I Sit You Down And Force You To Look At My Favourite Books From When I Was 5
What my mum would call "early influences" because she takes me too seriously
Last Friday, an Amazon package arrived at my house. A rare occurrence because I try never to give Bezos my money but this was a special circumstance. For a few years now, I’d been trying to track down a book that I loved as a child but unfortunately had a super generic title. It was also a collection of a few short stories so googling the plot of the book wasn’t yielding much. I think I was three or four pages deep in a Google image search that was a loooong description of everything I remembered about the first story and one of the characters when the cover of the book popped up. I’m frustrated that I don’t remember exactly how I found it because it was almost 3 years ago. The book popped back into my head again earlier this month and once again I couldn’t remember the name. I’d sent my mum a link to the book on Amazon when I originally found it in 2020 but I hadn’t backed up the chat and neither did she so the link was lost! Luckily, past-Tara had my back. I’d posted on this amazing website called StumpABookseller (look it up), received no response, and then gone back to comment on my own post when I eventually found it. I do not remember what combination of words made Google throw up the correct name the first time around. This time, having forgotten about my previous StumpABookseller post, I went back to the website and was of course immediately shown the post that I’d made and commented on. Phew. Anyway, I ordered it on Amazon immediately, not willing to risk being enslaved to the intrusive thought of a half-remembered childhood artifact again.
Anyway, Last Friday, my boyfriend Shantanu and I had just come back from hanging out with some friends when I saw the Amazon package and knew exactly what it was. I called up my parents: my dad lost interest and quickly irish-exited the three-person Facetime call but my mum was as thrilled as I was! She went off to find a couple of other books we loved when I was a kid to send me pictures of the illustrations we both remembered. Buoyed by the excitement of my shiny new (old) book I pulled out all the images my mum sent and a couple of kids’ books I’d had the foresight to bring with me when I came to NYC for college and sat my boyfriend down (this has to have been around 11:30 or midnight) and gave him a version of what you’re about to see in this newsletter: a collection of illustrations that I poured over as a kid and live as perfectly remembered pictures in my head even now.
Read With Me Stories by Terry Dinning, Illustrator: Angela Kincaid
Okay despite being the subject of my 3 year long search, the illustrations in this book aren’t super distinctive. I don’t think I gravitated towards this kind of classic, animal protagonist, cozy kids-book-illustration in general but they are so lush and joyful! Angela Kincaid the illustrator is better known for The Butterfly Children which is a little too cutesy for my taste. She’s also done comics/graphic novels for grown-ups (we love a versatile illustrator here at taraanandart dot substack dot com)
Ekki Dokki By Sandhya Rao Illustrations by Ranjan De
We’re swinging straight into the absolute most distinctive illustrated book I’ve ever seen. This book generally lives perfectly preserved in my brain (I can recite it) and I think of it every time I wash my hair (so 3 times a week at minimum). The story is about two sisters, Ekki and Dokki who have one hair and 2 hairs respectively. As an adult, I immediately see the problem with needing to somehow draw two kids with this odd hair situation and make it look natural. The geometric language that governs the character design in Ekki Dokki is such a clever solution. I absolutely love the weird charming illustrations and now recognize the spots as space for the illustrator to show us some sophisticated drawing. (images from google)
Robi Dobi - Madhur Jaffrey, illustrated by Amanda Hall
A wild story with an ensemble cast of animals who all come with crazy baggage and team up to help their rat friend who’s been dyed orange. The illustrations are crazy lush and the illustrator shares my love for bright and indulgent colour stories (or did I simply absorb her taste?). The panthers in particular with their silky purple highlight have stayed with me.
Sheila Beckett’s ‘12 Dancing Princesses’ (The Little Golden Book Library)
If I had to come up with a college-essay style “the moment I realized I wanted to be an illustrator” story, It would involve Sheila Beckett’s illustrations from my mum’s old Little Golden Library. I already had an interest in both drawing and storytelling but I think Sheila Beckett’s delicious art for this was the first time I looked at an image and thought “Oh, you can make a shape look like this? You can make lines look like this? You can do this with pattern? With colour?” I can see the DNA of my deep deep love for Sheila Beckett in my appreciation of Tincan Forest + recently discovered Elenor Abbott
(Images are from Google for this one because the volume containing this story has gone missing from our bookshelf)
Yum.
Bullshit you don’t wash your hair 3 times a week
Absolutely loved reading this! Finding your favorite children’s books as a kid is like a treasure hunt and it’s fascinating to think about how those influences might have shaped you as an artist!