“Boynton!” – The Sound of a Great Child’s Book
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Boynton! I’ve long thought that Sandra’s name made for a great sound effect.
Dinosnores, Sandra’s newest book, has a different sound effect.
And, while anytime is a good Boynton time,
The Atlantic takes this opportunity to profile Sandra.
“Where did you ever get such a crazy, scary idea for a book?” That’s the question the author and illustrator Maurice Sendak set out to answer in his 1964 Caldecott Medal acceptance speech, for Where the Wild Things Are…
Eight years later, as a Yale sophomore, Boynton applied to a children’s-literature seminar that Sendak taught there. A portfolio was required; she submitted a bestiary she had written and drawn in high school. She was accepted, so she figured Sendak must have liked it. Not so much. When the two met, Sendak dismissed the portfolio as “greeting-card art.” But that only emboldened her. “It occurred to me that making and selling my own greeting cards would be a much better summer job than the waitressing I’d done unhappily the previous summer,” she told me.
And that’s how it started.
Boynton obsesses over details. She pointed to the edges of a few board books nearby. They looked distinctly orange next to the white ones. “China,” she said disdainfully. Whenever possible, instead of printing offshore, she insists on using Terry Ortolani, who runs the only board-book printer left in the United States. He’s developed his own methods, including steps to ensure the thick pages don’t crack when folded and scored during the production process. But most of all, after 25 years of collaboration, he knows how to meet Boynton’s expectations.
While not as fun as Sandra’s books, the Ian Bogost profile is an entertaining and informative read.
For more Sandra Boynton fun, check in at her Facebook page where the images here were cribbed.
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