Hi, I'm Mark Brown. I write and illustrate the Arthur books and do the Arthur show on
television, so maybe you've read some of my books or watched some of my programs on television.
I'm really excited today because I don't often get to invite people
into my studio where I work, where I make all of these things. And this is where I work!
Today I have a special book I'd like to read in a while for you, and it's- it's about animals.
Um, but I'd like to talk a little bit about the process of how I make the art that you see
in your books. Well, for instance, let's take Arthur. Would you like to see me draw Arthur for you?
He's very easy to draw. In fact, I'm going to share the secret formula.
Okay, you ready? If you have a piece of paper and a pencil, you might want to try this.
I'm sure you'll remember it, it's pretty easy. Okay, we're going to make two circles or
letter O's, and hook them together like that. Can you guess what that's going to be?
And then we're going to make a large U-shape below the two O's, like that.
And then we're going to make another smaller U.
Two dots there for his nostrils, and two dots here for- what are those? ... You're right, his eyes!
Okay, now he looks a little bit like a frog, so I think we better fix that. Let's put an upside down
U over the two letter O's for the top of his head. Two lines for his... eyebrows! You were right.
And now this is kind of a funny part. I think of his ears as two ping-pong paddles, because the
first time I drew Arthur from my son, when it was just a bedtime story, before it became a book or a
TV show, I was drawing his ears and my son said, "Dad those look like ping-pong paddles!" I think they do.
Okay, let's put the other ear on, and if you want to give him a t-shirt, you make some little squiggles
down there under his chin, like that. But that's how you draw Arthur. So you're probably wondering:
What the art looked like in this book? I happen to have the real art that went into the book.
Now this is a book about a librarian who drives into the zoo by mistake.
And I'm not going to tell you too much more, because I want you to be surprised when we
read the book, but her name is Molly McGrew and there she is with her books and her bookmobile.
And the animals seem to be looking at books too, don't they? Now the art for this book
was done on wooden panels that I gessoed. It's a white paint that I painted the wood
with so that my paint stuck to the white paint. And I used a special kind of
paint, which- I need this big carrier. You can see all these little tubes. It's called gouache and
I keep one compartment for oranges, one compartment for reds, a compartment here for greens,
blues, that way I can find the colors I need easily. I use a lot of white paint too and a lot of black
paint, and those that's why those are larger tubes. So would you like to read the book now?
It's called Wild About Books. That's a good thing, right? I hope we're all Wild About Books, we love
books! We love reading! And Judy Sierra is the author, I've worked on a few other books with her.
She is really talented author and she writes the books in poems, so they rhyme and that makes it a
lot of fun to read aloud. This is one of my favorite books to read aloud when I go out
and I speak to maybe teachers or kids at a school. And the book is called Wild About Books and it was
a gift to Dr. Seuss and all of the wonderful things he gave us, the many wonderful books he gave us.
And this was published on his what would have been his 100th birthday.
Here we go! Oh, this was a fun piece of art to draw. I did the town and you can see Molly's
bookmobile there. She's driving and where is she going? Looks like she's driving into the zoo.
[Reading] It started the summer of 2002, when the Springfield librarian, Molly McGrew,
by mistake drove her bookmobile into the zoo. Molly opened the door
and she let down the stair, turned on the computer and sat in her chair. At first, all the animals
watched from a distance, but Molly could conquer the strongest resistance.
(Look at there, she is- she's sitting in her chair. Look at her bookmobile, doors are open and she has
all those books in there. The animals are looking out the window of the zoo to see what's going on.)
By reading aloud from the good Dr. Seuss, she quickly attracted a mink and a moose,
a wombat and oryx, a lemur, a lynx, eight elephant calves,
(they're the blue ones we looked at before) and a family of skinks. (Oh
let's see what happens now the animals are curious.)
In a flash, every beast in the zoo was stampeding, to learn all about this new something called
reading.
Forsaking their niches, their nests and their nooks, they went wild- simply wild! About
wonderful books. Choosing thin books and fat books and Cat in the Hat books,
and new books and true books and heaps of how-to books.
(She has books for everybody. Lots of books for lots of readers.)
Giraffes wanted tall books and crickets craved small books. Well, geckos could
only read stick-to-the-wall books. The pandas demanded more books in Chinese.
Molly filled their requests, always easier eager to please.
She even found waterproof books for the otter, who never went swimming without Harry Potter.
Raccoons read alone and baboons read in bunches, and llamas read dramas while eating their lunches.
(I wonder what's in those bowls? It looks like salad.)
(They're probably vegetarians, I think. And there are the raccoons up in the tree, they found cozy spots
to read.) Hyenas shared jokes with the red-bellied snakes,
and they howled and they hissed till their funny bones ached. (There's a hyena laughing.)
(Oh, and there's the red-bellied snake hissing. There's another hyena looking at the book, reading it.)
(That was fun, look at all the little dots. I wanted to make sort of a sand, gravelly texture.)
(Each one of those dots was put on by a small paintbrush. It took me a little while, but it was fun.)
(Oh, this is my favorite picture in the whole book.) A tree kangaroo, who adored Nancy Drew, began
solving mysteries right there at the zoo, such as why were the bandicoots books overdue? (Can you see?)
(Why do you think the bandicoot- oh, looks like she made a little house out of her books.)
(She better get them back to the library before they're overdue. Right, oh, this is important.)
Gently, Molly taught lessons in treating books right, for the boa constrictor squeezed
Crictor too tight. (Uh oh.) Baby bunnies mucked up Good Night, Moon with their paws,
and the termites devoured The Wizard of Oz. (Ahh! Look it, they're eating the whole book!)
(Somebody stop them! This is my second favorite picture in the whole book.) And bear's
love of books was completely outrageous. They licked all the pictures right off of the pages!
(Those bears, they're completely out of control.)
Tasmanian devils found books so exciting, that soon they had given up fighting
for writing. They made up adventures so thrilling and new that the others decided to be authors too.
Pythons wrote with their tails, penguins wrote with their bills, and porcupines wrote with
their very own quills. (That was clever of them. Look at the penguins, they're busy writing away.)
At the new insect zoo, bugs were scribbling haiku.
The scorpion gave each a stinging review. (Uh oh, look at all the haiku they're writing.)
(Should we read one of those? Let's try reading one of- here is the...)
(walking stick? "A cannibal twig silently devours a leaf.)
(Eating, not eating- not eaten." And the scorpion reviewer says, "Pretentious.")
As the cheetah's new novel began to take shape, he read chapters each night from the Barbary ape.
And although the gazelle couldn't spell very well, like everyone else she had stories to tell.
Imagine the hippo's enormous surprise when her memoir was given the Zoolitzer surprise.
(She looks very happy.)
(The title of her memoir is, "Mud in my Blood.")
(Oh, there's some activity going on here. Let's see what's happening.) With so many new books, Molly knew
what to do. She hired twelve beavers, a stork, and a gnu, to build a branch library right there at the zoo.
Then the animals cried, "We could do it ourselves! We can check out the books. We can put them on
shelves." And they did and they do, to this very day. So three cheers for the Zooberry! Hip hip hooray!
When you visit the zoo now, you surely won't mind
if the animals seem just a bit hard to find. They are snug in their niches,
their nests, and their nooks, going wild- simply wild!- about wonderful books. [stops reading] Did you like that story?
So that is Wild About Books, and one of the things we like to do here at the Metropolitan Museum
is to connect the books that we read to you to a piece of art in the museum.
And so I got to look at a lot of art with animals in it and think about which one
I liked the most. It's an unusual piece and it's- uh, has two things that really
are near and dear to my heart. Uh, it's a book for children and the artwork in it is, uh, is old and
this book has pictures of animals and it was used in Japan back in, I think, the 17 or 1800s to teach
English to kids who wanted to learn a new language. So thank you for visiting me today in my studio.
It was a pleasure to have you as a guest and I hope to see you again.
Bye!