We will practice looking deeply at picture books crafted for young children—including illustrations and book design, language and narratives. Each class will focus on the works of a single author or author-illustrator, beginning with some who are widely known (such as Margaret Wise Brown or Maurice Sendak), and then on to others just as exciting to encounter but less well known (such as Mordicai Gerstein).

This will be a highly participatory course. Class members will be encouraged to visit their local libraries, bring in their own ideas about works by the selected authors and, at times, show some pictures and read a few pages aloud over Zoom.

By the time we finish, I hope that class members will agree with me that the creators of superlative picture books deserve to be held in the same esteem as great painters, playwrights, and novelists. We should be reading them all our lives, not just when there are young ones around.

Dale Borman Fink, PhD retired as full professor in 2020 from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, MA, where he taught courses related to early childhood education, special education, and children’s literature. 

Fink earned his BA from Harvard College, MEd from Antioch University, and PhD from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.  Among his books are Making a Place for Kids with Disabilities (2000) and a children’s book, Mr. Silver and Mrs. Gold (1980).  To see some creative projects in which Fink has been involved in recent years, visit his YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/user/dalefink.

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