The Illustrator Man

"There he is! There he is!" A throng of children and parents,
books in hand, bump each other exitedly and jockey for position to meet a
jovial middle-aged children's book illustrator with a gray-flecked
beard.

Why the throng around Richard Egielski here at this Lambertville,
New Jersey, gathering dujring National Children's Book Week? For
one thing, the crowd has already met his characters in the pages of his
22 picture books; now they're determined to pay homage to the
creator.

Egielski's got great personal appeal--he's comfortable doing
readings for kids or presentations for grown-ups--but the audience
really values his methods, his slightly eccentric creative process, and,
most of all, his talent for capturing life at its most engagingly
bizarre. For most of his career, Egielski illustrated children's books
written by other authors. His shining moment came in 1987 when he won the
distinguished Caldecott Medal for best picture book in the United
States with his illustrations for Hey, Al by Arthur Yorinks. "It was like
winning the Academy Award," the illustrator recalled. But in
recent years, he's branched out to doing the whole book, from start to finish.
"I wanted to illustrate my own ideas, and do books that were image
driven," says Egielski, sitting in his home studio in rural Holland
Township, New Jersey.

Take Buz for example, a New York Times Best Illustrated Children's
Book for 1995 and a candidate for Pennsylvania's "Easy Reader Book"
award. The book uses whimsy to explain disease processes that
kids find hard to understand. With a large human eye providing a fitting
backdrop, two red-and-white pill capsules, with features like
those of the Keystone Cops, shine a bright light on a terrifed green bug. Part

fantastic voyage, part humorous fantasy, Buz stands out from other

children's books on the shelves. So, too, Egielski's most recent book, a
strikingly original rendition of The Gingerbread Boy.

Egielski grew up in Queens, New York, but always had a fantasy
about living in the country, especially when he watched the old Andy Griffith
television show. "When I won the Caldecott Medal for Hey, Al, I
got my first substantial check, so I came out here and used it as a down
payment on my first house," he says. "I drew a two-hour circle
around New York City and we ended up in half a duplex in Milford, New
Jersey, and then in Holland Township."

The home Egielski now shares with his wife Denise Saldutti (also a

published children's book illustrator) and his son Ian is listed on the
Historical Homes Register and is far removed from the scene of his

upbringing. "My dad was a policeman and I went to a parochial school
that I hated because they used to beat us all the time," he says.

"My parents didn't want me to go to the local high school because they
thought it was full of riffraff. I ended up going to a specialty
school called the High School of Art and Design, which saved me." In his
studio, Egielski is surrounded by framed illustrations of his work, his
wife's, and that of their teacher, famed illustrator Maurice Sendak.
Egielski credits Sendak with helping him establish his mindset
regarding picture books. "Before I took Maurice's class I used to like to
do pictures in sequences, one image following another, but I didn't
know what to do with that," the illustrator remembers. "In Sendak's class at
Parson's School of Design in New York, we talked about the picture
book, and he helped me learn how to tell a story visually using a
combination of exciting images that make kids want to turn the
page when they see them."

Struggling with technique wasn't the only thing this artist had to
deal with. In his early years during the 1970s, Egielski shopped his work
around but became frustrated. Children's book publishers didn't
find his images conservative enough. "The children's book publishers
told me to go show my work to magazines, but when I brought my
pictures to the magazines they told me my stuff looked like picture books.
I was trapped," he says.

Without much work, the young illustrator was propelled into living
at an artists' cooperative called Westbeth, an old AT&T building at the
corner of West and Bethoon Streets in New York City that was
converted into low rent apartments. "You sort of put everything on hold except
for paying your bills and feed yourself," he recalled. "I bought
as little clothing as I could, and I didn't go to the dentist for a couple
of years. It was tough but it was worth it. I was willing to take the chance."

Now the illustrator chooses to focus on the high points of his
career, such as Louis the Fish, also written by Arthur Yorinks. The book was
named one of the Best Books of 1990 by School Library Journal, and

eventually, the television show Reading Rainbow picked it up. "That
was a real break for us," says Egielski.

Egielski's work has garnered many awards, and it's clear
determination is the key to his success. Around the studio, several books are
scattered in various stages of development. Egielski spends many
hours meticulously going over his drawings, fine-tuning them into
colorful, action-packed scenes. When he needs a break, he plays
Beatles songs on his antique mandolin, jokes with his son, races
around his kitchen cooking a new recipe, or explores country
roadways on his bicycle. But mostly he works, creating unique pictures using
an opaque type of water color called gouache, and egg tempera--a
mixture of real egg yolks and paint pigments.

Considered fine art by collectors, Egielski's books, inspired by
his childhood love of comics, science fiction, and books like The Hobbit,
continue to engage. "Fantasy has a lot of visual potential and
kids like to fantasize," he says. Humor plays a big part in Egielski's work
too, as does irony. His comic images veer from the hilarious to the
poignant--as in The Tub People, where a forlorn tub toy stares up through a
prison-like grate, hoping his family will rescue him. Some
children's book illustrators and authors try to impart some lofty moral message
to kids. Egielski feels differently. "Teaching kids to read,
that's not enough? If you can do something that's fun enough to get a kid to
want to read it, that's all the teaching you need to do." Egielski's
work fulfills a single premise: If children realize books are fun, they'll want
to open them up, gaze at the pictures, and, eventually, move to the
words.

Recently there's been talk at the Egielski household about
Richard's work ending up on CD-Rom and kid's television programs like
Nickelodeon, but the artist doesn't much care about these newer
media.

"When someone is reading a book to you, or to a child," explains
Denise Saldutti, Richard's wife, "there's the closeness, the
bonding, a relationship that I don't think can ever be replaced."

It's in the heart of that bond that Egielski makes his lasting contribution.