2009-08-12

U.S.A. - Brattleboro-Vermont - Beth Krommes: The Poetry of Lines


The old saying is that “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” but with such a renaissance in children’s picture books in the last twenty-five years, a cover may well be a primary incentive to choose one book over another. A cover illustration by Beth Krommes offers a compelling reason for children, and adults, to choose a book—and to open it, read it, and examine the pictures. Good illustrations like hers keep the young listener attentive, seeing the tale unfold visually while an older reader tells the story.
Since 1989, Krommes has been a freelance illustrator, creating wood engravings and her signature scratchboard drawings for magazines and picture books. Her latest book, The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson, published by Houghton Mifflin in 2008, was awarded the 2009 Randolph Caldecott Medal for Best Illustrated Children’s Book. The artist’s other illustrated books are Grandmother Winter, by Phyllis Root (1999); The Lamp, the Ice, and the Boat Called Fish, by Jacqueline Briggs Martin (2001); The Hidden Folk, by Lise Lunge-Larsen (2004); and Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow, by Joyce Sidman (2006), all published by Houghton Mifflin; and The Sun in Me: Poems About the Planet, compiled by Judith Nicholls and published by Barefoot Books (2003).


Brattleboro Museum & Art Center - 07.08.2009-08.11.2009