Library of Congress | 23,831 (27,364) | 954 | 770 | (4.04) | 16 | 0 | Jack Prelutsky, born on September 8, 1940 in Brooklyn, New York, is primarily known as a poet for children but he is also a gifted musician, actor, photographer, sculptor and potter. Prelutsky studied at Hunter College for two years. He proposed to his future wife, Carolynn, on the day they met; she accepted the next day. While growing up in Brooklyn, Prelutsky studied voice at The High School of Music and Art in New York and first planned to be an opera singer. However, he decided he did not have the drive to sing opera, and he became a folk singer. Later he tried his hand at drawing. For fun, he wrote some short poems and made some drawings, which became his first publication. He has since published numerous books of illustrated poetry and also provided illustrations for books by other writers, including many in translation. Prelutsky never condescends to his young readers. He deals in verse with many imaginative creatures, but he also writes about people and problems such bullies, school, and fear of the dark. He is aware of the sound of his words and likes to perform his poetry to the accompaniment of the guitar. He visits schools and libraries to perform his work. Jack Prelutsky is the recipient of numerous awards. In 1977 The Children's Book Council honored him for Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep. His other award-winners are The Mean Old Mean Hyena, The Headless Horseman Rides Tonight, and The New Kid on the Block. In 2006, the Poetry Foundation named Prelutsky the inaugural winner of the Children's Poet Laureate award. His book Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant and Other Poems (illustrated by Carin Berger) won the 2007 Scandiuzzi Children's Book Award of the Washington State Book Awards in the Picture Book category. (Bowker Author Biography) — biography from The New Kid on the Block … (more) |
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Jack Prelutsky has 21 past events. (show)  Chris Raschka Chris Raschka ( Good sports, A Ball for Daisy, The Purple Balloon, Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle, Daisy Gets Lost) I’m sometimes asked about my general approach to illustration, which has over the years come to be described as minimal. Hmm, I’m not sure minimal is such a complimentary term, but I’ll accept it. I wasn’t always minimal. In the early days I was laying it on as thickly as I could, trying very hard to get it right. But I found that the harder I tried, the more tired whatever it was I was working on looked. And then I grew tired of it as well. “There is too much sweat in it,” is how my friend, the artist Vladimir Radunsky, would put it. Perhaps he means that there has been an imposition of too much of my will upon the material with which I was working. It is an offhand remark of Wordsworth’s that helped me when I needed a new way to move forward: “The matter always comes out of the manner.” How you say something has direct bearing on what you say. So, if you labor heavily upon a work of art, then part of what you are saying is, this is a heavy work of art. If you happen to be trying to say something about lightness, then the art should be light as well. It is much the same with food. There are heavy meals and light meals. There are sauces that contain endless lists of ingredients, and there are sauces that contain only a few but in exquisite proportion. Does an apple taste best bitten directly into, sliced thinly with a light squeeze of lemon, or baked for an hour with nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon, flour and egg whites? Maybe the answer is that there is a time for all of those things. My answer in my illustration has been to allow the materials to speak as directly as possible. I want each and every entire brushstroke to be seen. I want the marks made by the tip of the brush to carry as much meaning as the marks made by the dragging tail end, the part that splits open as the paint pulls away, thins and dries. I want each brushstroke to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, a story in itself and a life in itself. Then the life of this brushstroke can wrestle with the life of the brushstroke next to it. There is enough action there between two brushstrokes for a little story. And what happens when the next brushstroke comes in a different color? It could be epic. Of course, if it’s just brushstrokes wrestling around, it isn’t much of a picture book is it? There still has to be a picture. And maybe it needs to be a picture of a dog named Daisy or a little girl riding a bike. So I have to be careful before I get too carried away in the manner itself. In the end, this is how it goes in my books. There are always two stories happening: one is me having fun watching brushstrokes wrestle, and the other is the story told in pictures and words on a page. It may be minimal, but it’s enough for me. (added from Random House)… (more)
 Chris Raschka Chris Raschka ( Good sports, A Ball for Daisy, The Purple Balloon, Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle, Daisy Gets Lost) I’m sometimes asked about my general approach to illustration, which has over the years come to be described as minimal. Hmm, I’m not sure minimal is such a complimentary term, but I’ll accept it. I wasn’t always minimal. In the early days I was laying it on as thickly as I could, trying very hard to get it right. But I found that the harder I tried, the more tired whatever it was I was working on looked. And then I grew tired of it as well. “There is too much sweat in it,” is how my friend, the artist Vladimir Radunsky, would put it. Perhaps he means that there has been an imposition of too much of my will upon the material with which I was working. It is an offhand remark of Wordsworth’s that helped me when I needed a new way to move forward: “The matter always comes out of the manner.” How you say something has direct bearing on what you say. So, if you labor heavily upon a work of art, then part of what you are saying is, this is a heavy work of art. If you happen to be trying to say something about lightness, then the art should be light as well. It is much the same with food. There are heavy meals and light meals. There are sauces that contain endless lists of ingredients, and there are sauces that contain only a few but in exquisite proportion. Does an apple taste best bitten directly into, sliced thinly with a light squeeze of lemon, or baked for an hour with nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon, flour and egg whites? Maybe the answer is that there is a time for all of those things. My answer in my illustration has been to allow the materials to speak as directly as possible. I want each and every entire brushstroke to be seen. I want the marks made by the tip of the brush to carry as much meaning as the marks made by the dragging tail end, the part that splits open as the paint pulls away, thins and dries. I want each brushstroke to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, a story in itself and a life in itself. Then the life of this brushstroke can wrestle with the life of the brushstroke next to it. There is enough action there between two brushstrokes for a little story. And what happens when the next brushstroke comes in a different color? It could be epic. Of course, if it’s just brushstrokes wrestling around, it isn’t much of a picture book is it? There still has to be a picture. And maybe it needs to be a picture of a dog named Daisy or a little girl riding a bike. So I have to be careful before I get too carried away in the manner itself. In the end, this is how it goes in my books. There are always two stories happening: one is me having fun watching brushstrokes wrestle, and the other is the story told in pictures and words on a page. It may be minimal, but it’s enough for me. (added from Random House)… (more)
 Chris Raschka Chris Raschka ( Good sports, A Ball for Daisy, The Purple Balloon, Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle, Daisy Gets Lost) I’m sometimes asked about my general approach to illustration, which has over the years come to be described as minimal. Hmm, I’m not sure minimal is such a complimentary term, but I’ll accept it. I wasn’t always minimal. In the early days I was laying it on as thickly as I could, trying very hard to get it right. But I found that the harder I tried, the more tired whatever it was I was working on looked. And then I grew tired of it as well. “There is too much sweat in it,” is how my friend, the artist Vladimir Radunsky, would put it. Perhaps he means that there has been an imposition of too much of my will upon the material with which I was working. It is an offhand remark of Wordsworth’s that helped me when I needed a new way to move forward: “The matter always comes out of the manner.” How you say something has direct bearing on what you say. So, if you labor heavily upon a work of art, then part of what you are saying is, this is a heavy work of art. If you happen to be trying to say something about lightness, then the art should be light as well. It is much the same with food. There are heavy meals and light meals. There are sauces that contain endless lists of ingredients, and there are sauces that contain only a few but in exquisite proportion. Does an apple taste best bitten directly into, sliced thinly with a light squeeze of lemon, or baked for an hour with nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon, flour and egg whites? Maybe the answer is that there is a time for all of those things. My answer in my illustration has been to allow the materials to speak as directly as possible. I want each and every entire brushstroke to be seen. I want the marks made by the tip of the brush to carry as much meaning as the marks made by the dragging tail end, the part that splits open as the paint pulls away, thins and dries. I want each brushstroke to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, a story in itself and a life in itself. Then the life of this brushstroke can wrestle with the life of the brushstroke next to it. There is enough action there between two brushstrokes for a little story. And what happens when the next brushstroke comes in a different color? It could be epic. Of course, if it’s just brushstrokes wrestling around, it isn’t much of a picture book is it? There still has to be a picture. And maybe it needs to be a picture of a dog named Daisy or a little girl riding a bike. So I have to be careful before I get too carried away in the manner itself. In the end, this is how it goes in my books. There are always two stories happening: one is me having fun watching brushstrokes wrestle, and the other is the story told in pictures and words on a page. It may be minimal, but it’s enough for me. (added from Random House)… (more)
 Chris Raschka Chris Raschka ( Good sports, A Ball for Daisy, The Purple Balloon, Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle, Daisy Gets Lost) I’m sometimes asked about my general approach to illustration, which has over the years come to be described as minimal. Hmm, I’m not sure minimal is such a complimentary term, but I’ll accept it. I wasn’t always minimal. In the early days I was laying it on as thickly as I could, trying very hard to get it right. But I found that the harder I tried, the more tired whatever it was I was working on looked. And then I grew tired of it as well. “There is too much sweat in it,” is how my friend, the artist Vladimir Radunsky, would put it. Perhaps he means that there has been an imposition of too much of my will upon the material with which I was working. It is an offhand remark of Wordsworth’s that helped me when I needed a new way to move forward: “The matter always comes out of the manner.” How you say something has direct bearing on what you say. So, if you labor heavily upon a work of art, then part of what you are saying is, this is a heavy work of art. If you happen to be trying to say something about lightness, then the art should be light as well. It is much the same with food. There are heavy meals and light meals. There are sauces that contain endless lists of ingredients, and there are sauces that contain only a few but in exquisite proportion. Does an apple taste best bitten directly into, sliced thinly with a light squeeze of lemon, or baked for an hour with nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon, flour and egg whites? Maybe the answer is that there is a time for all of those things. My answer in my illustration has been to allow the materials to speak as directly as possible. I want each and every entire brushstroke to be seen. I want the marks made by the tip of the brush to carry as much meaning as the marks made by the dragging tail end, the part that splits open as the paint pulls away, thins and dries. I want each brushstroke to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, a story in itself and a life in itself. Then the life of this brushstroke can wrestle with the life of the brushstroke next to it. There is enough action there between two brushstrokes for a little story. And what happens when the next brushstroke comes in a different color? It could be epic. Of course, if it’s just brushstrokes wrestling around, it isn’t much of a picture book is it? There still has to be a picture. And maybe it needs to be a picture of a dog named Daisy or a little girl riding a bike. So I have to be careful before I get too carried away in the manner itself. In the end, this is how it goes in my books. There are always two stories happening: one is me having fun watching brushstrokes wrestle, and the other is the story told in pictures and words on a page. It may be minimal, but it’s enough for me. (added from Random House)… (more)
 Chris Raschka Chris Raschka ( Good sports, A Ball for Daisy, The Purple Balloon, Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle, Daisy Gets Lost) I’m sometimes asked about my general approach to illustration, which has over the years come to be described as minimal. Hmm, I’m not sure minimal is such a complimentary term, but I’ll accept it. I wasn’t always minimal. In the early days I was laying it on as thickly as I could, trying very hard to get it right. But I found that the harder I tried, the more tired whatever it was I was working on looked. And then I grew tired of it as well. “There is too much sweat in it,” is how my friend, the artist Vladimir Radunsky, would put it. Perhaps he means that there has been an imposition of too much of my will upon the material with which I was working. It is an offhand remark of Wordsworth’s that helped me when I needed a new way to move forward: “The matter always comes out of the manner.” How you say something has direct bearing on what you say. So, if you labor heavily upon a work of art, then part of what you are saying is, this is a heavy work of art. If you happen to be trying to say something about lightness, then the art should be light as well. It is much the same with food. There are heavy meals and light meals. There are sauces that contain endless lists of ingredients, and there are sauces that contain only a few but in exquisite proportion. Does an apple taste best bitten directly into, sliced thinly with a light squeeze of lemon, or baked for an hour with nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon, flour and egg whites? Maybe the answer is that there is a time for all of those things. My answer in my illustration has been to allow the materials to speak as directly as possible. I want each and every entire brushstroke to be seen. I want the marks made by the tip of the brush to carry as much meaning as the marks made by the dragging tail end, the part that splits open as the paint pulls away, thins and dries. I want each brushstroke to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, a story in itself and a life in itself. Then the life of this brushstroke can wrestle with the life of the brushstroke next to it. There is enough action there between two brushstrokes for a little story. And what happens when the next brushstroke comes in a different color? It could be epic. Of course, if it’s just brushstrokes wrestling around, it isn’t much of a picture book is it? There still has to be a picture. And maybe it needs to be a picture of a dog named Daisy or a little girl riding a bike. So I have to be careful before I get too carried away in the manner itself. In the end, this is how it goes in my books. There are always two stories happening: one is me having fun watching brushstrokes wrestle, and the other is the story told in pictures and words on a page. It may be minimal, but it’s enough for me. (added from Random House)… (more)
 Chris Raschka Chris Raschka ( Good sports, A Ball for Daisy, The Purple Balloon, Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle, Daisy Gets Lost) I’m sometimes asked about my general approach to illustration, which has over the years come to be described as minimal. Hmm, I’m not sure minimal is such a complimentary term, but I’ll accept it. I wasn’t always minimal. In the early days I was laying it on as thickly as I could, trying very hard to get it right. But I found that the harder I tried, the more tired whatever it was I was working on looked. And then I grew tired of it as well. “There is too much sweat in it,” is how my friend, the artist Vladimir Radunsky, would put it. Perhaps he means that there has been an imposition of too much of my will upon the material with which I was working. It is an offhand remark of Wordsworth’s that helped me when I needed a new way to move forward: “The matter always comes out of the manner.” How you say something has direct bearing on what you say. So, if you labor heavily upon a work of art, then part of what you are saying is, this is a heavy work of art. If you happen to be trying to say something about lightness, then the art should be light as well. It is much the same with food. There are heavy meals and light meals. There are sauces that contain endless lists of ingredients, and there are sauces that contain only a few but in exquisite proportion. Does an apple taste best bitten directly into, sliced thinly with a light squeeze of lemon, or baked for an hour with nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon, flour and egg whites? Maybe the answer is that there is a time for all of those things. My answer in my illustration has been to allow the materials to speak as directly as possible. I want each and every entire brushstroke to be seen. I want the marks made by the tip of the brush to carry as much meaning as the marks made by the dragging tail end, the part that splits open as the paint pulls away, thins and dries. I want each brushstroke to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, a story in itself and a life in itself. Then the life of this brushstroke can wrestle with the life of the brushstroke next to it. There is enough action there between two brushstrokes for a little story. And what happens when the next brushstroke comes in a different color? It could be epic. Of course, if it’s just brushstrokes wrestling around, it isn’t much of a picture book is it? There still has to be a picture. And maybe it needs to be a picture of a dog named Daisy or a little girl riding a bike. So I have to be careful before I get too carried away in the manner itself. In the end, this is how it goes in my books. There are always two stories happening: one is me having fun watching brushstrokes wrestle, and the other is the story told in pictures and words on a page. It may be minimal, but it’s enough for me. (added from Random House)… (more)
 Chris Raschka Chris Raschka ( Good sports, A Ball for Daisy, The Purple Balloon, Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle, Daisy Gets Lost) I’m sometimes asked about my general approach to illustration, which has over the years come to be described as minimal. Hmm, I’m not sure minimal is such a complimentary term, but I’ll accept it. I wasn’t always minimal. In the early days I was laying it on as thickly as I could, trying very hard to get it right. But I found that the harder I tried, the more tired whatever it was I was working on looked. And then I grew tired of it as well. “There is too much sweat in it,” is how my friend, the artist Vladimir Radunsky, would put it. Perhaps he means that there has been an imposition of too much of my will upon the material with which I was working. It is an offhand remark of Wordsworth’s that helped me when I needed a new way to move forward: “The matter always comes out of the manner.” How you say something has direct bearing on what you say. So, if you labor heavily upon a work of art, then part of what you are saying is, this is a heavy work of art. If you happen to be trying to say something about lightness, then the art should be light as well. It is much the same with food. There are heavy meals and light meals. There are sauces that contain endless lists of ingredients, and there are sauces that contain only a few but in exquisite proportion. Does an apple taste best bitten directly into, sliced thinly with a light squeeze of lemon, or baked for an hour with nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon, flour and egg whites? Maybe the answer is that there is a time for all of those things. My answer in my illustration has been to allow the materials to speak as directly as possible. I want each and every entire brushstroke to be seen. I want the marks made by the tip of the brush to carry as much meaning as the marks made by the dragging tail end, the part that splits open as the paint pulls away, thins and dries. I want each brushstroke to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, a story in itself and a life in itself. Then the life of this brushstroke can wrestle with the life of the brushstroke next to it. There is enough action there between two brushstrokes for a little story. And what happens when the next brushstroke comes in a different color? It could be epic. Of course, if it’s just brushstrokes wrestling around, it isn’t much of a picture book is it? There still has to be a picture. And maybe it needs to be a picture of a dog named Daisy or a little girl riding a bike. So I have to be careful before I get too carried away in the manner itself. In the end, this is how it goes in my books. There are always two stories happening: one is me having fun watching brushstrokes wrestle, and the other is the story told in pictures and words on a page. It may be minimal, but it’s enough for me. (added from Random House)… (more)
 Chris Raschka Chris Raschka ( Good sports, A Ball for Daisy, The Purple Balloon, Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle, Daisy Gets Lost) I’m sometimes asked about my general approach to illustration, which has over the years come to be described as minimal. Hmm, I’m not sure minimal is such a complimentary term, but I’ll accept it. I wasn’t always minimal. In the early days I was laying it on as thickly as I could, trying very hard to get it right. But I found that the harder I tried, the more tired whatever it was I was working on looked. And then I grew tired of it as well. “There is too much sweat in it,” is how my friend, the artist Vladimir Radunsky, would put it. Perhaps he means that there has been an imposition of too much of my will upon the material with which I was working. It is an offhand remark of Wordsworth’s that helped me when I needed a new way to move forward: “The matter always comes out of the manner.” How you say something has direct bearing on what you say. So, if you labor heavily upon a work of art, then part of what you are saying is, this is a heavy work of art. If you happen to be trying to say something about lightness, then the art should be light as well. It is much the same with food. There are heavy meals and light meals. There are sauces that contain endless lists of ingredients, and there are sauces that contain only a few but in exquisite proportion. Does an apple taste best bitten directly into, sliced thinly with a light squeeze of lemon, or baked for an hour with nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon, flour and egg whites? Maybe the answer is that there is a time for all of those things. My answer in my illustration has been to allow the materials to speak as directly as possible. I want each and every entire brushstroke to be seen. I want the marks made by the tip of the brush to carry as much meaning as the marks made by the dragging tail end, the part that splits open as the paint pulls away, thins and dries. I want each brushstroke to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, a story in itself and a life in itself. Then the life of this brushstroke can wrestle with the life of the brushstroke next to it. There is enough action there between two brushstrokes for a little story. And what happens when the next brushstroke comes in a different color? It could be epic. Of course, if it’s just brushstrokes wrestling around, it isn’t much of a picture book is it? There still has to be a picture. And maybe it needs to be a picture of a dog named Daisy or a little girl riding a bike. So I have to be careful before I get too carried away in the manner itself. In the end, this is how it goes in my books. There are always two stories happening: one is me having fun watching brushstrokes wrestle, and the other is the story told in pictures and words on a page. It may be minimal, but it’s enough for me. (added from Random House)… (more)
 Chris Raschka Chris Raschka ( Good sports, A Ball for Daisy, The Purple Balloon, Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle, Daisy Gets Lost) I’m sometimes asked about my general approach to illustration, which has over the years come to be described as minimal. Hmm, I’m not sure minimal is such a complimentary term, but I’ll accept it. I wasn’t always minimal. In the early days I was laying it on as thickly as I could, trying very hard to get it right. But I found that the harder I tried, the more tired whatever it was I was working on looked. And then I grew tired of it as well. “There is too much sweat in it,” is how my friend, the artist Vladimir Radunsky, would put it. Perhaps he means that there has been an imposition of too much of my will upon the material with which I was working. It is an offhand remark of Wordsworth’s that helped me when I needed a new way to move forward: “The matter always comes out of the manner.” How you say something has direct bearing on what you say. So, if you labor heavily upon a work of art, then part of what you are saying is, this is a heavy work of art. If you happen to be trying to say something about lightness, then the art should be light as well. It is much the same with food. There are heavy meals and light meals. There are sauces that contain endless lists of ingredients, and there are sauces that contain only a few but in exquisite proportion. Does an apple taste best bitten directly into, sliced thinly with a light squeeze of lemon, or baked for an hour with nutmeg, sugar, cinnamon, flour and egg whites? Maybe the answer is that there is a time for all of those things. My answer in my illustration has been to allow the materials to speak as directly as possible. I want each and every entire brushstroke to be seen. I want the marks made by the tip of the brush to carry as much meaning as the marks made by the dragging tail end, the part that splits open as the paint pulls away, thins and dries. I want each brushstroke to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, a story in itself and a life in itself. Then the life of this brushstroke can wrestle with the life of the brushstroke next to it. There is enough action there between two brushstrokes for a little story. And what happens when the next brushstroke comes in a different color? It could be epic. Of course, if it’s just brushstrokes wrestling around, it isn’t much of a picture book is it? There still has to be a picture. And maybe it needs to be a picture of a dog named Daisy or a little girl riding a bike. So I have to be careful before I get too carried away in the manner itself. In the end, this is how it goes in my books. There are always two stories happening: one is me having fun watching brushstrokes wrestle, and the other is the story told in pictures and words on a page. It may be minimal, but it’s enough for me. (added from Random House)… (more)
Poets Who Know It! Storytime April is National Poetry Month. That’s why we’ll be reading books full of rhythm and rhyme this morning, including selections from the brand new collection, I’ve Lost My Hippopotamus, by Jack Prelutsky. It will be noisy and neat, sibilant and sweet, and when we’re done with poems and all, we will write some more to hang on the wall! This morning at 10:30 AM. Location: Street: 603 N Lamar Blvd City: Austin, Province: Texas Postal Code: 78703-5413 Country: United States (added from IndieBound)… (more)
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Improve this authorCombine/separate worksAuthor divisionJack Prelutsky is currently considered a "single author." If one or more works are by a distinct, homonymous authors, go ahead and split the author. IncludesJack Prelutsky is composed of 7 names. You can examine and separate out names. Combine with…
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