"As a young artist, I could never find paper big enough to draw what I wanted to draw," said Don Wood. What remarkable things have happened to this artist since he actually left paper and turned to the computer for his creations! His wife, Audrey, has stretched her storytelling further than even she could imagine when her first text was illustrated by her husband.
The story of Audrey and Don Wood is a publishing success story. While they both have artistic talents, their backgrounds are quite different. Audrey was born in Arkansas, comes from a long line of artists and has studied and taught drama and art. Her hobby is sculpting life-size papier-mache figures.Don had been a logger and sailmaker before studying art at the California College of Arts and Crafts. He has done painting for Shelley Duvall's popular Faerie Tale Theatre.
The Woods collaborated on several books for children, including "King Bidgood's in the Bathtub" (an American Library Association Notable Book), "Heckedy Peg" (winner of the Irma Simonton Black Award and the Christopher Award), and "Elbert's Bad Word" (an International Reading As-so-cia-tion/
Children's Book Council Choice Award). Their "The Napping House" received the 1984 Golden Kite Award for the best picture-illustration from the Society of Children's Book Writers and was chosen as an International Reading Association Children's Choice, a National Council of Teachers of English Teachers' Choice Award and one of the New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Children's Books.
While the world has watched, the Woods' careers have unfolded with new projects into a diversity of styles. Five of their new books are representative of what these artist/writers have been doing, which includes collaboration with other artists and the use of the computer as a medium.
"The Bunyans" by Audrey Wood was illustrated by David Shannon of Scholastic. We have all heard of the American legend of the man who owned Babe, the Blue Ox, and who was bigger than trees. Audrey Wood has expanded that tall tale to include Paul Bunyan's marriage, his children and the beginnings of Niagara Falls, the Rocky Mountains and Old Faithful. Particularly humorous is how Bryce Canyon was started by the son who was in a sand box!
The far-fetched tale will delight young listeners and the stunning paintings are bigger than life. Certainly a fun read-aloud.
In another text written by Audrey Wood, "The Flying Dragon Room" (Scholastic), Mark Teague has expanded the story with fantastically illustrated animals and details to amuse children. This is a story of a bored child who creates an astounding world - every child's dream come true - without grownup help.
In "The Rainbow Bridge" (Harcourt Brace & Co.) Audrey Wood's text again has been illustrated by someone other than her husband. Robert Florczak's dramatic paintings bring to life the beauty of the Chumash people (those who live where the heavens touch the sea), their culture and the environment.
This book, carefully researched by both author and illustrator, portrays the legends that have been passed down for generations in the Spanish culture.
"The Red Racer" (Simon and Schuster), a creation of Audrey Wood, and "Bright and Early Thursday Evening" (Harcourt Brace & Co.) "dreamed" by Audrey Wood and "imagined" by Don Wood, are the newest ventures for this husband-and-wife team. "The Red Racer" is a story of a girl who yearns for a new red bicycle and does everything in her power to get rid of her ugly old one. Nearly too late she learns the beauty of her old bike. Like the Woods' "Elbert's Bad Word," children will see the underlying message and moral in the story.
"Bright and Early Thursday Evening" is laden with oxymorons that at first glance don't make much sense. (In reality, at second glance they don't either!) But a reader who recalls the rhythm and word games fabricated by Lewis Carroll will suddenly realize there is a paradox in things like a noble red rooster that lays an egg and someone who wakes up to go to their own funeral. There's a lot of fun here for the searching.
These two books are directly linked to their son, Bruce, who influenced their work by being recipient of bedtime stories every night, but now became instrumental in a larger way. The parents tell it like this: "Since Bruce was a child, he has been interested in computers, but for years he couldn't get me near one . . . he literally forced me to sit down, insisting that an artist could find magic there. . . . He was right."
For two years, Don Wood experimented and researched computer art. It took two-and-a-half more years to complete his first illustrated book. That was the tangled tale "Bright and Early Thursday Evening."
Don is exuberant about this new media: "I was certain that the computer would be cold and mechanical, but it wasn't . . . it felt so natural to me that it was just like another brush . . . a different kind of paint . . . my illustrations are very `handmade.' It took as long to paint the digital illustrations . . . as it did to make the oil paintings with 15 layers of glaze for `Heckedy Peg.' "
Audrey Wood's experience with the computer was similar. "One evening, Bruce challenged me to draw a picture on his computer. I sat down convinced I would hate it . . . I didn't get up out of his chair until 3 a.m."
So the talented writing and illustrating team go forward. With the kind of energy and inventiveness, who can tell where it will lead them!