Avisson Press -- tpbGreensboro, NC -- ©2004 -- 176pp
ISBN: 1-888105-68-2
personalized autograph by Claudette Hegel
A biography of artist/illustrator Randolph Caldecott, with a fair number of his drawings.
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I know Claudette, which is why I have this book. I might have picked this up at a library, or used even if I didn't know the author because I have been interested in knowing more about the man for whom a popular children's book award is named.
I definitely learned a few things about Caldecott, but I was not impressed with the book itself.
At first I had the feeling that the author was talking down to me. It did occur to me that perhaps this book was written for a young reader, but I wasn't certain then, and still am not.
I was also not particularly pleased with the set-up for this book. The chapters were not sequential with his life, but rather chapters touched on a particular aspect of the artists life/career (ie, one chapter about his health, one about his work life before he illustrated full time, one about his hobbies and interests, etc). The result of this kind of set up was that when one chapter ended i was expecting the next one to pick up there, but instead it would back-track, sometimes a great deal. I never quitre got used to this, and in some cases I felt that I heard about a particular incident more than once.
Probably not a lot of books available about this artist, and for that it's worth the read, but it probably holds interest to a very limited number of readers.
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