PASS IT DOWN

Children’s literature scholar Marcus is back with a fascinating portrait of five families who have achieved success in their picture-book endeavors. His intelligent introduction explains that offspring inherit not only traits like eye and hair color but talent in such areas as music and art. Nina Crews, Thatcher Hurd, Christopher Myers, Brian Pinkney and Lizzy Rockwell had their gifts nurtured from an early age by their like-minded parents. The contrast between the experiences of these children and that of their struggling elders is compelling: Walter Dean Myers and Anne Rockwell were foster children; Clement Hurd rebelled against his high-society clan; the working class dads of Donald Crews and Jerry Pinkney focused on making a living, not their son’s aspirations. Interspersed with quotations from the subjects, the text is lavishly illustrated with letters, family photographs and portraits of the artists at work, sketches, storyboard studies and finished artwork. Written in an engaging style with clarity and immediacy, this doubles as an accessible primer on the art of penning and visualizing picture books. Filled with intriguing tidbits, this is an outstanding work about the connections between parents and children, editors and artists and readers and writers. (photo credits, selective bibliography, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 9-13)