What I’m Doing at Kirkus This Week,
Plus What I Did Last Week,
Featuring Edwin Fotheringham and … well, the Wyeths

— Art from Barbara Kerley’s
A Home for Mr. Emerson, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham
(Click image to enlarge)
Andrew wouldn’t hold still. N.C. gave him the toy fire engine to hold, but he kept moving, so N.C. left the hands unfinished.”
— From Susan Goldman Rubin’s Everybody Paints!:
The Lives and Art of the Wyeth Family
(Click to enlarge spread)
This morning over at Kirkus, since Father’s Day is upon us, I write about some of my favorite picture books featuring fathers. That link is here.
Last week, I wrote here about two new biographies, Barbara Kerley’s A Home for Mr. Emerson (Scholastic, February 2014), illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham, and Susan Goldman Rubin’s Everybody Paints!: The Lives and Art of the Wyeth Family (Chronicle, February 2014).
Today, I’ve got a bit of art from the Emerson book, and Edwin is also sharing a few sketches and a few words below.
I’ve also got some spreads from the Wyeth biography. It turns out that (legally-speaking), I can post some art from the Wyeth book, if I include the spreads in their entirety. No problem. I’ll share them here. I’ve been a long-time fan of the art that has come from the Wyeth clan—my bookshelves groan under my collection of Wyeth books—and I hope you enjoy the spreads here today.
Until Sunday …
Edwin: The “Boy” series [below] is from the second spread in the book, and the “Woods” series is from the spread where Emerson dives into his books. Basically, what happened in these series shows how I flipped back and forth between metaphor and narrative realism in trying to breathe visual life into the story of the thinker, Emerson. It was a difficult task.

(Click to enlarge spread; please note that the colors as they appear here are a bit brighter than they appear in the illustration in the book)

his house, his mother, their cow, and his pony, Bud. …”
(Click to enlarge spread)
was happily pregnant again. But for the glowing face of Maid Marian,
he painted Carol’s portrait.”
(Click to enlarge spread)
he wrote to Andrew. ‘They represent the very best watercolors I ever saw!’
Andrew replied, ‘What you had to say about my watercolors means more to me than you know. You are the only person that really understands what I am after.'”
(Click to enlarge spread)
(Click to enlarge spread)
and found her sleeping,’ he said. …”
(Click to enlarge spread)
he found Jamie sitting and daydreaming, his arms clasped around his knees.
Faraway is a portrait of Jamie, age six, wearing his favorite
Davy Crockett coonskin hate and metal-tipped Civil War shoes.”
(Click to enlarge spread)
(Click to enlarge spread)
Illustrations from A HOME FOR MR. EMERSON copyright 2014, written by Barbara Kerley and illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham. Used with permission from Scholastic Press. The sketches are used with permission of Edwin Fotheringham.
EVERYBODY PAINTS!: THE LIVES AND ART OF THE WYETH FAMILY. Copyright © 2014 by Susan Goldman Rubin. Published by Chronicle Books, San Francisco. All spreads here reproduced by permission of the publisher.
Love the stories behind the portraits – what a lovely book.