Cherries and Cherry Pits

Vera B. Williams is the creator of many distinguished books and was the U.S. Illustrator Nominee for the 2004 Hans Christian Andersen Award. She lives in New York City.

In Her Own Words...

"Throughout my childhood I was encouraged to make pictures, tell stories, act, and dance-all of this at a heaven in our New York City neighborhood called the Bronx House.

"On Saturdays I painted with a crusading art director, Florence Cane. In her book The Growth of the Child Through Art, I appear under the name Linda. I was sixteen when the book appeared and embarrassed by it. But at age nine I had been totally proud when a painting of mine was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and I was later shown in the Movietone News explaining to Eleanor Roosevelt its Yiddish title, "Yentas."

"In 1945 I went to Black Mountain College in North Carolina, a unique educational community. I graduated in 1949 in graphic art, which I studied with Josef Albers. Along the way I planted corn, made butter, worked on the printing press, and helped to build the house in which I lived with Paul Williams, a fellow student I married there.

"I wanted that connection of art and community to continue. And it did at the Gate Hill Cooperative, a community we built with other Black Mountain people-a poet, musicians, and potters. I lived and worked there from 1953-1970 (after which I moved to Canada). My children (Sarah, Jenny, and Merce) grew up there. For them, we branched out into a school, part of the Surnmerhill movement. The gingerbread houses that led to my first book for Greenwillow I first made in sticky variety at our school. I have always liked to teach, and have taught art, cooking, writing, and nature study, for nursery age on.

"At forty-six, no longer married, living in a houseboat on the bay at Vancouver, British Columbia, I did my first book. But before that could happen, the fates decreed a stint of cooking and running a bakery at a small school in the Ontario countryside. My love affair with Canada included also a 500-mile trip on the Yukon River. Many of those adventures I put in Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe.

"I also write and draw for adults-short stories, leaflets, and posters. As a lover of children, I try to do what I can to help save their earth from nuclear disaster. This pursuit, too, has added its excitement to my biography, including, in 1981, a month's stay in the federal penitentiary in Alderson, West Virginia (an outcome of a women's peaceful blockade of the Pentagon). Perhaps this experience will some day appear in one of my books. So far I've found children's books a wonderfully accommodating medium where any of my various activities might pop up."

Kindergarten-Grade 2 Bidemmi, a young black child, draws splendid pictures. "As she draws, she tells the story of what she is drawing," always starting with the word "this." Bidemmi's brightly colored words and pictures introduce children to the man with the nice face that's dark brown; to the tiny, white, grandmotherly lady; and to the tall boy who is much like Bidemmi's own brother. Finally, Bidemmi tells her story, revealing her wish for her neighborhood and her world. Each story involves cherriesbuying, sharing, and enjoying them. The man with the nice face shares them with his children, the tiny lady with her parrot, the tall boy with his little sister. Bidemmi will eat her cherries and then plant the pits, nourish them, watch them grow, and share the fruit with people from all over the neighborhood. Williams uses a first-person narrator to tie these tales together. Very different styles of illustration further define who is speaking. Soft, beautifully-crafted watercolors depict Bidemmi as the narrator speaks. As Bidemmi herself tells her stories, fresh, child-like, highly detailed illustrations done in lustrous colored markers are used. Well formated text and illustrations complement, enhance, and extend each other. All together, this is a fresh and imaginative book which exudes a respect for and understanding of children. Maria B. Salvadore, District of Columbia Public Library
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.