A House by Kevin Henkes
September 7th, 2021 by jules
It was my pleasure to review for the Horn Book the latest picture book from Kevin Henkes. It’s called A House (Greenwillow, September 2021), and that review is here.
Here at 7-Imp today, Henkes shares some early sketches, as well as a few images that served as inspiration for this book. I thank him for sharing.
Kevin: The first/main inspiration for A House was seeing a reproduction of Paul Klee’s Three Houses (1922) in a magazine a couple years ago.
The other houses that I returned to throughout the development of the book [pictured below] were, clockwise from upper right:
- Maurice Sendak’s stable from Charlotte and the White Horse by Ruth Krauss (Harper and Brothers, 1955)
- Lois Lenski’s house in The Little Family (Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1932)
- The little house in the background of an illustration from Françoise’s The Thank-You Book (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947)
- Louis-Marie Cumont’s La Maison: Variation en quatre couleurs (Editions du Centre de Créations pour L’Enfance, 2004)
These are early house sketches (pencil and ballpoint pen):
Below are house sketches (watercolor and colored pencil):
And there are people and animal sketches (pencil and ballpoint pen):
A HOUSE. Copyright © 2021 by Kevin Henkes. Illustrations reproduced by permission of the publisher, Greenwillow Books, New York. All other images reproduced by permission of Kevin Henkes.
This is so lovely. I especially appreciate the inspiration images–although to me, the house is most reminiscent of Strega Nona’s!