Monday, April 4, 2011

C is for Donald Crews

Born: 1938

Excellent Books:   Freight Train, Truck, Big Mamas, Shortcut, and more.  Freight Train and Truck were both Caldecott winners.

From His Life:  As a child Donald lived in New Jersey and would often take a train trip during the summer with his siblings to visit his grandma in Florida.  These trips later inspired Big Mamas and Shortcut.  Donald is an artist who illustrates his own books and often draws himself in them.

Advice for Aspiring Writers:  I love Donald's attitude about starting a new project immediately after finishing another one.  He said, "It's more than a year before you're going to know whether or not you've got something that's generally popular on your hands. The book has to be printed, it has to be sold, it has to get into the stores. People have to review it. People have to look at it. So it's a good long time. You can't wait for all that to happen until you start doing the next project." (quote from article by George Bodmer)

Websitehttp://www.harpercollins.com/authors/16149/Donald_Crews/index.aspx 

8 comments:

D. U. Okonkwo said...

Very, very cool.

Cathy said...

Hi, Excellent idea for the A to Z challenge. Nice to meet and follow a fellow writer, and as a children's librarian who does 5 storytimes each week, I love that you're featuring (so far) picture book authors.

Corey Schwartz said...

More than a year? ha! In today's PB world, it is like more than five years!

Kenda Turner said...

Enjoying your A to Z posts--thanks for introducing authors/illustrators I'm not familiar with. Need to check out Donald Crew's books for the little ones of the family I love to read to!

Laura S. said...

Love his advice! I always make sure I'm working on something else as soon as I submit a story.

Carla said...

Thanks, DU!

Hi Catherine, All 26 will be picture book authors! I'm having so much fun with it!

Corey, That's amazing. It makes me wonder if there's any other industry (besides publishing) where the processing time is so long.

Thanks Kenda! He's an inspiring man.

Laura, it just makes sense to keep working...especially when the turn-around time is so long!

Carla

Dawn M. Hamsher said...

Freight Train is a great book! One of my daughter's favorites. We recently passed it on to a little boy who was in the hospital for a week. His mother said he read it day and night while in there. :0)

Carla said...

Dawn, that's awesome. I'm impressed that your daughter could pass on a favorite!

Carla

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