Any teacher in the arts and sciences has to maintain a sense of childlikeness to be truly inventive. Chris Raschka More Quotes by Chris Raschka More Quotes From Chris Raschka I always try to treat the book itself as the artwork. I don't want you to stop while you're reading one of my books and say, 'Oh! What a gorgeous illustration!' I want you to stop at the end of the book and say, 'This is a good book. Chris Raschka illustration reading book You are all perfectly correct in your implications that we would be safer if we stayed home in our rooms...But we would also be duller, stupider, and, finally, sadder. If you want to avoid danger, don't get born. Once you are born, make something of it! Chris Raschka would-be want home My goal is to create a book where the entire book-text, pictures, shape of book-work together to create the theme. The placement of images and text on the page is crucial for me. Chris Raschka goal together book Openness is something any teacher strives to instill in his or her students. Chris Raschka her something students teacher To learn to ride a bicycle, as with the other great noble human inventions, is a hugely complex activity. Generally, it requires three things: the learner, the teacher and the bicycle, all in the same place at the same time, most often outside someplace. Chris Raschka ride great time teacher Part of why I like watercolor is that mistakes are visible, and you can't really repair much. It has to look easy. When it comes out, it looks easy, but to get to that point takes a lot of doing. Chris Raschka mistakes look you easy Usually, a number of events will be going on around me to start me on a book. What I mean is, I will have read a poem or seen a picture that is lingering in my mind. Chris Raschka picture me mind book Whatever I'm thinking about has got to fit into thirty-two pages, the standard picture book size. So that's something. But the structure and the form for me are almost the most important, because these will express as much as words and images will the content of the work. Chris Raschka words me work thinking Somewhere in this process, I begin reading and showing my book to my audience. When I say my audience, I mean a single imaginary child who is a blend of myself as a young person, the students in my wife's classroom of first- through third-graders, and the students from two classrooms I visit regularly in the Bronx, New York. Chris Raschka child myself wife book Sometimes I worry about the amount of paper I waste. Chris Raschka waste paper worry sometimes Whether it's music, loss of something, loneliness or friendship - if that emotion is heightened in some way and painted to fit in between the covers of 32 pages, that can become a picture book. Chris Raschka picture music loneliness friendship With any book, I try to find where the manner of the making of the book is appropriate to the matter of the subject. Chris Raschka find try matter book When I present the Charlie Parker book, I do a call and response that works quite well. With the Thelonious Monk book, I play the music and work with kids in a group to create a color wheel and show how the wheel can be mapped on a 12-tone chromatic scale. Chris Raschka music color work book There has to be the right pacing of images to tell the story. I'm always stunned at how little you can put in. Chris Raschka story tell you always I never quite know if what I do will be understood. Chris Raschka will never know understood The Caldecott Award has allowed me to keep doing what I'm doing for some time longer, for which I am ever grateful. Chris Raschka i-am me grateful time It will always take a certain audacity to write or to make art of any kind. Chris Raschka write will always art Hand any four-year-old a fist full of crayons, and it is a very, very few who don't get busy with them, drawing, coloring, scribbling. I have not stopped scribbling. Chris Raschka hand who drawing busy For the continued survival of our planet and humanity, it is crucial that certain discoveries and skills and inventions made by people over the years be passed on from one human generation to the next, from one person, face-to-face, to another. Chris Raschka generation survival humanity people Can you really learn to knit from a diagram? Try it. Do you want to learn to ski or surf by yourself? You could drown or run into a tree. Chris Raschka yourself try you tree
