused instead on Pete as a social activist. After all he stood on the right side of history on unions, First Amendment rights, Civil Rights, and the Peace and Environmental movements.<\/p>\n

\"N.C.\"JamesIn analyzing narrative nonfiction, readers always need to ask what story an author has chosen to tell. Last week I read a fabulous new adult biography, Elizabeth and James Wallace\u2019s Garth Williams. <\/em>It now stands on my bookshelf alongside another superb biography, N.C. Wyeth <\/em>by David Michaelis.<\/em> If you love the golden age of illustration, both books contain abundant information. But the story they tell differs. Michaelis focuses on the psychology, almost family pathology, of Wyeth. Basically he puts Wyeth on a psychiatrist\u2019s couch for an in-depth analysis. But the Wallaces, who do mention some of the bizarre details of Garth Williams\u2019s life, don\u2019t dwell there. They explore his relationships with Laura Ingalls Wilder, E. B. White, and Margaret Wise Brown among others. They show letters between Williams and his editor Ursula Nordstrom. Even better \u2014 be still my beating heart \u2014 they provide contract and revenue details. Since I teach a course in the History of Children\u2019s Book Publishing at Simmons College, I cannot even begin to tell you how difficult, almost impossible, it is to locate that type of information. In short, I recommend both books. But the Garth Williams biography satisfied me more as a reader \u2014 because of the story the writers set out to tell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I finally began writing my biography of Pete Seeger, one of my main decisions involved the story I would tell. I had roughly 15,000 words \u2014 and I could have written that much about any one year of Pete\u2019s life. In fact, I needed five drafts to craft a clean and uncluttered saga. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"iawp_total_views":8,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pete-seeger"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/bk_ncwyeth.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7OPHQ-j","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":30,"url":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/01\/pete-seeger-videos\/","url_meta":{"origin":19,"position":0},"title":"Pete Seeger Videos","author":"Anita Silvey","date":"September 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"While writing Let Your Voice Be Heard: The Life and Times of Pete Seeger, I would often take a break and watch a video clip of Pete. His enthusiasm and his ability to engage an audience always inspired me. Of all the videos I viewed, I have returned to one\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Pete Seeger"","block_context":{"text":"Pete Seeger","link":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/category\/pete-seeger\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/0ZesRAo5PBghttps\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":47,"url":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/13\/pete-seeger-in-spain\/","url_meta":{"origin":19,"position":1},"title":"Pete Seeger in Spain","author":"Anita Silvey","date":"September 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"On Wednesday, September 14, at 6:30 p.m. at the Boston (MA) Public Library, the new recipient of the Associates of the Boston Public Library's Writer-in-Residency Fellowship, Lisa Rosinsky, will be reading from her novel Robin & Mariana. The Writer-in-Residency Program at the BPL bestows not only an office and research\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Pete Seeger"","block_context":{"text":"Pete Seeger","link":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/category\/pete-seeger\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"By Dan Tappan (originally posted to Flickr as p1190509.jpg) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Pete_Seeger11.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1,"url":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/18\/let-voice-be-heard\/","url_meta":{"origin":19,"position":2},"title":"Let Your Voice Be Heard","author":"Anita Silvey","date":"August 18, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In August a book that I had worked on for eight years, Let Your Voice Be Heard: The Life and Times of Pete Seeger finally became available to the world. With that length of research and writing time, most people would assume that as the author I managed to locate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Pete Seeger"","block_context":{"text":"Pete Seeger","link":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/category\/pete-seeger\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Let Your Voice Be Heard","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/bk_let-your-voice-be-heard-233x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anitasilvey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}