Once upon a time, long before the development of Photoshop, Tomie would send his completed illustrations to the publisher and the publisher would return an illustration to Tomie if a correction/adjustment was needed. That was the case when Tomie sent completed work to Holiday House and it was observed that a hand had six fingers in an illustration. After that incident, for decades, I would carefully review his drawings by counting fingers and toes. This “Hello, Tomie” drawing was at the bottom of a note Tomie was going to send to someone in November. I loved it, scanned it before mailing, and used it to surprise him with note cards. The printing process was too far along to pause when I realized the raised hand had six fingers. He told a teacher in elementary school, “I’m not going to be an arithmetic-er.” Nor I, I guess. (Bob)
Day Two of the June, 2020, Peace Novena
Think and say the word, or think and say “Peace.”
REMEMBERING TOMIE on June 2, 2020
This photo of Matthew, a first grader, was taken at the Opening Reception of an exhibition of Tomie’s artwork in 2009 at Elissa Della-Piana’s gallery in Wenham, MA. I believe Matthew was thinking what I imagined thousands of children, at autographings during a fifty-plus years career, were thinking. I stood in line to get a book. I don’t know why this man wrote in it. Smile. I’m always ready for a photograph. That was cool. Say thank you and goodbye. (Bob)
Day One of the June, 2020, Peace Novena
Think and say “Peace.”
REMEMBERING TOMIE on June 1, 2020
Roger Sutton, Editor in Chief of THE HORN BOOK MAGAZINE, wrote: “…You can’t tell the gender of the child created by Tomie dePaola - himself one of children’s literature’s most felicitous philosophers of what it means to be a boy or a girl - for our cover, and that’s on purpose. Reading allows us to independently and privately assume whatever (not whichever) gender we like, to see how it looks from a different side. Remember the old man in Mordicai Gerstein’s THE MOUNTAINS OF TIBET? When allowed to decide what kind of life he wanted for his next incarnation, he chose the one he just had - with only the revision of his gender, a difference at once small and profound…” (Bob)
