I have been thinking a lot about books lately, and Children's books in particular. I decided to go on a trip back in time to share my absolute favorite growing up. It is interesting just how much we connected with these books even if they popular or not. I just loved them. I would look at them over and over. They were precious to me. Here are some of my favorites:

I love the simple drawings of this book...more here

This encouraged me to wanna draw everywhere.

Strangely enough I always wanted this one but my mom never bought it for me.

I wanted to be that doll.

Miss Suzy was just so cool.

This was one of my all time favorites...I love, love, love the drawings

Who didn't want to be Madeline?

Super fun, color and craziness

This makes me so sad, then happy.

This was always a favorite.

It is amazing how floods of memories hit when I look these. My God, I'm sappy. I don't have kids so I can't really live vicariously through their books. I wonder if kids still have that same kind of bond with...or maybe I was just weird. I suppose that is why I became a illustrator.

What kids books were your favorites?

It is really funny to me that some of the darkest and scariest stuff for children was done a over a hundred years ago. I guess the world was a more dangerous place and these folktales were used to keep the kids in their place. One of my next projects is to do a few illustration from the Brothers Grim. I love their work and it just blows me away how twisted their minds were. Even though most of the tales are pretty short there is a lot to be told between the words.

As an inspiration I have been looking at a lot of the illustration that goes along with these stories. My favorite illustrator of creepyness? Arthur Rackham. Although he was born over 100 years before me, it is amazing how much I feel connected to him and his art. Arthur is a huge inspiration in my life. I'm hoping that I too can get to the dark world that he comes from.

If you don't know him, here are a few examples of his work: