Saturday, May 19, 2012

Artist of the Month: Garth Williams

In keeping with our new tradition, we celebrated an artist's birthday in April. Garth Williams was a beloved children's book author, born on April 16th. This was another great way to incorporate all of our Charlotte's Web festivities- by studying the book's illustrator.

I found a few sources about Garth Williams including his publisher's page and the wiki page- not great for really important stuff, but just fine for what we wanted. I made some fact cards about him.

For our personal use, I made some prints of his book illustrations and laminated them.

I also made up some questions about him and placed those on a card.

On the library shelf I laid out some of the books he illustrated. This is a great place to "strew" some things you want kids to discover!

I couldn't resist another peek at our library shelf- which is home to our library books, our Fred collection that isn't being used and the horizontal books at the bottom are helping to press flowers. There are a few others we own on there too.

We've enjoyed getting to know Garth Williams since April. It'll be time to switch out to another artist. Right now I'm trying to picture where our library shelf will go in our new house (the one we don't have yet though our house is under contract!) and where the pencil tree will call home there. We might have to take a break on the artist tree displays until these items (and us!) find a new place to call home.

3 comments:

Mary Prather said...

I learned so much from your post, Heather.

First, I should have a small bookshelf JUST for library books -- my basket isn't cutting it recently. :-)

I also love the way you approach artist study! I think we will try to incorporate something like this next year.

We were learning about Falconry last week and I told my kids about your son, btw!

Heather said...

Mary I stalked the second hand shop for that bookshelf for a long, long time. Finally, the perfect one came a long and I didn't leave without it!

I was on my way to the grocery store too so uh...I was moving kids and putting seats down in the Odyssey AND stuffing groceries in around it all. Such a great find!

I highly encourage the library shelf. Baskets, bags, etc were of no use to us anymore!

Dana Leeds said...

I wasn't familiar with the name, Garth Williams, but I'm certainly familiar with his work! I love it, and it brought back such fond book memories. :-)

As I Googled his art work, I came across this post about an auction of his Charlotte Web's drawings last year. It includes the prices they sold for: http://hairygreeneyeball2.blogspot.com/2011/01/garth-williams-original-art-scans.html